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Tesla Model 3 Drag Races Tesla Model 3 in Boring Tunnel

Last year, Elon Musk’s tunnel boring company completed work on a demonstrative stretch of tunnel that will eventually expand to link SpaceX’s parking lot in Hawthorne to the Los Angeles International Airport.
Tesla Model 3 drag racing through the Boring unnel 1 photo
Photo: The Boring Company
Part of a greater master plan of the billionaire to move most of a city's traffic underground, the tunnel has already been car-tested in the past and showed this solution could work. But this week Tesla, Boring and Elon Musk himself decided to show us exactly how well it will work.

Two identical Model 3 cars were pitted one against another in an unlikely drag race of sorts. One was positioned at the tunnel’s entrance, and the other on the road. The goal was to see which one is faster in reaching the selected destination.

Both started their drive at the same time, but as the video below shows, the surface Tesla was doomed from the start, as it immediately gets stuck in traffic.

One minute and 11 seconds after it entered the tunnel, the underground Model 3 emerged at its destination, having at times reached speeds of 127 mph (204 kph).

At the exact moment the car re-emerged, the surface Tesla was still waiting for a green light a few yards from where it departed. In the end, it took the car nearly five minutes to reach the finish line, and it only reached a top speed of 44 mph (70 mph).

The portion of the tunnel that opened in December is about two miles long, running mostly under 120th Street. It is the first stretch of a longer system – and a demo too - that will eventually be used by pods acting as public transport.

The idea of an underground transport system for crowded cities appeared in 2013 when Elon Musk published what became known as the Hyperloop Alpha paper, a 58-page document describing the hows and whys of high-speed underground transit.

There are currently several companies working on similar projects across the world.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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