It doesn't matter. Getting public money (or investor money generally) is a one on one experience, and individual humans are highly hackable to a master conman like Musk. He's a first rate money man and pretty much a loser at everything else. Trump has a similar one on one skill, which is why people can't reconcile the public tardfigure they see with his business success, which is real and driven by his incredible interpersonal skills.

That can really only last until the next project (Chicago?) flops magnificently. I dunno how the LA disaster hasn't destroyed boring company credibility - props to the hype man for that.

Someone needs to shop elons head onto this

https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/vi...rld-1831210269

Agreed, the world wants to believe in superstars

Amazing one on one skills confirmed

https://qz.com/1267508/all-the-peopl...-him-an-idiot/

Yeah, agreed. I will charitably say most people have no idea. That being said, I think things are starting to turn wrt his image, and he’s mostly been accelerating that process by doing **** like his 60 mins interview (he literally said why would anyone trust a timeline I give them, and that he’s stupid not a liar...) and this boring fiasco. Some weak but interesting corroborating evidence is the trouble he had with the spaceX loan (and now they are trying to do a 500m eq round).

I didn't follow any of the Boring company stuff in the recent weeks. What was the disaster with LA?

Also, regarding TS's statement on 10x:
Elon has multiple times already said how he wants to achieve the 10x improvement. 4.X of which is due to a reduction in diameter of the tunnel. I don't believe that this is going to fly with regulations as well as human psychology.

He promised a glossy vision and it came up so clownishly, comically short of what even a garden variety non-tard could achieve that everyone is amused and bemused and seeing Elon The Carnival Barker for what he is.

What The Actual **** Was That (yes that's a real headline) was a typical media reaction. It perfectly encapsulated the hype vs reality with this loser, and how he's not a genius at all but a tard who fails to see details and obstacles and always comes up way short of his hype.
The 10x is absolutely clownishly stupid wrt tunneling for about 10 different reasons.

The Concourse link above is actually a pretty good read for catching up on the tunnel.

The two articles are getting very hung up on the vehicle being used not the tunnel itself. This is approaching the problem completely wrongly. Tunnels are the ****ing expense, not the vehicles in there.

The expense of the vehicles isn't the issue. The terrible design and planning is. The tunnel is no better than a single lane underground highway (worse as currently designed with guard rails and doohickeys attached to the vehicles). He claims absurd throughput rates that assume no traffic bottlenecks at either end. None of it makes any sense at all.

The best case for this is that it becomes an underground highway system that requires autopilot compatible vehicles that communicate with the system to keep traffic flowing more efficiently. But there's no innovation there.

And if your argument is that Elon has found some new hyperefficient way to dig tunnels... Lol

Even the underground automated highway view of it is ridiculous unrealistic from what I can see. Tunnels are literal death traps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottha...ision_and_fire) and so you still need escape routes, escape exits, lighting, ventilation, room for emergency services, etc.

The simplest problem is the elevators kill throughput. You need side tunnels for slowdown and on-ramping.You need public works through already plumbed/corded ground for every elevator, which is extremely expensive. And elevators do what, 2 cars/minute?

It's the dumbest idea in modern history. Nice to see the idiot getting mocked for it. If it was the Ford CEO with this pure bull**** he'd be put in a straightjacket. Elizabeth Holmes could also spew similar BS and get away with it...frauds are great at creating cults of personality.

I just assumed elevators weren't even part of the final plan. You'd need at least dozens of elevators to get his claimed throughput rates so some kind of spiral onramp makes way more sense

I'll just say this about the tunnels. If something like this is actually viable for the future, then I can at least appreciate the attempt no matter how stupid it may seem. Gotta start somewhere...

That said, The Emperor's New Clothes. Trump and Musk are so full of themselves they don't even care how idiotic they look. They just care that they're getting all the attention and do whatever mental gymnastics is necessary to deflect blame and/or self aggrandize in any and all endeavors they partake in.

It doesn't even mean they're bad people, just that some things like being the center of attention is hyper important and supersedes something like, say, the well being of another human being(s). They may even care truly about the well being of another person(s), but the conflicts and rationalizations that go on in their head, to any normal, rational person, is going to look bizarre and, in many cases, evil to them. Ergo the hatred and mockery.

It's very easy for people like that to just piss everyone off and magnetize hatred and insults ad nauseam, because that's the natural reaction of your typical/average/normal/conventionally thinking person toward the standard behavior of guys like Trump and Musk. I think people forget who they're observing and/or dealing with. Their reactions would garner less volatility if you just kept in mind these aren't normal people. They're pathological at worst, and extremely eccentric w some real blinds spots at best.

/armchair psychology

I think that's wrong. Right now it's desperation, and cornered rats will do anything to try to get out of their situation.

Musk probably knows what he is proposing with the tunnels is complete BS, but he needs money to go into the Boring Company so he can use it to prop up Tesla, imo. Tesla is right now in a very desperate situation and they need to post free and clear cash by 1/1 as audited or its literally lights out. Hence, any BS to live another day, even if he himself can't buy into it.

Trump's recent actions make sense if you assume his thinking is along the lines of 2020 re-election being impossible due to the upcoming market crash. In which case, do everything you wanted to do because **** it you are the President; if you aren't getting re-elected in 2020 anyway then what other people think doesn't matter any more.

THe best part is even Boring Company's concept art video basically shows an underground highway.

The demos are just to get funding anyway. Musk is planning to dig tunnels for basically everything that a small tunnel is useful. I find it quite possible that Musk will even build a bigger version that can accommodate subway cars.

The Boring Company ain't going to make or break Tesla. They are just on totally different scales and timelines.

Just to be clear, you watched the boring co presentation and think this is a real, viable business?

I also feel obligated to point out that “a bigger version that can accommodate subway cars” is literally just a subway...

I don't see how Boring isn't short sighted and idiotic

I mean yes it would be really nice to go underground and avoid traffic. That said, it is completely inefficient. I think the future is mass transit like subway systems which are combined with autonomous fleets (eventually) completing the journey to a final destination complimenting it.

IMO driving your own car should become more and more of a luxury. I'm all for small government but things like roads/transportation is somewhere they should step in imo. First of all they control the land use rights. On top of that it takes a near impossible amount of organization and cooperation to make these projects come together. The running and management of these things could also be privatized to some degree

Traffic and congestion is baked in to the price of everything we buy. It's totally inefficient. On top of that it's a waste of people's time and quality of life. Idling in traffic is incredibly wasteful and bad for the environment. The amount of wasted efficiency and pollution created by people driving their own cars vs an electric subway system in metropolises is astronomical. It also reduces inequality on a social level. A car will become more of a toy than a tool, like a fancy watch.

Traffic in LA is awful. An underground network that moves people on a large scale is going to benefit everyone (if they can make the numbers work). What musk is proposing is like a super high tech H.O.V. lane. It's short sighted and barely even useful in the short term. What's valuable is having Musk the center of attention

There is definitely a "boring" business digging tunnels.

Musk has shown himself to be amazing at getting public funding. All he needs is one major municipality to give him a "boring" contract to extend some subway line and he's in business.

It's pretty much the SpaceX route: old tech+disregard for safety+getting government money.

One NYC subway line extension, taking the 7 train further west into NJ for example, alone can net him hundreds of millions.

All that said, as it stands, The "Boring" Company has yet to present a viable business model. Musk basically: I got a shiny new toy that is also a tech demo showing we got the engineers to build a tunnel "boring" machine.

story checks out

'Elon Muskox': Canadian city names mascot for tech entrepreneur

Elon’s whole premise is building tiny cheap tunnels. That’s not plausible for any actual infrastructure project. First, because they’d need to be actual mass transit and big enough to support large multi passenger vehicles. Second, they’d need to support all the things that public projects require: evacuation routes, room for emergency services, places for maintenance to happen. And so on and so on.