Musk first teased the tunnel idea back in December in a series of tweets one could easily have interpreted as merely the jokes of a futurist. Dude even said he would name his tunnel production company The Boring Company, a Dad joke wrapped in a Dad joke surrounded by an army of Dad jokes:
But this is no joke. According toWired, Musk started testing these boring activities in late January at SpaceX headquarters in Los Angeles. "We're just going to figure out what it takes to improve tunneling speed by, I think, somewhere between 500 and 1,000 percent," Musk said, adding that he and his team currently have "no idea" what they're doing. "I want to be clear about that," Musk said.
Musk hinted over the weekend that The Boring Company may end up intertwined with his other transit improvement proposal, the Hyperloop:
The Hyperloop plans were unveiled way back in 2013, with the Vergereporting that Musk's goal was to get passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in "less than 30 minutes." This would potentially be made possible through the use of aluminum pods traveling at speeds as high as 800mph. The Hyperloop, however, has never been Musk's priority. "If it was my top priority, I could probably get it done in one or two years," he told reporters on a conference call.
In addition to teasing The Boring Company, Musk has recently been using his Twitter presence to defend his position on Trump's advisory council. Though Musk doesn't align with Trump on policy, he told activists they should be stoked to have him advising Trump instead of "only extremists."
