Tech mogul Elon Musk has claimed that The Boring Company could create a transatlantic tunnel between New York and London for 1,000 times less money than previously estimated.
Musk made the claim in response to a post on the social media platform X, which he owns, by news platform Daily Loud that contained a rendering of a the tunnel with the headline: “Proposed $20 Trillion tunnel would get you from New York to London in 54 minutes.”
In response Musk said: “The @boringcompany could do it for 1000X less money.”
The @boringcompany could do it for 1000X less money https://t.co/IXJY63xUCo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2024
Elon Musk claimed he could create the transatlantic tunnel for around $20 billion
This estimation would put the price of the transatlantic tunnel at around $20 billion (£15.7 billion).
Daily Loud was referencing a figure that has recently appeared in multiple news outlets including Newsweek and CNN, although no scientific or engineering source was cited.
Tunnel would be world’s longest by over 3,000 miles
According to Forbes, in the early 2000s American researchers at MIT Ernst Frankel and Frank Davidson proposed a maglev vacuum train line that would cross the 3,500-mile distance between the metropolises and allow for speeds of up to 1,200 miles per hour.
If built, the 3,500-mile transatlantic tunnel would be the longest in the world by a huge distance. The current tunnel with the longest underwater section is the 31-mile-long Channel Tunnel, which connects the UK and France.
Opened in 1994, the Channel Tunnel cost £9 billion ($11.4 billion) to build, which would be around 18.5 billion ($23.4 billion) today.
Musk first announced his intention to develop “supersonic” lines, called hyperloops, in 2013, proposing a line between the California cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco that would carry small carriages at 700 miles per hour.
Since then, a number of other firms have tried to execute the plan to carry people in vacuum-sealed tubes.
In 2020, transportation company Virgin Hyperloop, owned by billionaire Richard Branson, travelled 500 meters in a BIG-designed pod and reached speeds of 100 miles per hour.
Numerous nations developing hyperloops
So far, the longest hyperloop journey carried out was earlier this year in Switzerland, where a team of scientists were able to run a pod for 11.8 kilometres with a top speed of 25 miles per hour.
A number of nations have also speculated on installing the technology – both India and Mexico have put forward proposals to connect major metropolitan centres with the technology.
Musk founded The Boring Company in 2016 to carry out some of these infrastructure projects, and in 2022 announced a proposal to build a tunnel for Teslas to drive underground and bypass traffic in Miami. This, and other similar projects proposed for Los Angeles and New York, have not moved forward.
A Wall Street Journal report claimed that Musk and The Boring Company had “backed out” on multiple cities to whom Musk’s company sent proposals.
In 2022, the New York Times cast doubt on the viability of these projects going forward. The main problems continue to be funding and questions of integration into the existing infrastructure systems.
“Some industry observers believe that regulatory, financial and political hurdles may doom hyperloop as a viable high-speed alternative to air travel,” said the New York Times.
The photography is courtesy of Shutterstock.
