Even though Elon Musk released his hyperloop concept publicly for anyone to develop and use, he clearly has his own designs for the superfast transport idea he thought up. His newest business venture so far, the Boring Company, has almost finished its first underground tunnel below Los Angeles, and hopes to offer free rides to the public soon, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO announced Thursday.
In a post on his Instagram account, Musk shared a video of the tunnel, what is presumably a hyperloop pod moving through it, and at one point, a couple of technicians working inside the tunnel, before the camera rides back to its starting point.
Responding to a user on Twitter, Musk also revealed the Boring Company was hopeful of starting work on a tunnel between Los Angeles and San Francisco next year, and that it was already working on a tunnel connecting Washington, D.C., to New York City. He didn’t provide an estimate for when either of those were expected to be functional.
Musk did say, however, that the technology used for transport in those tunnels would be “true hyperloop” — “pressurized pods in near vacuum tunnels & faster than jetliner.” The hyperloop pods are predicted to travel at speeds of over 600 miles (960 kilometers) an hour in those ideal conditions. And given how they won’t involve travelling the usually significant distance to most airports, or the long check-in queues, they probably would be faster than taking a flight.
