What does Elon Musk’s Boring Company do, what’s happening with the tunnel and do they sell flamethrowers?
The business focuses on infrastructure and tunnel construction
ELON Musk has unveiled his super-fast transport tunnel underneath LA - a project of his firm The Boring Company.
But just what is The Boring Company? We take a look at the business founded by the Tesla chief in closer detail.
What is the Boring Company?
Elon Musk’s The Boring Company was founded in 2016 in California.
The company focuses on infrastructure and tunnel construction, and primarily looks at how tunnels can help to ease traffic and congestion in Los Angeles, claiming the 2D transportation network at present is not viable any more.
In February 2017, the company began digging a 30-foot-wide, 50-foot-long and 15-foot-deep testing trench on the premises of SpaceX's offices in Hawthorne, California, as construction on the firm’s own site would not require any permits.
Musk describes this venture as a “personal hobby” and invests around “two to three per cent” of his time.
Musk hopes that the introduction of electric skates will help pedestrians and cyclists travel through the underground tunnels, bypassing traffic and hopefully easing congestion on the roads.
The Boring Company is tied up with Elon Musk's absurd Hyperloop proposals.
More test tunnels are planned across the US despite public transport experts repeatedly panning the plan as unworkable.
However, Musk's first tunnel was completed in December 2018 and is now being tested.
The new test tunnel only runs at 40mph right now, but Musk says his revolutionary system will eventually hit speeds of 150mph.
Drivers in autonomous vehicles will eventually be able to join the subterranean loop at any point, and be pushed through the tunnels at high speed to bypass the city's infamous traffic.
Why do they sell flamethrowers?
The flamethrower idea began as a throwaway joke on Twitter, but eventually was unveiled as another Musk special in order to raise money for his tunnelling project.
In December 2017, he tweeted: “After 50k hats, we’ll start selling The Boring Company Flamethrower.”
20,000 flamethrowers went on sale for $500 on January 27 2018 and were sold out by February 1.
That equalled revenue of around $10million within 100 hours.
MORE ON ELON MUSK
Where can I get a hat?
Before Musk started selling flamethrowers, he flogged The Boring Company hats – black baseball caps with the company logo.
According to the Boring Company website – the stockpile of 50,000 hats have been snapped up and shipped out.
It is believed they originally cost $20 each from the website, but are now on sale on Ebay for as much as $300.
All cash raised from the hat sales went towards the company’s tunnelling for transportation project.