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We read that Elon Musk tunnel-boring story so you don’t have to

How Elon wants to beat flying cars.

Tesla Debuts Its New Crossover SUV Model, Tesla X Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Elon Musk is actually digging a tunnel. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO thinks the future of transportation is not in the sky with flying cars, but deep underground, according to a recent Bloomberg Businessweek cover story.

Flying cars will create noise and may shed dangerous debris, Musk says. But building a three-dimensional transportation grid underground makes sense.

At reportedly more than 15 feet deep, his new Los Angeles crater — in the SpaceX parking lot — isn’t so giant yet. Further details about the project are also shallow.

But here’s what we know from the story:

  • It started with a series of tweets back in December. Apparently, he wasn’t just being funny. Or at least he’s willing to fund his road rage-fueled gags.
  • It’s being led by SpaceX rocket engineer Steve Davis. It still has no full-time employees and it’s not clear what the business model will be. Yet Musk envisions the company could create a “trillion” jobs.
  • The idea is to get better and cheaper at tunneling — “eventually creating a vast underground network that includes as many as 30 levels of tunnels for cars and high-speed trains such as the Hyperloop.” (Synergy!)
  • Musk is still being very funny about a lot of things. In addition to possibly naming this venture “The Boring Company” — which he called it in his initial tweetstorm — he also poses “American Tubes and Tunnels” — to troll AT&T.

Previously: Elon Musk’s latest plan is to dig underground tunnels to avoid traffic jams


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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