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Elon Musk's Boring Company Makes Progress, Tests the Hypnotizing Electric Sled

It may have sounded like a joke at first, but considering how things have developed since Musk first mentioned the idea of digging tunnels underneath Los Angeles, it'd have to be the most expensive one yet.
Staging area for the Boring Company's tunnel digging 3 photos
Photo: Elon Musk on Instagram
Staging area for Boring Company's tunnel diggingStaging area for Boring Company's tunnel digging
That's because Musk's Boring Company is making huge strides toward commencing its core activity, which is... to bore. The hole for the boring machine is already in place and the machine itself is being assembled, so it shouldn't be too long now before the work commences.

The giant mechanized mole has even received its name. It will be called "Godot," based on Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" play. Godot is currently being put together and will measure a few hundred feet in length when all modules are in place.

Musk is keeping everyone up to date on the proceedings via Instagram where he uploaded a picture of a few elements of the boring machine with the accompanying text: “Entry hole, staging area and starting tunnel for Boring Machine 1 (aka Godot) now complete.”

In typical Musk fashion, he also made it very clear he looks to increase the speed at which Godot functions from the current 300 feet per week to anything up to one mile per week. However, he wasn't very specific about how he plans to do it.

Just in case you haven't been following the news, this whole tunnel drilling thing is Musk's new idea of dealing with the congested traffic. Knowing some people won't give up the comfort of their personal vehicle no matter how good the public transport is, the Tesla CEO is building just that: a public transport system for cars.

The idea is to have electric sleds that work pretty much as train platforms on which the cars are individually loaded. They then go underground where a network of tunnels and rails takes them to their intended destination at speeds of 125 mph (200 km/h). No congestion, no speed limits, no pollution.

He posted on Instagram a short video taken during the test run of one of these sleds. The clip can be nauseating for some and a seizure warning is in place, but if you can handle it, it does look and sound pretty futuristic.

If he keeps coming up with new projects at this rate (Tesla, SpaceX, the solar panels, and now this), Elon Musk is going to start working on a solution for cloning as well because even with no sleep whatsoever, we don't see how he'd be able to keep up with the work volume.


 

[Warning, this may cause motion sickness or seizures] This is a test run of our electric sled that would transport cars at 125 mph (200 km/h) through the tunnels, automatically switching from one tunnel to the next. Would mean Westwood to LAX in 5 mins.

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on May 12, 2017 at 5:48am PDT

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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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