Elon Musk’s Boring Company To Build Tesla Tunnels Under Nashville

The Boring Company, Elon Musk’s tunnel-digging company, and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee person announced a scheme to build a 10-mile “loop” that will link Nashville’s downtown and its normal halfway to nan area’s airport.

The task will beryllium privately funded by The Boring Company “and its backstage partners,” according to nan Governor’s property release, though those partners are not named. The Boring Company and section officials will now statesman a “public process to measure imaginable routes, prosecute organization stakeholders, and finalize plans for nan project’s first 10-mile phase.”

Construction won’t statesman until nan task clears nan approvals process. But nan Governor’s agency said nan first conception of nan loop could beryllium operational arsenic “early arsenic autumn of 2026.”

If that happens, Nashville would go nan 2nd metropolis wherever The Boring Company has opened specified a system, pinch nan first being Las Vegas. The institution has spent nan past fewer years successful Sin City digging and opening tunnels astir nan Las Vegas Convention Center, and claims to person fixed 3 cardinal rides successful Teslas to date.

Musk launched The Boring Company in early 2017 (after publically noodling astir nan thought connected Twitter while stuck successful postulation successful precocious 2016), and it has taken galore forms since then.

The original video detailing Musk’s thought — now group to backstage connected YouTube — showed vehicles getting removed from aboveground thoroughfare gridlock by an elevator-meets-sled strategy and lowered into a three-dimensional underground web of tunnels. Musk besides claimed during nan first Trump management that The Boring Company had received “verbal govt approval” to excavation tunnels from New York City to Washington, D.C. that, leveraging hyperloop technology, could make nan travel successful conscionable 29 minutes.

None of that ever happened. The Boring Company abandoned plans to excavation a awesome passageway strategy underneath the greater Los Angeles area aft pushback from locals. A similar point happened successful Chicago. And nan Boring Company has essentially ghosted galore different cities astir nan country.

The thought of nan hyperloop, which Musk admitted to biographer Ashlee Vance came from his hatred of California’s high-speed obstruction system, was besides formed aside. Even nan Teslas that traverse nan Las Vegas tunnels are being driven by humans, contempt Musk’s obsession pinch self-driving cars.

Instead, The Boring Company now much intimately resembles a glorified normal halfway people-mover, though location are immoderate imaginable benefits to its attack versus nan emblematic monorail setup. Construction should beryllium little disruptive to Nashville’s regular traffic. And, successful its existent shape astatine least, it’s not costing taxpayers money.

While nan Tennessee Governor’s agency cites The Boring Company’s information record in Las Vegas successful nan announcement — nan loop “recently earned a 99.57% information and information rating” from nan Department of Homeland Security and Transprotation Security Administration, according to nan property merchandise — it is observant not to mention nan problem that Musk’s tunnel-digging effort has knowledgeable during construction. (The governor’s agency could not beryllium reached for comment.)

Like pinch other Musk companies, nan gait astatine which The Boring Company operates — nan aforesaid velocity that nan Tennessee Governor’s agency praised successful its announcement — has been a interest for immoderate of its workers.

Last year, Fortune’s Jessica Matthews reported that a Boring Company worker told his then-safety manager: “I person watched my friends get injured owed to nan accelerated gait we’ve been running… I garbage to beryllium nan first fatality successful this company’s history. No passageway is worthy a azygous person’s life.”

That aforesaid information head moreover said to Fortune connected nan record, saying: “The conditions they were told to activity successful were honestly almost unbearable … I couldn’t hole immoderate of nan things that were wrong.”