Elon Musk unveils Los Angeles tunnel plan

The world’s media was invited this week to travel in the mile-long tunnel – built by Musk’s Boring Company under the Hawthorne district - in an electric Tesla vehicle.

The trip was described as “almost a %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 link-external white knuckle false https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46616902 false false%> ride” by the BBC: “A bumpy two-minute journey in a modified Model X through a concrete tunnel with a blue neon light in the ceiling.”

A CNN %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 link-external video false https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/19/tech/boring-company-tunnel-elon-musk/index.html false false%> shows how vehicles are lowered in lifts into the tunnel system before travelling on modified tracking wheels: “The narrow space made the low speeds — we travelled mostly at 35 mph — feel faster. It felt like an amusement park ride.”

Musk says that vehicles could eventually travel at 150mph and he has plans for other tunnelling projects in Washington, DC and Chicago.

But Musk, whose SpaceX brand is also working on a separate Hyperloop initiative, does not deny that there is a long road ahead. “We’re obviously at the early stages here. This is a prototype. We're figuring things out,” he told reporters.