What started out as a series of cryptic tweets by Elon Musk on Dec. 17, 2016 about boring tunnels in California is turning out to be rock solid indications Musk plans a new multi-billion dollar business venture in tunnel boring.
Musk now believes that with new technology, which will probably come from his firms, underground tunnels can be built 1,000% faster than they are today.
Massive tunnel boring machines (TBMs) are currently the fastest and most efficient means of digging long underground tunnels such as those used by subway systems around the world. A TBM can bore tunnels with a diameter of 19.25 meters, which is the largest to date.
Musk now laughingly claims to be digging "a giant hole" at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
"I find holes in the ground exciting," said Musk.
But beyond this banter is a deadly serious business proposition.
"We're just trying to figure out what it takes to improve tunneling speed. Somewhere between 500 and 1,000% is I think possible, he said.
"If you apply a limit-of-physics approach we'll see how far we can get. We have no idea what we're doing."
But he did jokingly admit in December he already has a name for this new tunneling venture. He plans to call it "The Boring Company" (pun intended).
Musk admitted The Boring Company project is in the very early stages of development, however.
"We're just sort of muddling along, we've no idea what we are doing, we want to be clear about that ... (but) I'm actually quite optimistic that tunneling can be improved by at least fivefold, maybe tenfold, and that's really key to a lot of technologies: road tunnels, Hyperloop tunnels, train tunnels."
The revelation of Musk's fascination with huge holes in the ground came to light in a series of four tweets in December 2016.
In the first tweet, Musk said traffic was driving him nuts. Then he said he plans to build a tunnel boring machine. He then named the company that will get this done as The Boring Company.
He then tweeted "I am actually going to do this.