Elon Musk Pitches 150 MPH Rides In Boring Company Tunnels For $1 (engadget.com) 72
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: At The Boring Company Information Session not all of the talk centered on flamethrowers. Elon Musk and project leader Steve Davis described many details of their visions for an underground network that could alleviate traffic problems in big cities. Musk said "we're not suggesting this to the exclusion of other approaches," but did take a moment to call out flying taxi solutions (like Uber Elevate) right off the bat due to danger and noise.
Earlier in the evening Musk retweeted an LA Metro tweet that said it's coordinating with The Boring Company on its test and said the two will be "partners" going forward. Much of what Musk discussed about how his concept in-city Loop would work has been answered in concept videos and the company's FAQ, but he specifically said that the plan is for rides that cost a $1, and carry up to 16 passengers through hundreds of tunnels to those small, parking space-size tunnels located throughout a city. Test runs in the loop have already hit a couple of hundred miles an hour, and Musk's plan is for vacuum Hyperloop tubes between cities that enable travel in pressurized carts at up to 300 MPH. That's compared to 150 MPH in the in-city Loop carts, all without slowing down due to traffic or anything else. The main concern is hitting speeds that are still comfortable for people inside. The timeframe for when the "weird little Disney ride in the middle of LA" will be available to the public is unclear.
Earlier in the evening Musk retweeted an LA Metro tweet that said it's coordinating with The Boring Company on its test and said the two will be "partners" going forward. Much of what Musk discussed about how his concept in-city Loop would work has been answered in concept videos and the company's FAQ, but he specifically said that the plan is for rides that cost a $1, and carry up to 16 passengers through hundreds of tunnels to those small, parking space-size tunnels located throughout a city. Test runs in the loop have already hit a couple of hundred miles an hour, and Musk's plan is for vacuum Hyperloop tubes between cities that enable travel in pressurized carts at up to 300 MPH. That's compared to 150 MPH in the in-city Loop carts, all without slowing down due to traffic or anything else. The main concern is hitting speeds that are still comfortable for people inside. The timeframe for when the "weird little Disney ride in the middle of LA" will be available to the public is unclear.
Whee! (Score:2)
It's fun until you come to the end of the tunnel.
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Point-to-point is still a fixed route unless you're moving the endpoints constantly.
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Re:Whee! (Score:5, Informative)
This makes my head hurt. Differentiate point-to-point from a fixed route...
They're terms of art in the transportation sector, so it's jargon, not English. The English meaning doesn't have to make sense.
Generally speaking, point-to-point means no set schedule and no defined order. Fixed route means visit order of each stop is immutable, and usually scheduled. Light rail is the classical fixed route example. The train has no choice about which stations it will pass in which order. (Nor does the train driver, for the pedantic among us.)
<Insert gratuitous trains-running-on-time unfunny "joke" here>
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""
In this universe, everything runs on time not necessarily on schedule
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Differentiate point-to-point from a fixed route...
I think they mean that instead of having a number of subway lines with large capacity trains each keeping always to the same line, there will be small "vehicles" or "carts" that can change lines and miss out the stations that the passengers on board do not need. With existing subway systems, to get from one point on the system to another can involve changes onto different lines and also multiple stops at intermediate stations that you do not require yourself.
But there are many problems and flaws with Musk's
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Thirdly, individual vehicles, no matter how many there are, and even if full of 16 passengers, will mean that the line will have far less capacity (in terms of passengers per hour) than conventional trains, because the gaps between the vehicles will still need to be as large (or in fact, at 150 mph, much larger).
Why do you think Musk's loop carts will be as large as conventional trains? Roadway vehicles typically carry 1 passenger per vehicle during rush hour, but roadways still have enormous capacity because the vehicles are seconds/single-digit feet apart. I would imagine these carts will similarly be very close together. Autonomous carts merging into a high-speed lane with not much distance between vehicles is certainly a problem to be solved, but how is it much different than an autonomous car merging into a
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Why do you think the gap between Musk's loop carts will be as large as conventional trains?
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Why do you think Musk's loop carts will be as large as conventional trains?
???? I don't. As I said, I'm assuming they will carry only 16 passengers because that is what TFA said.
Roadway vehicles typically carry 1 passenger per vehicle during rush hour, but roadways still have enormous capacity
Actually, they do not have enormous capacity in terms of passengers per hour per width.
.... because the vehicles are seconds/single-digit feet apart.
Single digit feet apart? Only if they are driving illegally, insanely tailgating, or only at walking pace. The official recommendation on UK motorways is a 2 second gap, which is over 200 feet at 70 mph
I would imagine these carts will similarly be very close together. Autonomous carts merging into a high-speed lane with not much distance between vehicles is certainly a problem to be solved, but how is it much different than an autonomous car merging into a crowded freeway?
Keep imagining. The reason it is a lot different from cars is braking distance. The braking distance with steel wheel
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???? I don't. As I said, I'm assuming they will carry only 16 passengers because that is what TFA said.
I meant to say "Why do you think the gap between Musk's loop carts will be as large as conventional trains?" Slashdot, born in the 90s and still stuck there, does not have a comment edit feature. I replied to myself with the correct sentence but you didn't see it. You answered it below.
Actually, they do not have enormous capacity in terms of passengers per hour per width.
1800 cars per hour per lane. Heavy rail (subways) are just about the only thing that's better.
Roads have enormous flexibility, which equals lower transit times for passengers, or more flexibility in living and working l
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It appears to be a hybrid subway/taxi system with autonomously piloted vehicles.
Since the system's "roadways" would be designed around those vehicles it should be possible to achieve much higher safety than you'd get with autonomous vehicles on roads designed for human drivers.
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"It's fun until you come to the end of the tunnel."
And remember, sometimes the light at the end of a tunnel is a train.
Transportation isn't supposed to be fun. (Score:2, Funny)
Where's an airline exec when you need them?
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BBC says it was a plane leased from Mexican company called Damojh.
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I thought Cubana flew mostly Russian aircraft with some Embraers thrown in.
Aeroflot (the Russian national airline) won't even fly Russian aircraft. [wikipedia.org]
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I thought Cubana flew mostly Russian aircraft with some Embraers thrown in.
Aeroflot (the Russian national airline) won't even fly Russian aircraft. [wikipedia.org]
They've come a long way from the days when some flights were bench seating with no seatbelts
Edison (Score:1)
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Re:Edison (Score:4, Insightful)
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Edison was the marketing genius, I think Musk has that skill too. :-)
Tesla was also a marketing genius, all those tesla coil demos and whatnot. Unfortunately, he wasn't a business genius.
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You're not actually believing this are you?
He did put together some nice animations, and pulled the $1 figure out of... well I don't know where, but where's the engineering analysis and the business plan?
Why does he think he can be that much cheaper, faster, and more efficient than any other type of transportation? Where are the efficiencies gained?
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You're not actually believing this are you?
He did put together some nice animations, and pulled the $1 figure out of... well I don't know where, but where's the engineering analysis and the business plan?
Why does he think he can be that much cheaper, faster, and more efficient than any other type of transportation? Where are the efficiencies gained?
Every mass transit system in the U.S., without exception, has the same exact problems, and there's no reason to believe that this system will be any different, if it ever gets built at all.
- Extremely expensive to build, resulting in massive debt.
- Extremely expensive to operate and maintain, resulting in losing huge amounts of money every year because you can't charge a high enough price to recover your actual costs -- if you did, riding would be so expensive that nobody would every use it. Operating at a
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So what is wrong with the US that makes it so bad for public transport?
It works great in other countries, so why is the US failing so badly?
That is why he's solving those problems (Score:2)
Extremely expensive to build, resulting in massive debt.
Which is the whole reason Musk *started* the boring company, because he realized if the technology was improved it was not a stretch to see a 10x improvement in construction costs compared to other underground systems.
Extremely expensive to operate and maintain
Which is why he's going for this much smaller car approach, you don't have a ton of tracks and expensive powerful engine cars to maintain, you just have cheap transport cars that can be maintaine
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Extremely expensive to operate and maintain
Just like going to orbit
Snails Pace (Score:2)
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The big news there is - Musk is apparently a SpongeBob SquarePants fan.
Or, maybe he secretly sees himself as Plankton, in which case we should be concerned that a coin-operated self-destruct might get included in these cars...
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Which is probably fine since it's heading for Mars, I just don't see it having any business model on Earth. SpaceX is obvious. SolarCity for panels and batteries too. Tesla for EVs. Starlink for communications. All of those make sense, except for the Boring company for excavation. I don't think Musk will get involved in some random business that doesn't tie into his Mars colonization plans somehow at this point. I mean we built a tunnel under the English channel, does anyone really think drilling needs a re
Too Dangerous Huh? (Score:2)
but did take a moment to call out flying taxi solutions (like Uber Elevate) right off the bat due to danger and noise.
This seems a bit hypocritical considering about a year ago, Musk was advocating using SpaceX rockets for point-to-point travel on Earth. Pretty sure a rocket is noisier and more dangerous than a quadcopter. If the rocket only takes off and lands in rural areas, it might be less of a danger to those on the ground than a quadcopter flying in an urban area, but is still likely to be more dangerous for the passengers.
And yet you are wrong (Score:2)
Pretty sure a rocket is noisier and more dangerous than a quadcopter.
The rocket is actually vastly safer than a quadcopter taxi, which could have any number of things go wrong in a very crowded city.
It's also quieter since, as described in the presentation, the point to point rockets would take off from small islands or other locations miles away from the city.
but is still likely to be more dangerous for the passengers.
Rockets are much simpler structures and safer overall. If I could choose any means of tr
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Does a quadcopter taxi have a 5% failure rate like rockets?
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You seriously think a quadcopter failure rate would be only 5%?
Not to mention that a cross-world transport service wouldn't start until the failure rate was much lower than 5%. I'm not sure they could ever meet 5% for any quadcopter based system with near constant operation in a city.
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What quadcopter fails every twenty flights on average?
Hmm, I've seen how this one ends... (Score:1)
In 10 years why would I leave my house? (Score:2)
I have broadband Internet, video conference, etc. Can't most of us "knowledge workers" work at home and stop commuting every day. In 20-30 years will our grandkids have to go to a physical building for their education? (I work with hardware, but I still do a bit portion of my stuff remotely. using cameras and control/relay boards)
I suspect the future will be where most things we do can be done remotely. And the percentage of us that absolutely have to be on site will decrease over many years as technology i
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It's a great idea but if you're a manager or other similar non-productive type, half of your job is randomly stopping by and annoying your co-workers. It's difficult to sexually harass or force mind numbingly idiotic and boring stories on workers if you're not there in person.
Why else would a technology based company like Amazon need a new HQ with 50,000 workers?
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It's a great idea but if you're a manager or other similar non-productive type, half of your job is randomly stopping by and annoying your co-workers
That's still quite possible to do remotely.
I had a boss who required we all be on instant messaging at all times, whether in the office or working from home. On my telecommute days he would IM irrelevant crap to me at random times - I assume to check whether I'd respond or not (he would only do this when I was teleworking, never in the office). I'd tell him that having to stay on IM all the time substantially negated the benefit of teleworking, since those were supposed to be my focus-on-longterm-project da
It's a brave new world (Score:2)
At my company managers have direct reports in multiple timezones. Lots of conference calls for me.
And Anthony Weiner has shown the power of dick pics to harass people from afar.
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Whoosh!
I hope you're not saying that your managers need to randomly annoy the shit out of employees to creep them out? That's what the post was about.
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Is it annoying to be in a 9pm-10pm conference call with people cycling through their weekly status reports in a monotonous drone to the entire team?
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Well, I'm not in Silicon Valley, and some days my "commute" is about 3 meters. I only go onsite if my client is incapable of physically pushing the button I need pushed, or if there's a hardware failure, or if I feel like there would be an actual benefit to having the client see my smiling face.
(Or, you know, I actually feel like leaving the house because I'm getting a touch stir crazy, but that's not usually the thing.)
I honestly have no idea why Google or Apple or MicroSloth or any other tech company wou
Carnival barker (Score:2)
I'm sure the tunnel ride is sufficiently boring... (Score:2)