Like many of Elon Musk's most controversial ideas, The Boring Company began as a tweet. Musk was presumably sitting in a Los Angeles rush hour on Dec. 17, 2016, when he wrote, "Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging..." If Musk were anyone but the CEO of Tesla, he might have left it at that, but just minutes later, it seemed that he had given the idea some serious thought.

"It shall be called 'The Boring Company'. I am actually going to do this,'" Musk said in a series of tweets. But unlike his proposals to "澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:take Tesla private," build a "media credibility website," or pilot a mini-submarine in Thailand—ideas that were either hated, unsuccessful, or both—The Boring Company may just be Musk's most successful social media pitch to date.

What Does The Boring Company Do?

The Boring Company is an infrastructure and tunnel construction company with contracts in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Hawthorne, California. The Tesla CEO announced the first test dig in January 2017, but not before returning to X to coin a company slogan: "Boring, it's what we do."

The company broke ground one month later in February 2017 while digging a test hole on the premises of SpaceX. The test dig reportedly began on a Friday afternoon, when Musk said "Let's get started today and see what's the biggest hole we can dig between now and Sunday afternoon, running 24 hours a day." At the end of that period, The Boring Company produced a hole measuring 50 feet wide and 15 feet deep.

The company's mission is to "solve traffic, enable rapid point-to-point transportation and transform cities" by building "safe, fast-to-dig, and low-cost transportation, utility, and freight tunnels." But how will it do that? Musk suggested that he has the technology and the means to significantly increase tunneling speed and drop costs. For context, it can cost an average of $1.4 billion per mile to construct a tunnel in urban areas of the U.S.

The Boring Company Projects

The Boring Company boasts five different project lines:😼

• LVCC Loop: Known formally as the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop, this is a 1.7-mile two-tunnel system with three transportation system stations. Now complete, this project cost the company $47 million.
• Resorts World Connector: The third phase of construction for this project began in the third quarter of 2023. It will connect Resorts World Las Vegas with different halls at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
• Vegas Loop: This project, which is listed as being under construction, will accommodate traffic moving from the LVCC to other resorts on the Las Vegas Strip and other key hubs, including the airport, stadium, and downtown Las Vegas.
• R&D Tunnel: Completed in December 2018, this project is used to test the company's Loop and Hyperloop ventures. The tunnel is located in Hawthorne, California, and cost less than $10 million.
• Hyperloop: Dubbed as an "ultra-high-speed public transportation system," Hyperloop would see people travel in autonomous electric pods at extremely high speeds.

Reimagining Public Transit

The Boring Company debuted its first completed stretch of an underground tunnel in December 2018, in Hawthorne, California. When the project was first proposed, Musk suggested that pods capable of carrying 16 passengers at once would shoot through the tunnel at speeds of up to 150 miles per hour.

But, the completed project looked remarkably different. Instead of passenger pods, Tesla Model Xs were equipped with tracking wheels, a guiding system similar to the way that vehicles are moved through a car wash.

First riders reported that the tracking wheels made rides extremely bumpy even at the test speed of approximately 50 mph. In 2018, The Boring Company completed its first 1.14-mile tunnel at the construction cost of $10 million.

The Boring Company Wins Chicago

Love it or hate it, The Boring Company's first tunnel will now pave the way for the company's work in Chicago and Maryland, where it has negotiated contracts to build public transit systems. In late November 2017, the City of Chicago announced a competition to build a high-speed transportation network from downtown Chicago to the O'Hare Airport.

By February 2018, the mayor announced the four contenders: The Boring Company, Oaktree Capital Management, O'Hare Express Train Partners, and O'Hare Xpress, LLC.

The Boring Company entered the contest with the proposal to transport passengers from downtown to the airport in 12 minutes using automated electric cars. Musk described using a loop system, in which 16 passengers (and their luggage) would be transported at speeds of over 100 mph in pods that depart every half-minute. The project died after Rahm Emanuel opted not to rerun for mayor after his term ended in May 2019.

Selling Recreational Flamethrowers

Elon Musk hasn’t been able to keep some of the promises he's made in the past, but when it comes to his Boring Company’s pledge to bring a recreational flamethrower to the market, the Tesla CEO appeared to deliver.

On December 10, 2017, Musk vowed to make a Boring Company flamethrower if the company could sell 50,000 branded hats for $20 each and barely two days later, over half of the goal had been reached. By Christmas Eve, he announced on X that the goal had been met.

Shortly after the release, Musk tweeted: "Apparently, some customs agencies are saying they won’t allow shipment of anything called a 'Flamethrower'. To solve this, we are renaming it 'Not a Flamethrower'."

Flamethrower or not, The Boring Company sold 20,000 units for $500 each on limited release, earning the company unprecedented media exposure and a potential $10 million in revenues.

Latest Innovations

In April 2021, The Boring Company completed the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop—a 1.7-mile, two-tunnel system with three stops: the LVCC Central Station, the LVCC West Station, and the LVCC South Station. The LVCC Loop was designed to reduce traveling time and traffic congestion.

The company also completed the 0.8-mile Hyperloop Test Track and 1.14-mile R&D Tunnel in Hawthorne, California, in 2016 and 2018, respectively. The Hyperloop Test Track is a hyperspeed public transportation tunnel system in which passengers travel in autonomous electric pods.

Not yet open to the public, the Test Track is used for competitions where participants design and build electric pods to travel Hyperloops. The R&D Tunnel was built to test the company's tunnel infrastructure and Loop and Hyperloop systems.

Under construction is the Vegas Loop, a 29-mile tunnel that will connect to the LVCC and 50 other stations along the Vegas strip, in downtown Las Vegas, the Las Vegas airport, and other locations. Also, the plan is to connect the Loop to stations in Los Angeles.

The Elon Musk Factor

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Elon Musk is the richest person in the world with a net worth of $256 billion as of September 2024. Musk is the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:chief executive officer (CEO) of Tesla, SpaceX, X Corp., and The Boring Company. He is also one of the founders of PayPal and other tech companies. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and Bernard Arsenault round out the top five richest people in the world.

The Early Years

Born in South Africa to an engineer father and a fashion model mother, Musk was always fascinated with 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:entrepreneurship and innovations. At the age of 10, he began to program computers and became so skilled that, at 12, ꦛhe created♌ and sold his first galactical computer game, Blastar.

At 17, Elon moved to Canada with his mother and attended Queen's University, where he spent two years before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania. He finished his academic career in Pennsylvania, graduating with bachelor's degrees in Physics and in Economics.

Founder and CEO

Elon Musk's entrepreneurial passion and academic background led him to begin Zip2 with his brother, Kimbal, and partner, Greg Kouri, in 1995.

However, in 1999, Compaq purchased the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:software company for $340 million. With his sudden windfall, Musk formed X.com, which later became PayPal. Before Musk left the company, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:e-commerce platform eBay purchased PayPal for a whopping $1.5 billion.

In 2002, Elon used his payout to found SpaceX, a space travel company, although it did not take off for years. In 2004, Elon Musk heavily invested millions in the then-startup Tesla Motors and was later recruited to join the founders to run the company. In 2007, the existi🐓ng CEO was ousted and Musk was named CEO, a title he currently holds.

In 2022, Musk purchased X Corp. and took the company private.

The Bottom Line

The Boring Company, far from what its name suggests, seeks to redefine our infrastructure and transportation systems via the use of tunnels. With successes such as the LVCC Loop system and RD Tunnel, this futuristic travel system may be arrivi🎃ng sooner than anticipated.