Elon Musk unveiled his underground transportation tunnel this week, allowing reporters and invited guests to take some of the first rides in the revolutionary albeit bumpy subterranean tube – the tech entrepreneur’s answer to what he calls “soul-destroying traffic.”
Guests boarded Musk’s Tesla Model X and rode along Los Angeles-area surface streets about a mile (1.6 kilometers) away to what’s known as O’Leary Station. The station, smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood – “basically in someone’s backyard,” Musk says – consists of a wall-less elevator that slowly took the car down a wide shaft, roughly 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface.
Elon Musk, co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., walks into the crowd during an unveiling event for the Boring Company Hawthorne test tunnel in Hawthorne, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018. Musk unveiled his underground transportation tunnel on Tuesday, allowing reporters and invited guests to take some of the first rides in the revolutionary albeit bumpy subterranean tube — the tech entrepreneur’s answer to what he calls “soul-destroying traffic.” (Robyn Beck/Pool Photo via AP)The sky slowly fell away and the surprisingly narrow tunnel emerged.
“We’re clear,” said the driver, who sped up and zipped into the tunnel when a red track light turned green, making the tube look like something from space or a dance club.
The car jostled significantly during the ride, which was bumpy enough to give one reporter motion sickness while another yelled, “Woo!”