Elon Musk's first high-speed tunnel 'almost done' in LA
Transpod co-founders Sebastien Gendron and Ryan Janzen on the competition to make the Hyperloop concept a reality.
It’s almost here.
In less than two months’ time, Elon Musk is set to open his first high-speed tunnel in Los Angeles.
The billionaire entrepreneur tweeted Sunday that his Boring Company, an infrastructure and tunnel construction company founded by him in 2016, is almost finished with its first project.
“The first tunnel is almost done,” Musk tweeted Sunday.
“Opens Dec 10,” he added.
The new tunnel will reportedly run under Hawthorne, just southwest of Los Angeles.
Last month, Musk said his tunneling company idea actually “started out as joke” but it later morphed into a hobby company and now he plans to build tunnels in other cities, “eventually.”
"We decided to make it real and dig a tunnel under LA. And then other people asked us to build tunnels, so we said yes in a few cases,” Musk said on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
"I'm not saying it's going to be successful. It's not, like, asserting it's going to be successful. But so far I've lived in LA for 16 years and the traffic has always been terrible. And so I don't see any other ideas for improving the traffic,” he added.
In March, Musk posted a video on Twitter of what his new form of transportation would look like. Dubbed as the “Loop,” the video shows a van-size pod filled with people being lowered into a station before setting off for Los Angeles International Airport. He added that the new futuristic ride would cost as little as $1 per fare.
But while the idea of this new way of transport has been Musk’s from the beginning -- he first tweeted his vision for a tube-based transportation in 2013 — he said he didn’t have any plans to execute it. However, three years later, he changed his mind.
Since then other companies have also developed their own system for creating a high-speed tunnel system.
Earlier this month, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) unveiled its first full-scale passenger capsule,dubbed “an airplane without wings,” in Spain.
Other competitors include Arrivo and Richard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop One.