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You'll never want to drive on regular roads again after you watch Elon Musk's slick video of his futuristic underground transportation tunnels.
The tech mogul revealed the video at the TED conference in Vancouver as he delved deeper into his latest project, The Boring Company.
“There’s no real limit to how many levels of tunnels you can have,” Musk said, according to Recode. “The deepest mines are much deeper than the tallest buildings are tall.”
Musk famously came up with the idea for the new project after tweeting about his frustrations with LA traffic. Pictures of the machines behind the project on SpaceX property popped up yesterday.
SEE ALSO:Help, we're worried about Elon Musk's InstagramThe video he presented at the conference, seen above, appears to show a Tesla car (of course) being pulled on a platform called a car skate up to 130 mph through a cavern containing dozens of underground, single vehicle lanes.
Musk also addressed concerns about his busy schedule -- with Tesla, SpaceX, and the new Neuralink project (not to mention vacationing with Amber Heard) on his plate, it's fair to worry that Musk could be stretched too thin.
“This is basically interns and people doing it part time,” Musk said of his time commitment to the Boring Company. “We bought some second-hand machinery. It’s kind of puttering along but making good progress.” He estimated he only spends about "two or three percent" of his time on the tunneling project.
It's fair to say that with Musk spending so little time and few resources on the project, we are a long ways off from zipping past traffic underground. Beyond just making the technology work, The Boring Company will likely be hamstrung by mountains of permits and environmental impact reports, you know all the general government hurdles you have to deal with when you want to dig underground.
Musk also discussed his desire to develop a new boring machine that could potentially dig tunnels and reinforce them simultaneously, which would be much more efficient than the current rigs that spend their time split between the two tasks.
“We have a pet snail named Gary,” he said to illustrate just how slow the machines work. “Gary is capable of currently going 14 times faster than a tunnel boring machine. We want to beat Gary. He’s not a patient little fellow, that will be victory. Victory will be beating the snail.”
After the presentation, Musk tweeted out a link to the new company's website.
Tweet may have been deleted
For now, the only info posted is the video -- but future updates will likely be posted to the site. Keep up with the project there, and, as always, Musk's frequent Twitter exchanges with fans and customers. He'll also treat you to some top-level dad jokes:
Tweet may have been deleted
Tweet may have been deleted
Never change, Elon.
UPDATE: April 28, 2017, 5:17 p.m. EDT This post was updated to include additional context from Musk's talk and his tweets.
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