Here's Why Elon Musk’s Bizarre 155mph Tunnel Is Pointless

There’s no doubt that Elon Musk is a great engineer and a peerless doer of things, but if only he’d stop a little more often to think about the endgame…

I admire Elon Musk. If I had half his creativity, ingenuity and drive to get things done, I’d be driving a much newer Octavia vRS. Or possibly something with a V8. Maybe an Octavia vRS with a V8. Anyway, the point is that Elon Musk is a man to be respected for all that he has achieved.

However, by his own admission he’s the type of guy who’s always thinking about the next big idea rather than settling on one problem until it’s totally debugged. The endless issues with the Tesla Model 3 were an example: while the lines slowly turned out faulty goods Musk was already talking about the next car, semi and pickup he was going to build.

The Los Angeles Loop that we talked about earlier this week is turning into another example of a time when this restive engineer should probably have slowed down and considered a few other points of view. Sure, he realised this grand tunnelling project could be done. The Boring Company was founded to deliver projects like this. But Elon Musk seems so preoccupied with whether he can, that he hasn’t yet considered whether he really should.

In principle the idea is great. On paper it’s a single-file tunnel that can allow self-driving cars to travel at high speed with no danger of crashing, hitting anything or getting stuck in traffic. It needs no significant surface-level infrastructure and could cut journey times to a fraction of what Angelenos currently have to put up with. What’s more, it ‘only’ costs about $10 million per mile, compared to sub-city railways that cost – no typo – $900 million per mile. Great, you might say. Get it built!

Here's Why Elon Musk’s Bizarre 155mph Tunnel Is Pointless

But whoah, there, cowboy. There are some realities that we need to clash around in your face like the cymbals of an irritating toy monkey. The first is the obvious one: the Loop only runs in one direction, making the £10 million figure an immediate fallacy. For two-way traffic it’s $20 million and potentially double the build time. Musk could partly get around this by operating the single Loop tunnel in the direction most traffic needs at any one time. In the morning rush hour it would run into the city, and the reverse in the evening. It’s hardly ideal, though.

The second point is that at maximum theoretical safe capacity it could move 4000 cars per hour. That’s just over one per second. On any busy but flowing Californian freeway there might be anything between five and 15 cars passing a single point per second. Maybe more. Even assuming the finished Loop can run reliably at full capacity, it couldn’t make the tiniest dent in LA traffic. Doesn’t that alone render it a self-indulgent folly?

Arguments against it just keep on tumbling like large boulders onto a beach of mud huts. Much was made of the terribly bumpy ride during the mere 40mph test drive given to select media and fans of Musk’s work. The man himself admitted it and said the final surface will be as smooth as glass, but that’s not likely.

With very-slightly-suspended guide wheels firmly pressed against the sides of the tunnel, at 40mph even small imperfections toss the car around like a cat in a washing machine. At 155mph the surfaces down which the car is guided will have to be incalculably precise. A fraction of a millimetre this way or that, or the tiniest hump in the surface, and the occupants of a car that hits it will feel like they’ve just been kicked by a horse. That’s before we consider the smoothness of the concrete the car’s regular wheels run on. I don’t believe it’s a practical possibility to make the Loop that smooth. Not for $10 million per mile, anyway.

Here's Why Elon Musk’s Bizarre 155mph Tunnel Is Pointless

Finally, it’s the point I wish I didn’t have to make. The Loop, if it ever gets finished, will be a shockingly obvious target for terror attacks. Being able to drive an anonymous car up to a lift on the surface, drop down to Loop level, set off and then detonate a boot full of explosives right underneath downtown LA would suddenly have every bomb maker with ties to ISIS looking towards the city. To add time-consuming security checks to the ‘boarding’ process would put people off, so yet again we have to argue that there’s no practical point to this plan.

Elon Musk is a genius, and a wizard at actually getting crazy stuff started. Sometimes that crazy stuff is worth pursuing and perfecting for future generations. Other times, it isn’t. I think I know which category the Loop belongs in.

Comments

Chewbacca_buddy (McLaren squad)(VW GTI Clubsport)(McLaren 60

About that last point, by that logic wouldn’t that make tunnels as a whole a risk for terror attacks?

12/22/2018 - 12:41 |
15 | 2

Yes, but it depends on what is above the tunnel

12/22/2018 - 13:29 |
2 | 1
bcrm

In terms of the guided system, I believe it’s very much possible, even in the UK they have guided busways albeit they only run up to 50mph, the concept is there

12/22/2018 - 12:41 |
2 | 1
RotaryBlade

So you lower your car onto a conveyor belt and it takes you from end to the next. No thanks If wanted to travel somewhere in an unengaging manner while the car I was in was moving over a track I would take the train

12/22/2018 - 13:43 |
37 | 7

You are completely missing the point of the tunnels
.
The point of the tunnels are to take you out of the miles of inching forward once a minute so you can drive more freely

12/22/2018 - 17:35 |
6 | 4

This isn’t meant to be a personal attack, but because of the demographic of CT you are most likely a 12 year old who’s never driven other than in forza and regurgitates what they hear on the internet. Traffic is not a fun or engaging experience, it sucks it is a grind, so if it is not state funded I don’t see why this couldn’t happen or why it shouldn’t.

12/22/2018 - 21:18 |
18 | 7
Ali Mahfooz

Well ISIS is defeated so now they’re WASWAS.

I’ll show myself out.

12/22/2018 - 14:18 |
8 | 4

That is a bit of a stretch tbh.

12/23/2018 - 05:43 |
0 | 0
Slyline guy 09

It is made from the boring company …. They have made a fire weapon

12/22/2018 - 14:33 |
2 | 2
Anonymous
  1. 👏Infrastructure 👏takes 👏 you sound like you want this to perfection over night. There will be more tunnels.
  2. You do realize that the idea is there will be more than one tunnel right? The idea is that there are dozens of not hundreds of these. (Not to mention to keep cutting the price down)
  3. Like a cat in a washing machine? You are exaggerating way to much there. No one was being slammed against each other, no one was thrown out of their seats. This is still in its early phase, it was a little shaky buy nearly that bad, holy cow…
    .
    But seriously why don’t you just be honest with us and just say it is a bad idea because it is Elon Musk doing it? What about the other companies working on similar projects? Are their tunnels fantastic because they didn’t fight words with a bully ex pat?
12/22/2018 - 14:43 |
8 | 5
Anonymous

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

The idea is unpractical, not useless

12/22/2018 - 14:53 |
3 | 3
RWB Dude

Finally someone agrees with me

12/22/2018 - 15:14 |
3 | 2
RotaryBlade

So the company that built a domestic use flamethrower has also invented a tunnel for cars….this is about to get ugly

12/22/2018 - 15:55 |
7 | 1

glorified lighter

12/22/2018 - 16:29 |
11 | 2

It’s the other way around

12/22/2018 - 23:08 |
0 | 1
TheDriver 1

Isn’t most of his stuff useless?

12/22/2018 - 16:01 |
4 | 7

No.

12/22/2018 - 19:19 |
1 | 1
Anonymous

It is funny that you complain that he isn’t thinking about the “End Game” when all your complaints revolve around the PROTOTYPE version of the tunnel.
TL;DR: neither are you.

12/22/2018 - 17:30 |
8 | 4
RotaryBlade

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Lool so true this will help congestion and is a good innovative step towards removing stagnated cars needlessly enjoying fossil fuels while not moving.

12/22/2018 - 21:26 |
1 | 1

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