On Tuesday 18 December in Hawthorne, near Los Angeles (California), Elon Musk gave a demonstration of the first road tunnel built by his Boring Company, a company founded a couple of years ago and which was added to the numerous other activities of the American billionaire. starting with the car company Tesla and the one for SpaceX space launches. In Musk's very ambitious plans, the new system should solve the traffic problem in big cities, offering an articulated network of underground tunnels that can be traveled by electric cars. The test was indicated as promising by some reporters and as disappointing by others; Musk assured that there will be improvements soon and that the current tunnel should be considered a demonstration prototype.
The tunnel
The experimental tunnel is 1.8 kilometers long and connects a former SpaceX parking lot with a residential area in Hawthorne. Compared to classic road tunnels, it is very narrow, with a width of about 3.7 meters: it can be accessed directly by car, via a freight elevator that drops the vehicle to the entrance of the tunnel.
The demonstration was carried out by some drivers and employees of the Boring Company, who accompanied the journalists on the drive from one end of the tunnel to the other. At the entrance, a series of green LED lights illuminate to indicate the green light, after which the car accelerates and begins to travel through the tunnel, at a speed limited to 70 kilometers per hour per hour. According to Musk, advances in construction techniques and safety systems will soon allow the tunnel to exceed 160 kilometers per hour. At the end, other LED lights indicate the end of the route and the arrival towards the freight elevator to return to the surface.
Journalists who participated in the test say they were tossed around a lot as the Tesla walked down the tunnel. Musk later explained that the bottom of the tunnel is still uneven and that there was no time to fix it for Tuesday's demonstration. Once finished, he said, it will be much smoother and more uniform, to offer a more comfortable ride.
Autonomous electric cars only
In recent months Musk had announced that the cars in the tunnels would not move by themselves, but through some sort of large skates, which they would accompany them to their destination. Now the plans have changed and the idea is that individual cars move through the tunnel. To do this they will use their own engines, and for this reason access will be limited to compatible electric cars only, not necessarily Tesla. They will only be able to travel through the tunnel in autonomous mode, with the autopilot activated, to minimize the risk of accidents in the event of unforeseen events.
For Tuesday's test, a modified Tesla Model X was used, on which small horizontal wheels were mounted that serve to keep the car in the right trim and make it go through the tunnel more easily. At the end of the underground journey, the wheels fold automatically, with a retractable effect under the car. According to Musk, the additional trolleys will cost no more than $ 200-300 to purchase and fit into the cars, or chosen directly as an option when purchasing from the dealership.
In addition to their own cars, self-driving electric cars will be able to circulate in the tunnel and can be booked as normal taxis. The idea is that each user indicates on an application the access point where he wants to be recovered and the destination, then leaving the system to transport it. This version is expected to be paid, but for now Musk hasn't given much information about the revenue system he has in mind.
Costs and benefits
Musk argues that the Boring Company tunnels will be much cheaper and more versatile than the classic road underpasses, or tunnels used for subways. This is because they are smaller in size and because the company has worked hard to make tunnel construction cheaper and more automated. On this point Musk has long claimed to have introduced innovations such as the possibility of assembling tunnel linings with the same machine as they are excavated, even if technologies of this type have existed for many years and are regularly used, especially in Europe where have been developed.
From the start of the first projects to the conclusion of the prototype tunnel, Boring Company spent around 40 million euros, but only a quarter of the amount was used to build the tunnel. Given the length of almost two kilometers, the cost figure is interesting, especially when compared to the larger tunnels that cost hundreds of millions of dollars per kilometer.
Several cities have already expressed their interest in Boring Company, even before the test tunnel was finished. The city of Chicago, for example, has awarded Musk's company a contract to build a tunnel system between downtown and the main airport. Construction of the planned 30-kilometer loop could cost around $ 1 billion, while for smaller projects, $ 100 million of integrated tunnel systems could be built.
The idea is in fact to create more underground tunnels, on different levels and put in communication with each other. A sort of large anthill below the cities in which self-driving electric cars whiz by. However, Musk did not provide many details on the security of the system, nor on other practical implications related to the possibility that the tunnels themselves become very busy, in the absence of more rational collective transport systems.
