Boring Company Tunnel Opening
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (1)
Transcript
0:10Elon MuskI've lived in LA for 16 years and traffic has gone from like, just like seventh level of hell to like the eighth level of hell. And, you know, it's terrible.
0:21Elon MuskFinally, finally, finally there's something, something that I think could solve the problem. Goddamn traffic problem. The thing is, like, why tunnels? You know, sometimes people say, what about, like, flying cars and all these other things?
0:37Elon MuskI want to be clear. We're not opposed to mass transit. We think mass transit is fine. Like, let's try every solution possible. But the thing about tunnels is that you can go 3D underground.
0:49Elon MuskThe inherent problem with the way cities are constructed is that you've got all these tall buildings that are in 3D and then a road network in 2D necessarily. This will result in traffic.
1:01Elon MuskThere's no way around it. You have to make transport 3D. You could go with a flying car. But there are some drawbacks to flying cars. Essentially, it's a helicopter with wheels, and they make a lot of noise.
1:16Elon MuskThere's a lot of wind force. And the probability of something falling on your head if there are a bunch of flying cars around is much higher than if there are not.
1:25Elon MuskThe great thing about tunnels is that there's no limit to how deep you can go. They're weatherproof. That's the other thing about flying cars. If there's like snow or rain or hurricane or something, suddenly you can't go anywhere.
1:40Elon MuskBut tunnels are immune to weather. It does not matter if there's a tornado. It doesn't matter if there's an ice storm. Doesn't matter what's going on above ground. If you're in a tunnel, you're safe and secure, so you will not hear, see, or feel the tunnels being created.
1:55Elon MuskYou can weave the boring system tunnel network into the fabric of a city without changing the character of the city. You'll have this revolutionary transport system and your city will still feel like your city.
2:10Elon MuskSo what's the problem with tunnels? They usually take a very long time to build and they're very expensive. Can cost up to a billion dollars per mile. In fact, the LA subway extension that just got completed cost $2 billion for two and a half miles.
2:25Elon MuskSo clearly something needs to be done to revolutionize tunneling technology. We need to be able to build tunnels way faster and for a hell of a lot less money.
2:35Elon MuskThis is us Nail. This is Gary Vi. It turns out snails don't live that long. So this is Gary the sixth. What are we doing to increase the speed of tunneling?
2:51Elon MuskIn a given hour of tunneling, only about 10 minutes of the hour is spent actually digging. Then the other 50 minutes are spent erecting the tunnel reinforcements, laying down tracks, doing logistics and a bunch of other stuff.
3:08Elon MuskSo just automating the segment placement and solving the logistics issues will actually give you about a five fold increase in tunneling speed. With our design, we've also tripled the power of the drill that results in a theoretical net speed increase of about 15 compared to the next best tunneling machine.
3:31Elon MuskSo, and hopefully we'll beat our snail. So aspirationally we should be slightly faster than a snail after doing those things. And we have three tunnel products. One is the loop.
3:46Elon MuskThat is for transportation pods. And you guys will try it out later today. And that's transport tunnel. We're also seeing a lot of interest in just utility tunnels, where a municipality can get a big tunnel and then put water mains and electricity lines inside the tunnel and then they can actually service.
4:10Elon MuskLike if they had a water main break, instead of it flooding the main street in the city, they can actually go into the boring company tunnel and fix the water main.
4:21Elon MuskBut this fundamentally is what we're trying to solve. We've all been there many, many times. We must solve the soul destroying traffic situation. So the loop that we're talking about consists of autonomous electric vehicles.
4:35Elon MuskThe combination of autonomous electric vehicles with deployable guide wheels so that it braces itself against the side of the tunnel so that it's safe even if the car loses power or even if somebody goes crazy or there's like a mechanical failure.
4:51Elon MuskThose guide wheels keep the car centered in the tunnel and ensure that you can go through the tunnel very fast and still be safe. But the thing about going 3D is that you could have like three.
5:02Elon MuskYou could have, you could have 16 tunnels going in the same direction. So you can have as many tunnels as you want. And I'm pretty sure everyone in the United States is not going to move to la, but you could literally build enough tunnels to transport everyone in the United States.
5:16Elon MuskIn la, there is no limit. The way the loop would work is that you'd have main arteries that are traveling at 150 miles an hour. And only when you want to go to an exit would you have an off ramp.
5:29Elon MuskIt's like a 3D highway system underground, basically.
5:49Elon MuskSam.
6:34Elon MuskAnd for the elevators, the way we're doing the elevators is we construct them off site. So the elevators are prefabricated, self contained steel structures. And so in order to insert the elevator, all you do is dig a hole in the ground.
6:47Elon MuskReal fast. Then bring the prefabricated elevator in sections, drop it down, connect the sections and you're done. There's not like some extended construction project. I think that's also important.
6:58Elon MuskSo you don't have these like construction projects that disrupt the city all over the place. And this, I should say also we will have continuously operating cars in the loop for those that do not have a car.
7:11Elon MuskSo this will be. We'll actually give priority to pedestrians and cyclists with cars that are continuously circulating in the loop. So even if you don't have a car, you can still use the system.
7:21Elon MuskI really want to emphasize that a small but very important element is having retractable wheels that when you're driving down the road, normally they retract and go under the car, you don't even see them.
7:39Elon MuskBut when you get into the tunnel, they deploy and allow you to go through a narrow tunnel very quickly and effectively, like a little train. So this, even though it's like a small thing, it's a small but very important element of the technology.
7:55Elon MuskThis is not intended to be some sort of walled garden or just for Teslas or something like that. Any autonomous EV can be outfitted with these guide wheels. Yeah, and why autonomous will?
8:06Elon MuskIt means you can go very, very fast and brake very quickly. Like we expect that you can probably do one vehicle per second through the tunnel. Typically on a freeway you can do without autonomous vehicles.
8:19Elon MuskYou can do a car every two seconds, but with autonomy, we think you can do a car at least every second. I mean, you can think of these like they're sort of like wormholes.
8:29Elon MuskJust like you drop down the worm like you're driving around. I need to get to the other side of the LA or New York or whatever, drop down the wormhole, pop out the other side, and then you can just drive.
8:38Elon MuskNormally the elevator itself only takes as much as two parking spaces on the street. So if you can just have a station in exchange for two parking spaces, and that's what I mean, that's basically the size of a station.
8:54Elon MuskSo you can interleave these stations throughout cities, wherever there's, you know, a couple parking spaces or a little patch of road, pretty much anywhere you can actually even have them come up in underground garages.
9:06Elon MuskAnd then one day it will connect to the hyperloop, but that's for another time. And what I think this really amounts to is an actual solution to the soul crushing burden of traffic.
9:21Elon MuskThis is something that I think will actually work. It's scalable and we have a demonstration tunnel here. And we expect to expand this over time to many cities all around the world and give people more time for their friends and family.
9:45Elon MuskThat concludes our presentation. Thank you.