Elon Musk revealed a conceptual video of a multistoried tunnel system under the city of Los Angeles, which he aims to build with his startup Boring Co., at a TED conference in Vancouver, Canada, on Friday.
The video shows a Tesla S sedan lowered from the street on a skate, which then whisks the vehicle through a network of tunnels, until it is delivered to its final destination where it is then raised back to street level.
Boring Co. began work in January on SpaceX’s Hawthorne campus, digging a large pit to experiment with different boring methods. Musk aims to shake up the tunneling business by developing cheaper and faster ways to cut out tunnels underground. At the TED conference he said his machine would cut earth and reinforce tunnel walls simultaneously to save time.
On Thursday an employee posted an image to Instagram of what appears to be the company’s first boring machine.
The idea for the tunneling business allegedly came to Musk after enduring a gridlocked commute in December. From that frustration he declared on Twitter: “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging…”
Technology reporter Garrett Reim can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @garrettreim for the latest in L.A. tech news.