The boring company is a scam. They don’t do anything new or better and in many ways are much worse.

They took the costs of major tunnel projects, calculated the costs per meter of diameter, scaled it down to their max diameter and compared the two. Then they say OMG WE ARE SO MUCH BETTER! Well sure, because that’s in no way a fair comparison to make at all. Let alone the fact that comparing budget to actual costs is a no go, it’s not possible to just scale the costs.

If you want to make a small narrow tunnel, for example to connect two existing buildings on a existing manufacturing site with a small diameter to for example run some infrastructure and a servicing tunnel, you don’t use a tunnel boring machine. You just get out a digger, dig a big hole, drive the digger down the hole, dig forward, brace, dig forward, brace etc. It doesn’t cost much at all, doesn’t require many people or special equipment and goes pretty fast.

If you want to make a big ass tunnel, for example for a road or a railroad, you might want to use a tunnel boring machine, but mostly traditional digging is preferred. We’ve gotten pretty good at creating tunnels using diggers and explody stuff and have been for thousands of years. When it’s figured out a tunnel boring machine is actually the best option, you need a company with a lot of experience and equipment to get the job done. When you are at that point, money is mostly a non-issue and time becomes the main limitation. These projects take a long time and the public or company providing the funding needs it done, they don’t mind paying if it’s done as fast as possible. And experience is the key to getting huge projects like that done on time.

The costs come mostly from all the red tape, safety provisions and pure manhours getting it done. The costs of the machine is so much a non factor, there are times the machine is custom built for a project and a lot of it is left there because taking it out isn’t worth it. Cutting on red tape isn’t possible, regulations are regulations and they are strict for a reason. Cutting on safety is a Elon trademark, but in a lot of places you can’t get away with that. And doing that within your own company is one thing, but if it’s a job for a client, the client might not be inclined to agree to something like that. The manhours can be minimized with a super efficient setup and you can count on companies having done a lot of projects over the decades know how to do it as efficient as possible.

And on the safety point: The only tunnel the Boring Company has ever built would not be allowed to be open to the public in most places. And it actually isn’t really open, you have to sign a waiver beforehand and only certain personal is allowed in the tunnel and only with their Tesla cars. It’s only barely large enough for a car and would be considered way too small for an actual road. Real tunnels need stuff like emergency exits, guardrails and a walking space behind the guardrails to get to the emergency exits, a lot of safety infra, monitoring, ventilation, air inputs and outputs, fire safety etc. You can’t even drive in their tunnel with regular cars, the fumes have nowhere to go. And the day one of their cars catches fire in that tunnel is a dark day indeed. I’m not sure the driver can even open the doors and for sure emergency services can’t get to it. They’ve made a concrete hole and called it a tunnel, that’s not what a tunnel is.

I’m not sure what the point of it is, it’s probably an economic vessel of some kind to shift some money around. They haven’t accepted any orders and have only done that shitty Vegas thing. They say they are going to do more in Vegas, but I’ll believe that when I see it.