- Elon Musk’s tunneling firm has announced plans to build a 10.5-mile tunnel network in Dubai.
- The Boring Company has already built a “loop” in Las Vegas, which ferries people through tunnels in Teslas.
- Boring’s loops are still a long way from the futuristic “hyperloop” proposed by Musk in 2013.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company wants to set up its Tesla-carrying tunnel network in Dubai.
The tunneling company announced on Thursday it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Dubai’s roads and transport authority to build a 10.5-mile tunnel system in the Gulf city-state.
The initial pilot project will have 11 stations and transport around 20,000 passengers an hour, the Boring Company said, with plans to eventually expand the transit system to carry 100,000 passengers an hour.
The company called it “a landmark collaboration poised to set the standard for urban mobility.”
The company didn’t give a timeline for the Dubai project, which would be the Boring Company’s second location.
Musk’s tunneling firm’s only operational loop is under the Las Vegas Convention Center, where passengers are transported through around 1.8 miles of tunnels in Tesla vehicles at speeds of around 40 miles per hour.
The Boring Company’s Las Vegas loop — and its planned loop in Dubai — are a long way from the science-fiction “hyperloop” concept Elon Musk sketched out in a 2013 white paper.
The billionaire proposed a system of low-pressure tubes that would transport commuters in pods at speeds as high as 760 miles per hour.
The Boring Company was founded in 2017; partly to bring the “hyperloop” concept to life. Musk said he founded the company after being driven “nuts” by LA traffic.
The company is expanding its Vegas Loop into a 68-mile tunnel network though this has run into obstacles. The city’s monorail was temporarily shut down last year after Boring Company employees reportedly dug close to pillars holding it up.
The Boring Company is led by Steve Davis, one of Musk’s closest associates.
He is involved with DOGE, the new department Musk is leading to drive spending cuts in the US federal government, per a list of staff working there, that Business Insider obtained.
