The original stated goal was to 10x the speed of existing tunnel boring machines by bringing up the cutting head RPMs, automating liner installation, and speeding up spoil removal with electric sleds. Which would seem like a good bet, except that there are a million other bottlenecks to the process. On top of that, it doesn't seem like they even solved their core problems.
It would be cool if they'd post a postmortem or something, but I get the impression that reporting bad news is a good way to get fired in an Elon-run organization.
Much like the Hyperloop before it, the core assumption of the Boring company is ill-conceived. Tunnel boring isn't a bottleneck.
The costs of surveys, hvac, seismic research and maintenance required to keep a deep-underground tunnel going are much higher than cut-and-cover. So, even if tunnel boring was free, it still wouldn't make sense to prefer it over other options. There are very scenarios where deep-tunneling makes sense (dense cities, across rivers when bridges are infeasible), but they're the minority.
In most transit projects, cut-and-over is blocked not because it's a bad technical option. It's because NIMBYs refuse to permit on-the-ground disruptions or noise of any type. San Jose is the canonical example. It's a political problem, not a technical one.
My impression was that the main "innovation" was using sewer tunnel sized tunnels for cars. We already know how to build sewer tunnels relatively cheaply and quickly.
I’m not sure why anyone believed this load of lies, tunnel boring is a mature industry with multiple companies that make tunnel boring machines, and tunnel boring has been around for well over a hundred years. The cutting heads move slowly because they’re between 3 and ~50 feet in diameter (1 to 15 meters for non Americans)
Anyone claiming they can 10x the speed of a physical process that has been worked on by thousands of engineers over more than a century is full of shit. Anyone who bought that explanation is either far too credulous or just doesn’t understand what it takes to bore a large diameter tunnel.
I get the sense that the goalposts get moved to wherever he kicks the ball, even retrospectively. His whole vibe feels like he’s just real-life cosplaying Ironman.
> I maintain the belief that Boring Company's purpose, first and foremost, is to confuse and derail (pun intended) local efforts to build real transit.
Same strategy at different scales, Boring Company is to local transit what Hyperloop is to regional.
The original proposal was squarely aimed at disrupting CAHSR, but existing bureaucratic dysfunction is more than sufficient to prevent anything being built at that scale in the US, so Hyperloop was proven unnecessary and abandoned.
> [...] when multiple employees reported that a representative of The Boring Company was soliciting them to bail on Shane and work directly for TBC [...]
> [...] noting that many prospective employees won’t work on the project because of Musk’s reputation.
It's a sad situation, but great to see workers being smart: knowing who deserves loyalty, and who is not to be trusted.
Yeah the fines are designed to provide incentive to operate like you value your worker’s and others’ humanity even if you don’t have the humanity to really do it. It’s useful because our business economy mostly incentivizes businesses to treat people like fungible economic units of potential profit and loss. If the business is run by someone more interested in stroking their ego rather than optimizing profit and loss, the whole thing breaks down. Yet another example of the real work not working like an economics thought experiment.
The response from the Boring Company executive feels like gaslighting.
> Buss later clarified that he does not believe The Boring Company has a “common” practice of missing payments to vendors, but rather missed payments happen sometimes during “the normal course of business.”
I’m sure this small business owner spent a lot of time and effort trying to get this corrected, but got no cooperation from Boring Company. If Vice President Buss or others want to look trustworthy, they need to explain in a public post-mortem what happened, and how they’ll avoid it going forward, and how they’re making this company whole including for their lost time.
> The final straw that caused Shane to pull his crew from the site was when multiple employees reported that a representative of The Boring Company was soliciting them to bail on Shane and work directly for TBC on Monday.
And this is just deeply unethical. They’re basically holding a fraudulent business relationship with the purpose of poaching employees, it seems like.
So, the Greediest Person In The World [0] also cheats subcontractors and workers out of their pay, and poaches employees — who would have guessed?
[0] a far more accurate way to describe those who hoard wealth without helping the people or society who got them there, vs the usual praise as the "richest"
There is a high demand for negative reports on any organization affiliated with Elon Musk. It is unsurprising that a robust supply has developed for it. I got paid very slowly by Verizon once, and McKesson another time, but nobody cares. I'm perfectly willing to believe that Musk's companies are worse than usual in this regard, but I'll need something better than plural anecdotes. This isn't a court, and innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply. But neither does guilty until proven innocent.
Readit News
Anything they do happen to build is incidental to that goal, and as such it's unsurprising that actual construction would be a shitshow.
It would be cool if they'd post a postmortem or something, but I get the impression that reporting bad news is a good way to get fired in an Elon-run organization.
The costs of surveys, hvac, seismic research and maintenance required to keep a deep-underground tunnel going are much higher than cut-and-cover. So, even if tunnel boring was free, it still wouldn't make sense to prefer it over other options. There are very scenarios where deep-tunneling makes sense (dense cities, across rivers when bridges are infeasible), but they're the minority.
In most transit projects, cut-and-over is blocked not because it's a bad technical option. It's because NIMBYs refuse to permit on-the-ground disruptions or noise of any type. San Jose is the canonical example. It's a political problem, not a technical one.
Anyone claiming they can 10x the speed of a physical process that has been worked on by thousands of engineers over more than a century is full of shit. Anyone who bought that explanation is either far too credulous or just doesn’t understand what it takes to bore a large diameter tunnel.
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Well that was the purpose of the Hyperloop too
The original proposal was squarely aimed at disrupting CAHSR, but existing bureaucratic dysfunction is more than sufficient to prevent anything being built at that scale in the US, so Hyperloop was proven unnecessary and abandoned.
> [...] noting that many prospective employees won’t work on the project because of Musk’s reputation.
It's a sad situation, but great to see workers being smart: knowing who deserves loyalty, and who is not to be trusted.
Tesla collects a variety of regulatory violations like they're paid for it.
SpaceX...OSHA, FAA, EPA
Boring company...
etc.
Deleted Comment
> Buss later clarified that he does not believe The Boring Company has a “common” practice of missing payments to vendors, but rather missed payments happen sometimes during “the normal course of business.”
I’m sure this small business owner spent a lot of time and effort trying to get this corrected, but got no cooperation from Boring Company. If Vice President Buss or others want to look trustworthy, they need to explain in a public post-mortem what happened, and how they’ll avoid it going forward, and how they’re making this company whole including for their lost time.
> The final straw that caused Shane to pull his crew from the site was when multiple employees reported that a representative of The Boring Company was soliciting them to bail on Shane and work directly for TBC on Monday.
And this is just deeply unethical. They’re basically holding a fraudulent business relationship with the purpose of poaching employees, it seems like.
[0] a far more accurate way to describe those who hoard wealth without helping the people or society who got them there, vs the usual praise as the "richest"
Maybe that's the American Way? (/s but not really).
Somebody worked out that Smaug would be the 14th wealthiest American.
Dead Comment