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Elon Musk Is Really Boring (bloomberg.com)
Sometimes it is hard to tell if Elon Musk is serious about the things he says. But as for his "boring" claims, that's really happening. In a wide-range interview with Bloomberg, the billionaire talked more about his new venture, The Boring Company. The idea began on a Saturday morning a few weeks ago when Musk tweeted, "Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging..." Over the course of next few hours later, Musk added, "It shall be called 'The Boring Company,' Boring, it's what we do. I am actually going to do this. Excerpts from the story: And so, around noon on a Friday in January, an excavation crew started digging. "I was like, 'Hey, what's the biggest hole we can make by Sunday evening?'" Musk says. [...] "My other idea was to call it Tunnels R Us and to essentially troll Toys "R" Us into filing a lawsuit," he says, letting out a loud and well-articulated ha-ha-ha-ha. "Now we've decided to troll AT&T instead! We're going to call it American Tubes and Tunnels." When I ask him if the tunnel venture will be a subsidiary of SpaceX or an independent company, he responds cryptically. "Don't you read my Twitter? The Boring Company. Or TBC. To Be Continued." An aide chimes in: Yes, the Boring Company, aka To Be Continued, aka Tunnels R Us, aka American Tubes and Tunnels, aka whatever, will indeed be an independent company. Tunnel technology is older than rockets, and boring speeds are pretty much what they were 50 years ago. Musk says he hopes to build a much faster tunneling machine and use it to dig thousands of miles, eventually creating a vast underground network that includes as many as 30 levels of tunnels for cars and high-speed trains such as the Hyperloop. Musk chose the SpaceX parking lot as the site of his first dig, mostly because it was convenient and he could legally do so without city permits. The plan is to expand the current hole into a ramp designed for a large tunnel boring machine and then start digging horizontally once the machine is 50 feet or so below ground, which would make it low enough to clear gas and sewer lines and to be undetectable at the surface. 100 marks to Bloomberg for the headline, and the story which is as funny as it is insightful.
Between making SpaceX & Tesla profitable - or cutting the cash losses - and raising 5 kids, don't you have enough already on your plate?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
...we probably need to legalize whatever he's smoking.
Before all the sour-pusses have their say, I want to say this: good on him.
Will it work? No idea, but at least he's trying. And betting against Musk is always risky.
Is he crazy? Since he has so much money, and since he's not destructive, no, he is not crazy, he's eccentric.
They sold Instant Hole kits, I think.
As long as you leave other competent people in charge of the project, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
He's already going to space.
If he gets to build up digging know-how, he'll be the first to actually make a shitload of money off asteroid mining.
Best part: r&d possibly largelgy paid for by public money (first NASA, and maybe now he can acceds some infrastructure funds or public contracting for the boring part)... That's one hell of a way to hack the system. Go him! :-)
Stole my idea.
At least he's able to get things started and then bring in the people to see his projects to fruition. SpaceX is moving along nicely. Tesla cars are on the roads. If only 50% of his projects take-off he's doing well.
We need innovative people like him to really shake things up, even if he does get bored and move on to something else before his projects fully reach completion.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The problem is that, we have innovative people. We have very wealthy people. Finding those who fit in both those categories is difficult. There are thousands of people with the next Big Thing, but because their product isn't advertising or analytics (read, more ways to spy on the user), their stuff is ignored by VCs. There are well to do people, but for the most part, they are purely interested in the next Vertu offering or what Bugatti is making next... and extremely few are even interested in doing anything that would make anyone but themselves better off.
Not mentioned in the summary is the fact that what got Elon moving on this idea was when some of his SpaceX employees were hit by a car crossing the street to their parking structure:
"A news report about three SpaceX employees who were hit by a car on Dec. 17 after leaving work. The incident occurred at 2:15 a.m. About three hours later, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted the following Tweets:
@elonmusk Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging..."
SpaceX has been trying to get a pedestrian bridge built there for a long time, but haven't been able to get permission from the city (blame NIMBYism or just bureaucracy). But with the tunnel, they're able to start digging down without permits on their own land (still need permission once they start digging under the street, of course).
The Yellow Pages here used to have an entry for Boring: "See civil engineers".
Typical - get a big idea, get resources together to make it happen, get it off the ground and running, empower others to complete your work, then lose interest. On to the next big idea.
FTFY
If only there were more successful serial entrepreneurs in the world. We would have our flying cars by now.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
There are thousands of people with the next Big Thing, but because their product isn't advertising or analytics (read, more ways to spy on the user), their stuff is ignored by VCs.
Considering how much valuations of these companies are ballooning in recent years, it seems VCs are getting pretty desperate with finding companies worth investing in. I doubt there is this massive pool of people with truly marketable and executable ideas that simply cannot find funding. Nearly everyone has some idea they think could make millions, but having an investable idea is far different than that.
If your contention is that we need to be spending more money on basic research which is unlikely to pay off for many decades then I completely agree with you. But that is primarily the responsibility of government not private investors.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Here in Seattle we've had some tunnel boring going on over the past few years - and, based on experience, I believe our tunnelers will tell you there are lots of man-made obstacles deeper down than that.
#DeleteChrome
He doesn't claim to already have new tunneling tech. He's just done some back of the envelope, first-principles calculations to show it should be possible in theory to go much faster. Typical Musk.
So does he have a faster TBM right now? Definitely not. It'll be interesting to see if he develops one, though. I suspect just reducing the man-power and increasing the up-time would give a significant boost to performance-to-cost, though. Europeans usually require a lot fewer workers for a similar TBM project than Americans do. Don't know why that is. (Or you can also think of it the other way around: for a given number of workers, you can get a lot more tunneling done, thus making tunneling cheaper and more appealing, thus increasing the number of tunneling projects you can afford to do.)
You mean like Apple and its amazing innovations in the last few years? /s
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
If by, "primarily the responsibility of government not private investors" you mean, "what only governments seem to realize is important and has a high ROI" then sure.
Most investors don't have 50 years to wait for their investments to pay off. I'm only in my 30's and would be considered a long term investor, but I still need my retirement investments to be fairly liquid in 30 years. Probably more like 20 years so I can start re-balancing to a lower risk portfolio.
It is not the fault of short sighted investors that they won't invest in basic research. It really is something that is most suited for institutions that have the luxury of planning 50 years ahead instead of just 20. Sadly our governments rarely think 50 years ahead anymore.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Google has a similar case of Corporate A.D.D. - except the "A" team hands off the project when they get about 80% done with it.
Unfortunately, it seems like the remaining 20% is done by the interns.
That's exactly what he meant.
You leave COMPETENT people in charge.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
You can either talk people down or rise to their level.
Think well before you choose.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
People take Musk's jokes too seriously. SpaceX is building a pedestrian underpass to the big SpaceX parking lot that is across a major street (Crenshaw Blvd in Hawthorne). There have been accidents, and a number of SpaceX employees have been hit by cars trying to cross the busy street.
- Necron69
A "mild" case of having an extra chromosome? Is that like a mild case of losing a leg?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Undetectable at just 50ft? Hardly. there are plenty of cases of people in England loosing their homes down sinkholes that appear after some old, forgotten mine hundreds or even thousands of feet down collapses after centuries.
I find it hard to believe that in California, once you've dug 50 ft down on your own land, absolutely nothing stands in your way (other than geology) to just tunneling wherever and as far as you like.
If I happen to own some land in CA that Musk wants to tunnel under/through, can he really do so without my permission or even knowledge?
for once, I can't tell if the spelling mistake should be corrected by adding an "n" or removing an "o" to "loose".
Solutions like this are classic examples of tech-rich people thinking they have all the answers when there's a whole bank of qualified specialist people already working in that field who know what's really needed to fix the problem but have only been stymied by politics.
If traffic is driving Musk nuts then the solution is not to find innovative new ways to handle more traffic. The solution is to ask why is traffic so bad in the first place.
Recommended reading: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jacobs
Or if that's too heavy, try Suburban Nation: The rise of sprawl and the decline of the American dream.
Only then will you come to see the culprit: Single Use Zoning, aka the BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) rules. Single-use zoning forces everybody to make several car journeys just to get through a typical day. Going to work? Car. Going out for lunch? Car. Going home form work? Car. Need to go out for a bottle of milk and postage stamp? Car. Going to a movie? Car.
No bloody wonder the place is flooded with traffic. You try to build a city around the automobile and it becomes a hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists. You try to widen roads to accommodate more cars and the laws of induced demand kick in, resulting in even more traffic and roads as choked as they were before.
Learn a few things about urban planning, Elon. Don't arrogantly assume that you're the first person to want to address this problem. Smart growth and sustainable, walkable, transit-oriented development is a far better solution than drilling holes in the ground and cracking puns about the word "boring." It requires years of tedious work and politicking to build support for smart growth. A city is not a private company with which you can do what you like. There are elected councils, public advisory committees, public hearings, tax implications, and all manner of complex bureaucratic hoops that you have to jump through to fix these things.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I don't get it. I see teslas on the road almost daily here in the frozen north. I can only imagine there's more in warmer climes and where there's more luxury cars on the road. They have some of the highest customer satisfaction levels for any car. They flat out outperform the competition in many regards. He built a better mousetrap, but instead of a mousetrap it was a multi billion dollar project to launch some of the most complicated consumer hardware people can purchase into an extremely mature competitive environment.
Whether or not Tesla survives or wins in the car sector, other manufacturers have been forced to respond to the market disruption.
Calling him a failure seems like an ad hominem attack, really.
You can either talk people down or rise to their level.
Well the first one is much easier, so...kind of a no-brainer.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Why would any sane person ever run for president?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
A sane person would not. Elon was accused of being insane. I don't happen to agree with that assertion. But it was stated. I believe insanity to be a qualification for president. Current administration being an extreme example. However as another poster pointed out, Elon could not become US president for other reasons, despite the alleged insanity.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Note that, neither Tesla's Autopilot, nor the countless other camera/lidar based solution sold by countless other manufacturer nowadays are self-driving.
At best, they are exactly what is called an Autopilot for planes and ships : some travelling is automated up to some level by the onboard electronic, but the vessel still must remain under the supervision of the plane's/ship's captain. (i.e.: the captain can't go take a nap. only the electronics is relieveing them from needing to mind the minute detail of piloting).
Hence the logical name "autopilot" used by Tesla marketing. Though stupid people are stupid and somewhat mis-interpret what "autopilot" means.
At worst, they are simply collision avoidance technologies (the driver is in full charge of steering the vehicle, but the car is able to sound an alert and to an emergency braking to avoid a crash).
Self-driving is *still* limited to small scale experiments (google cars and similar technologies tested by startups)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
At least he's able to get things started and then bring in the people to see his projects to fruition.
And that's what a serial entrepreneur does. Building a business is one skill set. Running a business is another skill set. Not everyone has both, or the desire to have both.
It's not necessarily a bad thing, however, sometimes the older businesses flounder if the president is more interested in the new thing.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
when you pay a high price for something, you tell your self [sic] it's worth it, otherwise you have to admit to yourself your [sic] an idiot!
Care to cite a methodologically-sound study that shows a high correlation between price and consumer satisfaction for automobiles?
Surveys suggest there isn't one. Last year, the highest-rated brand was luxury Lincoln, but number two was Honda, and Toyota outranked its luxury marque Lexus. For that matter, Honda's luxury line Acura was the lowest-scoring brand in the survey.
If people did feel compelled to defend their choice to pay more for a luxury brand, then they should rate Acuras (largely just rebadged Hondas) higher than the cheaper equivalent Honda models. They don't - quite the reverse.
The profit margins on Tesla autos indicate that they're not Veblen goods, so people aren't buying them simply for conspicuous consumption. Tesla unit profit margins are pretty good - around 19% - but they benefit from selling directly rather than through dealers (who take a cut, and who discount cars from their MSRP to get sales). Of course selling directly isn't an unalloyed benefit (which is why other manufacturers aren't doing it); it means lower volume, so less economy of scale and less market penetration.
Indeed it appears that, as with many commodity goods, consumers generally treat car prices as signaling quality, and are therefore more likely to be more critical of expensive models.
I'm no fan of the Tesla vehicles - they're completely unsuited to my needs, and I'm not impressed by gadgets and technological gee-whiz features that offer little benefit. But independent reviews suggest that at least some Tesla models are indeed quite good, for the use cases they satisfy.