Elon Musk just casually posted a photo of a Tesla car in a Boring Company tunnel
Eccentric billionaire Elon Musk caused a stir today when he posted a progress photo of the Boring Company's underground tunnel being constructed at the SpaceX headquarters just outside of Los Angeles — complete with a Tesla Model S sitting at the mouth of the tunnel.
The photo revealed, finally, just how gigantic the Boring Company's tunnel actually is. Part of the long term plan is to have cars lowered down into the tunnel by a massive lift. The cars will then be pushed onto a magnetic platform that will transport vehicles on a rail at speeds of up to 124 mph.
Musk has high hopes for the tunnel his company is digging. Once the Boring Company can prove its tunnels are able to cut down on the congestion in Los Angeles, Musk hopes to create a network of the passages throughout the US for super-fast commutes.
This isn't the first we've seen of the gigantic lift he's building, though. Musk previously showed off the Boring Company's car elevator in an Instagram post back in July, but we never saw the Model S descend into the actual tunnel. This new post doesn't specify whether the car was put in place by the elevator, but if it was, it's certainly something to be excited about.
Musk also shared a first-hand look at how a Hyperloop system could work shortly afterwards, posting a video on Twitter of a tunnel run by the winner of SpaceX's Hyperloop Pod competition. The only major caveat in this video is that it was shot on a small recreation of the Hyperloop system — not a full human-sized version.
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The team behind the run, WARR Hyperloop out of the Technical University of Munich, sent their pod down the SpaceX track at 201 mph. It's certainly promising, and exciting to think that someday soon, a similar pod might transport humans.
Perfecting the technology and putting it into the tunnels are far out in the future, though. The Boring Company still has to finish that first project and work through the government approval process at the local, state, and federal levels. Elon Musk also has to figure out how exactly he'll make his Hyperloop system work IRL. He's likely to share all that progress on social media, though — so pay attention to your news feeds.
Brett Williams is a Tech Reporter at Mashable. He writes about tech news, trends and other tangentially related topics with a particular interest in wearables and exercise tech. Prior to Mashable, he wrote for Inked Magazine and Thrillist. Brett's work has also appeared on Fusion and AskMen, to name a few. You can follow Brett on Twitter @bdwilliams910.
