Even though Elon Musk released his hyperloop concept publicly for anyone to develop and use, he clearly has his own designs for the superfast transport idea he thought up. His newest business venture so far, the Boring Company, has almost finished its first underground tunnel below Los Angeles, and hopes to offer free rides to the public soon, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO announced Thursday.
In a post on his Instagram account, Musk shared a video of the tunnel, what is presumably a hyperloop pod moving through it, and at one point, a couple of technicians working inside the tunnel, before the camera rides back to its starting point.
Responding to a user on Twitter, Musk also revealed the Boring Company was hopeful of starting work on a tunnel between Los Angeles and San Francisco next year, and that it was already working on a tunnel connecting Washington, D.C., to New York City. He didn’t provide an estimate for when either of those were expected to be functional.
Musk did say, however, that the technology used for transport in those tunnels would be “true hyperloop” — “pressurized pods in near vacuum tunnels & faster than jetliner.” The hyperloop pods are predicted to travel at speeds of over 600 miles (960 kilometers) an hour in those ideal conditions. And given how they won’t involve travelling the usually significant distance to most airports, or the long check-in queues, they probably would be faster than taking a flight.
Replying to another Twitter user, who asked for a stop near the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, so that he could see SpaceX’s Falcon launches easier, Musk said the design of hyperloop made it “easy to incorporate branch loops” that would not disrupt or slow down the main loop and serve smaller cities not along the main loop.
The Boring Company is also testing a tunnel under the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. The first phase of the tunnel under Los Angeles is 2.7 miles long and is a “proof-of-process” tunnel, which “would be used for construction logistics verification, system testing, safety testing, operating procedure verification, and line-switching demonstrations.”
The company is also one of the two shortlisted entities for building an express connection service between downtown Chicago and the city’s O’Hare International Airport.
The projects on the East Coast would utilize what the company calls its Loop concept, which is different from hyperloop insofar as it does not completely eliminate air friction inside the tunnels the pods would travel in, since it would be used for relatively shorter routes. Loop pods would travel at about 125-150 miles an hour.
Boring CompanyGodot, one of the Boring Company's tunnel boring machines, is seen here. The Elon Musk company is "almost done" with its first tunnel under Los Angeles, he said Thursday. Photo: The Boring Company
For its projects, Musk is not seeking any money from the public. But the company has sold merchandise, raising $1 million from selling branded hats and another $10 million from the sale of flamethrowers.