Boring Tunnel Opens with live Boring Product Unveiling
69 replies, posted
https://www.boringcompany.com
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1070834865619259393?s=19
https://twitter.com/boringcompany/status/1075199618458181632?s=19
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1075227467239940096?s=19
https://twitter.com/OCTeslaClub/status/1075221950186713089?s=19
It will probably be boring.
I'd like to see some cost estimates. More detail the better.
great you've made wealth inequality more unfair.
I mean their will be access for those who don't own Tesla's. I don't see any reason it would need to be significantly more expensive then other mass transit.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1075229709393252352
I've seen nothing about turning the tunnels into some VIP club
Given Elon's history hes probably going to use this as a proof of concept to pitch as a large scale infrastructure project for major cities. If it ends up being as efficient as planned it could do a lot to alleviate traffic congestion
ya because everybody has a model x/s/3 to commute through the tunnels in. The passenger capacity on these things is a joke compared to actual subway rail and if musk had gotten his way he'd have built a giant network while circumventing the regulations by cutting the project up into dozens of little projects much like the oil and gas industry does to shortcut their pipelines through environmental review
Dude it's literally the first tunnel and they need to limit access somehow
I've seen nothing that indicates this will do anything to actually help people. all the videos on this, all the media show its going to have a very small capacity especially with it mixing vehicles on sleds (which will no doubt only be tesla products allowed) and purpose built passenger trams. Their goal is to have these things to where you drive your car on or step onto a pad and get lowered down which seems... quite impractical and potentially dangerous...
Its massively overhyped and he's trying to take credit for reinventing the subway but he's made a worse subway system and he's detracting from other valuable public works programs that do need public support.
Wait, are they seriously trying to pile cars in ome at a time? On an elevator.
https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/the-boring-company-tunnel-route-los-angeles.jpg
this was what they proposed to build
That's not a test for congestion, this going to cause more congestion.
Most of these stops that aren’t attractions in and of themselves (stadium and convention center) or airports are in extremely rich sections of Los Angeles. Except UCLA, but that’s a fairly expensive college.
Also, why not show its body effectiveness by building an expansion for the LA subway system, god knows it needs it.
ya he's making a subway for rich people and couching it in language of tech disruption bullshit. He even tried to use the same tactics oil and gas companies use to dodge environmental review studies to get this thing permitted. Musk is a rich billionaire, ya he wants to do some really good things but lets not pretend he's working for the good of the masses, at the end of the day he's going to do what's best for himself just like Trump.
Previously, the company had been talking about building “electric skates” on which vehicles could park and be transported through the tunnel.
Additionally, they had planned to do “electric pods” for public transportation.
Today, Musk announced that they are dropping both of those ideas in favor of a system of “tracking wheels”, which can be installed as an attachment to vehicles.
They deploy from underneath the vehicle to act as a guide to keep the car from hitting the side of the tunnel.
In a press briefing ahead of the event tonight, Musk said the system could be added to a vehicle during the configuration for “$200 to $300.” He also said that it could be installed as an aftermarket product.
Musk even said that it could be installed on vehicles other than Tesla’s, though they are using the Model X:
“We used Tesla vehicles because I run Tesla. What I am going to do? Use someone else’s car?”
Though, there are several restrictions for a vehicle to be used in the Boring Company’s tunnels that it basically makes Tesla vehicles the only eligible ones at this point.
They need to be electric, be able to maintain a speed of ~150 mph, and have some autonomous capabilities (at least be able to accelerate and brake autonomously).
...
For that machine, they are working to increase the power of the machine by a factor 3, modify the cutter design, and add an automated segment erection system.
In a brief with the press prior to the event, Musk said existing tunnel boring companies spend only about 10 minutes mining per hour as the rest is spent installing the reinforcement and deploying all the logistics behind: power, dirt removal, etc.
They see a potential 15x improvement in the speed of boring versus the next best boring technology by engineering a system that automatically takes care of that at the same time as they dig.
Musk said that he expects this new system to be ready “relatively soon”.
...
The Boring Company is betting that the combination of going faster, reducing the diameter of the tunnel, and better economics of managing the dirt will result in drastic reduction in the cost of tunneling.
Where most projects cost over $1 billion per mile and take 3 to 6 months per mile, the Boring Company plans to do it for a fraction of the time and the cost.
Musk said that the 1.14-mile test tunnel in Hawthorne cost them only about $10 million and they have yet to implement most of their cost and time-saving ideas
https://electrek.co/2018/12/18/elon-musk-boring-company-tunnel-tesla-tracking-wheels/
Also cool video:
https://youtu.be/KLNMufcM1m0
I still lovec the fact the bricks were a fucking afterthought.
the whole point is that currently it is prohibitively expensive and slow to bore traditionally sized tunnels (like the ones utilized in subways). by reducing the tunnel diameter, you can reduce both the cost per distance bored and the rate at which you can progress. for a good example of why subway systems and their expansions are not exactly a walk in the park, look at NYC's subway expansions. there are lines there which have been in the planning/construction stages for nearly one hundred years
this is generally the way these projects work. you pitch them to the wealthy clients that can afford to bankroll the project, then once the costs have come down and the technology is proven, you can roll it out to mass market. i am unsure if this specific company/project is receiving public works funding, but if it is, wouldn't that be more of an issue with the city's governance not performing due diligence than the boring company and its product?
They need to be electric, be able to maintain a speed of ~150 mph, and have some autonomous capabilities (at least be able to accelerate and brake autonomously).
Truly transport for the common man has arrived.
Not to mention needing “guide skates” that would cost thousands on any car unless sold for a loss. His $200-300 estimate is bullshit for deployable wheels. There is no way any car company could make these wheels that can stand sustained speeds of 150mph and be deployed and retracted for less than 2 grand and still make any kind of profit.
I don't imagine subway carriages are cheap. Using lots of mass market cars is probably cheaper.
They're not building this at all. They have this small test tunnel, a proposed tunnel in Chicago, and a proposed tunnel to Dodgers Stadium that links up with some transit hub.
If you don't think that electric cars meeting that criteria are going to be common in ~10-15 years when the first of these tunnels would be truly deployed then I'm not sure what to say? Pretty much every major automaker is launching electric models and most are also deploying autonomous capabilities as well.
2000 dollars can get you an entire forced induction kit and tuning, or any other number of modifications to a vehicle... i'm sure modern economies of scale can reasonably downsize the price of a motorized folding guide wheels. sustaining 150mph isn't that hard when you can have a relative guarantee as to the quality of the surface and constrained operating conditions.
i don't understand these arguments. the point isn't to replace existing modes of transit, its to add another layer of navigable routes on top of the existing ones to help reduce congestion. yes, the loading/unloading process seems like it could be a bottleneck, but if the connecting travel is so fast it could result in a total travel time similar to normal driving. until we've either seen these tunnels in action or have a better understanding and a firm does a cost-benefit analysis, these arguments are moot.
i think the way they want these tunnels to be seen is as underground roads, not as a replacement to subways.
There's a lot of things I'm skeptical about with the Boring Co. I'm skeptical about the whole "infinitely scalible in 3D space" thing, and about congestion, and about the apparent need to have these little wheels bolted on your car in order to use it. There's a lot of questions with it but I see no harm in him going for it and seeing what happens. I don't know if it will ever end up as something in wide scale use but it may have a niche here and there. Who knows. I can picture a few situations where tunnels would be hella useful. Like getting between parking garages in a city where surface traffic would be congested. (in this case you would already have paid for access to the parking garage and the tunnel would be a way to get from area to area) City wide transit? We'll see.
no its not. A subway car is engineered to endure the rigors of light rail use for 30+ years. Your car is designed to drive on the road for ~10.
the things that make a car good at being a car don't really make it a great train no matter how you spin it.
this is a false comparison. they aren't making cars into trains. this application and the use-case of a typical subway carriage are completely different. this isn't even going into the logistics of the fact that people own their own cars, while people don't own their own subway carriages, and that you can use a car for more things than you can a subway.
this is more like letting cars drive through subway tunnels, rather than using cars as trains.
they spent considerable time and resources trying to get that plan approved
His tunnel nixed, Elon Musk doubles down on a subterranean dream
but ultimately they only got a couple 'test' tunnels approved
they aren't 'handwaving it away', they haven't even discussed how they want to handle it yet. i can understand being skeptical but you are making a lot of assumptions about a project that is still in the proof-of-concept stage, or even before that.
With autopilot, and the cars having an internet connection already it's essentially just a software problem. I don't imagine a subway car smashing into a wall at 150 would be death free either, at least in a car you have seatbelts and the other cars can stop.
Sure it might not last as long, but is it cheap enough to be an issue?
The Boring Company’s Chicago project seems awfully cheap for som..
Then there are the vehicles, or “skates” as Musk calls them. The Boring Company says it will use modified Tesla Model X car chassis as an underpinning for its so-called Loop public transportation system. These vehicles would be transported on “autonomous electric skates” traveling at 125–150 mph. Electric skates will carry between eight and 16 passengers or a single-passenger vehicle, according to the company’s website.
By comparison, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority can squeeze about 2,000 people on a single subway train.
You're still putting a passenger car in the mix and using it to provide all the structure and safety. this whole thing just looks like a million cut corners and cities are jumping on it simply because he says he can do it for 1/10th the cost that a traditional subway costs.
this isn't rockets or cars though, civil engineering on the scale he wants to build isn't something you can just fuck up, you have to build the best thing you can and do it right the first time.
The car transporting thing is dumb. I only really care about the tunnel cost so they can put trains in them.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1075229709393252352?s=19
Oh shit imagine how good advertisement that is for Tesla. If by circulating cars they mean gutted teslas
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