It's easy to lose track of how many businesses Elon Musk owns, but it's nearly impossible to forget about The Boring Company. The Boring Company is an infrastructure and tunnel construction company whose major purpose is to establish a network of underground transportation corridors to alleviate the problem of soul-destroying traffic.
The Boring Company broke ground in February 2017 on the SpaceX campus while drilling a test hole. The business then gained authority from officials in 2019 to construct a network of automobile tunnels beneath Las Vegas, with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority as its first paying customer.
In June 2021, the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop opened to the public. The convention authority paid $52 million for the 1.7-mile section of underground road, which took The Boring Company roughly 18 months to finish. It was the company's first public project that was completed. The Vegas Loop's original design included 29 miles of tunnels and 51 stations, with a capacity of up to 57,000 passengers per hour.
Hotels and casinos will pay for stations at their respective enterprises, according to The Boring Company. Each of those stops will be subject to the same permitting requirements. Although Musk's ambition for the future is for high-speed pods or at the very least autonomous Teslas to transport people, you can already ride in a Tesla (driven by a human) to see the completed segment of the Vegas Loop.
The Boring Company's high-tech subterranean transportation system ran at full capacity at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week, in one of the system's first actual testing.
Teslas entering the Vegas Loop
For the CES event, the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) Loop boosted its Tesla fleet to 70 vehicles. The exhibition, which featured prominent tech companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Samsung, and Panasonic, drew roughly 75,000 guests, which was fewer than half of the previous year's attendance.
The LVCC Loop, which was designed to reduce foot traffic by condensing a 45-minute walk into a 2-minute excursion, is featured in several social media videos. The majority of users said the encounter was smooth, despite a brief traffic bottleneck inside the tunnel.
In the tunnel, Teslas may reach speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. The delay looked to add roughly a minute to a trip that was supposed to take barely two minutes. This, however, was due to the temporary closure of one of the three-station system's exits.
The public portion of the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) Loop is barely 1.7 miles long, takes about two minutes to travel from West to South halls, and can only accommodate 70 Tesla vehicles at a time. Still, it's a lot faster and more comfortable than walking, plus it's in a good location for easy access to the halls. As a result, when it grows farther into the city, this innovative transportation system has the potential to alter the way people travel in Las Vegas.
The Hyperloop Race
Musk isn't the only one who wants to develop a hyperloop system.
Virgin Hyperloop, founded by Sir Richard Branson, completed its first ultra-fast transportation system with human passengers in November 2020. The test took place in the Nevada desert, just outside of Las Vegas.
Virgin's Pegasus Hyperloop Pod
Pegasus, the company's shining white and red hyperloop pod, is an airlocked enclosed vacuum tube that rocketed at 100 miles per hour (160 kilometres per hour) down the length of the track before slowing to a stop.
Virgin Hyperloop has since published a new concept movie demonstrating its ambitions for a transportation system that will let people to ride in pods in a near-vacuum tube at speeds of up to 670 mph.
According to the corporation, the technology will "establish the norm for 21st-century travel," allowing people to travel between cities in minutes.
