201812.17
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The Boring Company silent on Dec. 18 tunnel-opening party

by in News

With less than 24 hours before The Boring Company’s planned unveiling of its test tunnel under a Hawthorne city street on Dec. 18, the company has offered scant details about what to expect.

That a publicity event was clouded in secrecy comes as no surprise for an enterprise headed by Elon Musk. What started out as a pet project for the intrepid billionaire who was tired of fighting traffic has become one of the most watched transportation endeavors in the world.

On Twitter, Musk promised the product launch would be more than a tunnel opening.

“Will include modded but fully road legal autonomous transport cars & ground to tunnel car elevators,” Musk Tweeted on Dec. 6.

That same day, The Boring Company tweeted that it needed a few days to finish the “snail habitat.”  A request for comment to a company representative was not returned, Monday, Dec. 17.

One sign that something was brewing over at The Boring Company Hawthorne headquarters, which shares property with SpaceX, is a giant tower taking shape out of bricks created from material drawn from the tunnel. Musk called the castle-like structure adjacent to the rocket maker “medieval futurism.”

On Nov. 16, Musk and The Boring Company released video of its giant cutter head emerging out of the ground at a property the company bought at 4012 120th Street near Prairie Avenue. The property is located just a few hundred feet from its roughly one-mile test tunnel beneath 120th Avenue between Crenshaw Boulevard and Prairie Avenue.

In a mockup video illustration of how the tunnel would work, cars descend from street level on an elevator on board a skate, similar to a flat bed rail car. From there, the skate would then travel through the tunnel using an electric motor. Alternatively, the tunnel could contain a large people mover similar to a van or more like a subway car. In some cases, the tunnel would be depressurized to reduce friction.

The Boring Company is also in the middle of developing a prototype for a personal car elevator where drivers could access the underground tunnel through their personal garage. A home on 119th Avenue was purchased earlier this year to create this and connect it to the test tunnel.

The company’s ambitious plans to revolutionize urban transportation faced a setback a few weeks ago on Nov. 28 when The Boring Company announced it had dropped plans for a tunnel beneath Sepulveda Boulevard on the west side of Los Angeles. The decision was made to settle a lawsuit from a pair of residents.

In response to the settlement, Musk said the company will focus on the proposed Dugout Loop from downtown Los Angeles to Dodger Stadium. Another project the company has on the horizon is one to connect downtown Chicago with O’Hare Airport.