Elon Musk’s Boring Company Completes Las Vegas Tunnel Excavation
An earlier version of this article was originally published on Tesla Oracle.
Elon Musk’s “The Boring Company” isn’t sleeping at all. It has been steadily working on the tunnel loops under the 200-acre Las Vegas Convention Center that will enable visitors to go from one end of the property to the other in approximately 1 minute.
Excavation of the final of the two tunnels has been completed and The Boring Company shared the video of the last wall of rocks falling down on the official account of the company.
Interestingly, the wall that was demolished by the machine had a sign saying “You Can’t Stop Vegas” — it is unclear if this was aimed at the coronavirus or a taunt at Alameda County, California, where Tesla’s manufacturing was halted longer than Elon Musk liked.
Vegas Loop 12:41 AM Rumblings pic.twitter.com/aEFbkwD8WI
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) May 14, 2020
The official Twitter account of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority also posted a video of the same event that says the first public debut of the functional transportation in these tunnels is due in January 2021.
No matter the barrier, Vegas doesn’t stop. This morning, excavation was completed on the final tunnel of Elon Musk’s innovative underground transportation system beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center. The project is scheduled to debut in January 2021. #VegasMeansBusiness pic.twitter.com/HX9pSISP4w
— Vegas Means Business (@LVCVA) May 14, 2020
The Boring Company’s founder, Elon Musk, discussing the project in this thread, also hinted that the project might even be completed sooner than the end of this year. He said:
“Boring Co will also connect Vegas hotels & airport. Autonomous Teslas in tunnels will provide individualized mass transit.”
Last year, The Boring Company also demonstrated in the following video that it only takes 1/4 the amount of time using the tunnels vs. the roads for the same distance covered — this demonstration was done at the already completed 1.2-mile test tunnel that was dug from the SpaceX HQ in Crenshaw Blvd. to a nearby parking lot.
At the start, Elon Musk tested the idea of using super-fast electric sleds in the tunnels, but last year he abandoned this method to save costs on modifying Tesla vehicles and installing the rails. Now the cars can run on their own wheels inside the tunnels at a max speed of around 125 mph, which is pretty fast considering no traffic jams, stop signs, or traffic lights.
The following timelapse video of The Boring Company setting up the tunneling machine at the Las Vegas Convention Center shows how efficient and productive the engineering team is. Currently, The Boring Company is hiring engineers and related staff for its Nevada and California projects, meaning the likelihood of new projects is pretty imminent.
Las Vegas Convention Center 🏗🕳 #TheBoringCompany @elonmusk $TSLA pic.twitter.com/qCGQbKUBL2
— Tesla New York (@TeslaNY) November 15, 2019
Since the launch of The Boring Company in 2017, the company has introduced 3 versions of its tunneling machines — V1 (Godot), V2 (Line-Storm), and V3 (Prufrock) — and the cost of tunneling has gone down with every new version of the tunneling machine. That’s the beauty of Elon Musk’s low-cost tunnels. Otherwise, it would have been only a dream.
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