San Bernardino, Ontario, Chicago & Los Angeles are a few of the cities miffed at Musk’s empty promises.
The WSJ article points out that Boring was overwhelmed by bureaucratic hurdles such as obtaining permits & passing environmental reviews.
But likely the failure of Boring to design & build a fast boring tunnel machine is what really ended the projects. “Boring has yet to make good on its most ambitious pitch: that it can design tunnel-boring machines that are so fast to operate that they will drive down costs and shake up the industry.”
Musk may be a genius but he has a history of overpromising. That in combination of his leadership style of relentlessly driving his employees to accomplish very difficult tasks does seem to be working for him & is alienating his workforce.
He did indeed create an EV manufacturing entity. But methinks his focus is scattered between that-& Space & Boring means that those businesses suffer.
That’s the part I never understood. Digging in the dirt is the oldest human engineering activity there is. There isn’t going to be some undiscovered method of digging that no one has thought of before Elon came along.
Well, so far the “secret sauce” is just wide enough for a single car, plus a couple inches on either side, with human drivers, with inadequate ventilation in case of a car fire, without safety rooms, and with no way to exit in case of an accident or breakdown.
The first leg of the Las Vegas route recently opened, giving patrons a chance to skip the traffic above ground with a mind blowing 4mph (correct) ride through a claustrophobic tunnel. Wheeee!
Does that link say 4 mph? I was in LV back in April for a convention and I rode this 4 or 5 times. I recall it was more like 30 mph. But the “improvement” was they had many cars, many loading parking spots and wait times just 1-2 minutes … you bypassed lots of above ground traffic, saving 10-20 minutes that you would normally walk or get stuck in a taxi for a while but instead can get dropped off away from the traffic.
That was a review from a writer at a tech convention, it had just opened the week before. Hopefully they have improved the speed.
Still seem odd to have a bunch of fancy cars sitting around waiting for passengers who can only go one place. (The have plans for more stations, but it still seems an odd kludge.)
Well it opened in the spring of 2021 according to the article…which was published in June of 2022. I can say it was operating at at least ~30 mph in April of 2022. So I’m confused as to why they would say 4 mph in June 2022.
In any case, I can’t see how the thing could make a profit. (Especially considering it was free) They had lots of people directing you where to go to hop in the next car. Maybe some of this was due to Covid.
But having been to a couple of dozen conventions in LV with over 100K attendees the traffic is a total mess and maybe this would help relieve some of it. Actually, no, not really, they’ll just use this to expand even more just like they did when they put in the monorail – totally useless when there is a big crowd and you have to wait 30 or 45 minutes. And then almost empty at other times.
Maybe the tunnels with EVs are better at surge demand loading
The article made it sound like it was a temporary congestion problem. However, in the early days when Musk was pitching this, it was supposed to be a Telsa in FSD mode travelling about 75 mph. For some reason, speeds are much slower and they have a safety driver.
Yeah, having a “safety driver” pretty well negates the cost savings, doesn’t it? I say give the tunnels to Disney and tell them to figure out a people mover that works more efficiently. I’d say they’d be able to do it. It would probably come with dancing ducks and superhero wall paintings, too.
I don’t think they have safety drivers.
They are just drivers.
I asked them about FSD. They said they knew nothing about it.
Also said that the operators were not employed by Tesla or the Boring company but a seperate company – I can’t find this on the web anywhere.