Enlarge / A Tesla car drives through a tunnel in the Central Station during a media preview of the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop on April 9, 2021, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images) Elon Musk's tunneling company has permission to significantly expand its operations under the city of Las Vegas. Last month, the Las Vegas City Council voted unanimously to approve the Boring Company's plan to dig more tunnels under the city, following in the steps of Clark County, which in May gave a similar thumbs-up to the tunneling concern. The company's plan calls for 68 miles of tu ..read more

Enlarge / JR East unveils to the media its new test bullet train "ALFA-X" in Rifu, Miyagi prefecture on May 9, 2019. (credit: JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty Images) This week, Japanese railway company JR East showed off its new Alfa-X, a high-speed bullet train that is designed to achieve a top speed of 400kph, or 249mph, which would make it the fastest commercial train in the world. In day-to-day operations, the train would shuttle passengers at 360kph, or roughly 224mph. On Friday, JR East will begin testing the Alfa-X, without passengers, on its railways. According to Bloomberg, the 10-car train w ..read more

Enlarge / The Landmark skyscraper, center, stands on the city skyline beside a waterway in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Monday, May 30, 2016. (credit: Alex Atack/Bloomberg via Getty Images) This week, startup Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (otherwise known as HyperloopTT) announced that it would start building a commercial Hyperloop track as well as an "XO Square Innovation Center" and a "Hyperloop Experience Center" in Abu Dhabi, capitol city of the United Arab Emirates. Construction will commence in the third quarter of 2019, HyperloopTT claimed. The news seems to extend a ..read more

Enlarge / An image of the Hawthorne test tunnel under construction. (credit: The Boring Company) On Sunday night, Tesla, SpaceX, and Boring Company CEO Elon Musk tweeted "The first tunnel is almost done," adding that the tunnel will open December 10. "The first tunnel" refers to the initial tunnel that The Boring Company has been digging under the streets of Hawthorne. Work began on that project around the start of 2017, when Musk moved excavation equipment into what was then SpaceX's tiny employee parking lot and began digging. Since then, Musk has purchased a boring machine to tunnel und ..read more

Enlarge / Hyperloop Transportation Technologies' new passenger capsule. (credit: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies) In August 2013, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk published a white paper detailing a "Hyperloop," a super-fast passenger train that would overcome the usual friction by levitating above its track on air-bearings in an enclosed low-pressure tube. In the five years since, advancements have been incremental—a few interesting engineering choices have been swamped by announcements of feasibility studies for routes between populated cities. Back in 2013, Musk declined to start a H ..read more

Enlarge / All the action happened at this end of the 3/4 mile low-pressure test track. A pyramid and an obelisk of Boring Company bricks and EPFLoop's pod cover can be seen beside it. (credit: Megan Geuss) HAWTHORNE, CA—On a sweltering day in Southern California, 20 groups of student engineers gathered on a side street near the SpaceX headquarters to show off the Hyperloop pods that they had spent the better part of a year putting together. The teams had spent the previous days showing SpaceX engineers their designs and testing them in vacuum chambers and on open-air tracks. The SpaceX engi ..read more

Enlarge / Elon Musk speaking to a crowd in Los Angeles On Thursday evening in Los Angeles, Tesla, SpaceX, and Boring Company CEO Elon Musk laid out plans for The Boring Company to start building longer tunnels under the city. The first step? A 2.7 mile north-south test tunnel parallel to one of the city's most congested freeways, the 405. This test tunnel won't carry the general public, but The Boring Company does intend to do test rides to get user feedback eventually. The company has buy-in from LA Metro, the city's public transportation provider. In a short, tweeted statement Thursday e ..read more

Enlarge (credit: Boring Company) Elon Musk's Boring Company is nearing completion of its first tunnel near SpaceX headquarters. In a Thursday evening Instagram post, the mogul showed off a fly-through video: "Pending final regulatory approvals, we will be offering free rides to the public in a few months," Musk wrote. "As mentioned in prior posts, once fully operational (demo system rides will be free), the system will always give priority to pods for pedestrians & cyclists for less than the cost of a bus ticket." It's not clear how far Musk plans to take his tunneling project. He cert ..read more

Enlarge (credit: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies) The drive between Chicago and Cleveland can take about five hours. Taking the train is a little longer—six to seven hours, depending on how many stops the train makes. It's easy to see why people would be interested in bringing a faster type of transportation to the corridor. Enter Hyperloop, of course. The brainchild of Elon Musk, a Hyperloop is a system of transportation envisioned to carry cargo or passengers at speeds above 700mph through low-pressure tubes. The train pods would hover above the track, using either magnetic levitati ..read more

Enlarge / A potential design for an electric skate. (credit: The Boring Company) Elon Musk started The Boring Company in late 2016 because he was frustrated by sitting in his car in Los Angeles traffic. A system of tunnels, he reasoned, would alleviate certain traffic choke points. The idea turned into reality throughout 2017, as Musk tore up the parking lot outside of his SpaceX headquarters, testing boring machinery to find weak spots that engineers might improve upon to make tunnel-digging faster and cheaper. The idea also changed a bit: instead of simply looking to build the cheapest tu ..read more