Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption What did we learn from Elon Musk's big reveal?

Entrepreneur Elon Musk has unveiled a prototype underground tunnel in Los Angeles which is designed to transport cars at high speed around the city.

The tunnel is only a mile (1.6km) long at the moment but the goal is a network to ease chronic traffic congestion.

Modified electric cars would be lowered into the tunnel and travel at speeds up to 150mph (240km/h), Mr Musk says.

The tunnel has been built by Mr Musk's Boring Company, which boasts state-of-the-art engineering techniques.

Mr Musk, best known as the head of Tesla electric cars and the commercial SpaceX programme, arrived at the launch on Tuesday in a Tesla car modified to work on the "loop" system.

He was cheered by a small crowd as he emerged from the car at one end of the tunnel bathed in green and blue interior lights.

How will it work?

The plan envisages modified cars being lowered into the tunnel network by lifts and then slotted into tracks on the "loop".

"The profound breakthrough is very simple: it's the ability to turn a normal car into a passively stable vehicle by adding the deployable tracking wheels, stabilising wheels, so that it can travel at high speed through a small tunnel," Mr Musk said.

"The way the loop will work is you will have main arteries that are travelling at 150mph and when you want to go to an exit, you will have an off ramp," he added.

"So you can travel the vast majority of your journey without stopping at 150mph and only slow down when you get to your exit, and then automatically transfer from one tunnel to another. It's like a 3D highway system underground basically."

Feeling the bumps

The BBC's Peter Bowes takes a test ride on Elon Musk's LA tunnel

Image copyright Getty Images

It was almost a white knuckle ride. A bumpy two-minute journey in a modified Model X through a concrete tunnel with a blue neon light in the ceiling. We reached a speed of 49mph, although cars will eventually travel at up to 150mph.

Elon Musk later explained that the bumpiness was due to problems with a paving machine and that it would be "as smooth as glass" eventually. The vehicle was modified by adding two alignment wheels to keep it stable at high speeds and prevent it from hitting the side of the tunnel.

Mr Musk said the $200-$300 attachments could eventually be fixed to any fully autonomous electric vehicle, for use in the tunnel. They would not interfere with the vehicle's normal operation.

"We used Tesla vehicles because I run Tesla. What I am going to do? Use someone else's car?" he asked, smiling.

Traffic solution?

Alana Semuels, of The Atlantic, told the BBC World Service that Mr Musk had yet to unveil the technology that would allow vehicles to travel at such high speeds through the system.

"At first he said we're going have these tunnels and transport people in pods, now he's saying we're going to transport them in cars, so I'm not sure even he knows how it works," she said.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption A modified Tesla electric car was used in the demonstration

Mr Musk first unveiled the tunnel plan earlier this year, saying he wanted to alleviate Los Angeles's "soul-destroying" traffic congestion.

On Tuesday he said his Boring Company had built the tunnel segment for $10m (£8m), adding that traditional tunnel-building technology would have cost up to $1bn.

The tunnel runs beneath the municipality of Hawthorne, where the Boring Company and SpaceX are both based.</s>LOS ANGELES (AP) - Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is set to unveil an underground transportation tunnel on Tuesday that could move people faster than subways.

Musk also plans to show off the autonomous cars that will carry people through the test tunnel, which runs about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) under the streets of Hawthorne, California, Musk's SpaceX headquarters. He's also planning to unveil elevators he says will bring users' own cars from street level to the tunnel.

Tuesday's reveal comes almost two years to the day since Musk announced on Twitter that "traffic is driving me nuts" and he was "going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging."

"I am actually going to do this," he added in response to initial skepticism.

So began The Boring Company, tongue in cheek intentional. Since the announcement, Musk has revealed a handful of photos and videos of the tunnel's progress.

The tunnel, meant to be a "proof of concept," is being used to help Musk and The Boring Company conduct research and development for a broader system in traffic-plagued Los Angeles and beyond.

FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2018, file photo, Elon Musk, founder, CEO, and lead designer of SpaceX, speaks at a news conference from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Musk is set to unveil an underground transportation tunnel that could move people faster than subways. Musk plans to unveil the test tunnel Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018, as well as the autonomous cars that will carry people through it. He's also set to show off elevators he says will bring users' own cars from the surface to the tunnel. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

One, known as the Dugout Loop , would take Los Angeles baseball fans to Dodger Stadium from one of three subway stations. Another would take travelers from downtown Chicago to O'Hare International Airport. Both projects are in the environmental review phase.

The Boring Company canceled its plans for another test tunnel on Los Angeles' west side last month after a neighborhood coalition filed a lawsuit expressing concerns about traffic and disruptions from trucks hauling out dirt during the boring process.

Musk has described a system in which vehicles would descend via elevators into tunnels and move on electrically powered platforms called skates. Up to 16 pedestrians and bicyclists could board autonomous vehicles also traveling on the skates as fast as 150 mph (240 kph).

"Once fully operational (demo system rides will be free), the system will always give priority to pods for pedestrians & cyclists for less than the cost of a bus ticket," Musk tweeted in May.

For the privately funded test tunnel, Musk acquired a tunnel-boring machine that had been used in a San Francisco Bay Area project and put it down a shaft in a parking lot at the SpaceX headquarters.

Musk's vision for the underground tunnels, known as loop, is not the same as another of his transportation concepts known as hyperloop. That would involve a network of nearly airless tubes that would speed special capsules over long distances at up to 750 mph (1,200) kph), using a thin cushion of air, magnetism and solar power.

The loop system is designed for shorter routes that wouldn't require the elimination of air friction, according to The Boring Company.

The company says on its website that the reason such a system hasn't been done before is that tunnels can be as expensive as $1 billion a mile to dig. But by using the skates to transport cars, which reduces the size of the tunnels needed by about half, thus reducing the cost to build them by up to four times, the company says.</s>Technology mogul Elon Musk has unveiled a prototype underground tunnel in Los Angeles which is designed to transport cars at high speed around the city.

The tunnel is only a mile (1.6km) long at the moment but the goal is a network to ease chronic traffic congestion.

Modified electric cars would be lowered into the tunnel and travel at speeds up to 150mph (240km/h), Musk says.

The tunnel has been built by Musk’s Boring Company, which boasts state-of-the-art engineering techniques.

Musk, best known as the head of Tesla electric cars and the commercial SpaceX programme, arrived at the launch on Tuesday in a Tesla car modified to work on the “loop” system.

He was cheered by a small crowd as he emerged from the car at one end of the tunnel bathed in green and blue interior lights.

The plan envisages modified cars being lowered into the tunnel network by lifts and then slotted into tracks on the “loop”.

“The profound breakthrough is very simple: it’s the ability to turn a normal car into a passively stable vehicle by adding the deployable tracking wheels, stabilising wheels, so that it can travel at high speed through a small tunnel,” Musk said.

“The way the loop will work is you will have main arteries that are travelling at 150mph and when you want to go to an exit, you will have an off ramp,” he added.

“So you can travel the vast majority of your journey without stopping at 150mph and only slow down when you get to your exit, and then automatically transfer from one tunnel to another. It’s like a 3D highway system underground basically.”</s>LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Latest on Elon Musk's underground tunnel (all times local):

Elon Musk has unveiled his underground transportation tunnel, allowing invited guests to take some of the first rides ever on the tech entrepreneur's solution to "soul-destroying traffic."

Guests boarded Musk's Tesla Model S and were driven on Los Angeles-area surface streets about a mile away to what's known as O'Leary Station on Tuesday.

The station sits smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood. It consists of a wall-less elevator that slowly took the car down a wide shaft, roughly 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface.

Reporters described the rides as bumpy but impressive. At least one experienced motion sickness while another yelled, "Woo!"

A modified Tesla Model X rests on an elevator above the pit and tunnel entrance before an unveiling event for the Boring Company Hawthorne test tunnel in Hawthorne, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018. Elon Musk unveiled his underground transportation tunnel on Tuesday, allowing reporters and invited guests to take some of the first rides in the revolutionary albeit bumpy subterranean tube - the tech entrepreneur's answer to what he calls "soul-destroying traffic." (Robyn Beck/Pool Photo via AP)

The tunnel, meant to be a "proof of concept," runs just over a mile under Musk's SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne.

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is set to unveil an underground transportation tunnel that could move people faster than subways.

Musk plans to unveil the test tunnel Tuesday, as well as the autonomous cars that will carry people through it. He's also set to show off elevators he says will bring users' own cars from the surface to the tunnel.

Tuesday's reveal comes almost two years to the day since Musk announced on Twitter that "traffic is driving me nuts" and he was "going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging."

Since then, he's revealed a handful of photos and videos of the tunnel's progress. The tunnel, meant to be a "proof of concept," runs about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) under Hawthorne, California, Musk's SpaceX headquarters.

FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2018, file photo, Elon Musk, founder, CEO, and lead designer of SpaceX, speaks at a news conference from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Musk is set to unveil an underground transportation tunnel that could move people faster than subways. Musk plans to unveil the test tunnel Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018, as well as the autonomous cars that will carry people through it. He's also set to show off elevators he says will bring users' own cars from the surface to the tunnel. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)</s>The Latest: Elon Musk allows rides on underground tunnel

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Latest on Elon Musk's underground tunnel (all times local):

Elon Musk has unveiled his underground transportation tunnel, allowing invited guests to take some of the first rides ever on the tech entrepreneur's solution to "soul-destroying traffic."

Guests boarded Musk's Tesla Model S and were driven on Los Angeles-area surface streets about a mile away to what's known as O'Leary Station on Tuesday.

The station sits smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood. It consists of a wall-less elevator that slowly took the car down a wide shaft, roughly 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface.

Reporters described the rides as bumpy but impressive. At least one experienced motion sickness while another yelled, "Woo!"

The tunnel, meant to be a "proof of concept," runs just over a mile under Musk's SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne.

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is set to unveil an underground transportation tunnel that could move people faster than subways.

Musk plans to unveil the test tunnel Tuesday, as well as the autonomous cars that will carry people through it. He's also set to show off elevators he says will bring users' own cars from the surface to the tunnel.

Tuesday's reveal comes almost two years to the day since Musk announced on Twitter that "traffic is driving me nuts" and he was "going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging."

Since then, he's revealed a handful of photos and videos of the tunnel's progress. The tunnel, meant to be a "proof of concept," runs about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) under Hawthorne, California, Musk's SpaceX headquarters.</s>Elon Musk’s Boring Company will unveil an underground tunnel in Los Angeles on Tuesday in a bid to address traffic congestion in major cities and provide “proof of concept” for the Tesla CEO’s vision.

The debut event will showcase a roughly two-mile tunnel in Hawthorne, California, near the headquarters of both the Boring Company and Musk’s aviation company SpaceX, to the media and the public. Musk will reportedly unveil an elevator system that will bring the public’s vehicles from the street to tunnel level, as well as autonomous vehicles that could shuttle passengers from place to place at high speeds.

“Boring Company product launch on Dec. 18,” Musk tweeted earlier this month. “More than a tunnel opening. Will include modded but fully road legal autonomous transport cars a& ground to tunnel car elevators.”

Musk founded The Boring Company in late 2016 after growing frustrated with traffic in Los Angeles. The firm digs tunnels to facilitate underground rapid transportation systems. The tunnels will be able to move vehicles at up to 150 miles per hour, according to Musk.

Aside from the Hawthorne tunnel, Musk is pursuing a project called the “Dugout Loop” that would shuttle passengers from subway stations to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, as well as a separate system that would connect downtown Chicago to O’Hare International Airport. The Boring Company canceled another planned tunnel from downtown Los Angeles to L.A. International Airport amid pushback from local officials.

Musk’s systems would utilize platforms called “skates” to transport public vehicles at high speeds. The autonomous vehicles would be able to hold as many as 16 passengers per trip and would have an estimated cost of $1 per ride, according to Musk’s preliminary estimates.

The Boring Company is crafting displaced dirt from its tunnels into low-cost bricks, which will be sold to the public and for use in affordable housing projects.</s>HAWTHORNE, CALIF.—Fed up with Southern California vehicle snarls, Elon Musk set out to solve the persistent urban irritant: the traffic. But rather than build atop the highway system, where his Tesla cars travel, or in the sky, home to his SpaceX rockets, he sought an answer under his feet: tunnels. “I said, ‘What if we go down instead of up?’” Musk told Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles during a recent public discussion. “I’ve lived in L.A. now since 2002. Traffic has gone from bad to horrific back to bad.”

On Tuesday, Musk unveiled the first mile-long stretch of his underground vision of a transit system in this suburb of 90,000 people about 24 kilometres southwest of Los Angeles. It is the home of both SpaceX and his tunnelling enterprise, called the Boring Co. But the promotional event, which attracted hundreds of people who lined up to see the tunnel, fell short of earlier promises of a system that could transport up to 16 people at a time in electric-powered pods. Musk said he had abandoned that concept in favour of a system using more conventional passenger vehicles. “So what we believe we have here is a real solution to the traffic problem we have on Earth,” Musk told reporters. “It’s much more like an underground highway.”

The entrance to the tunnel sits across the street from the SpaceX headquarters and the Hawthorne Municipal Airport, next to a single-family residence and behind some storefront-style buildings. Test rides on Tuesday featured Tesla Model X cars that were lowered on a circular panel to a lighted pathway several stories underground that is wide enough for a single vehicle. The concrete walls are painted white, with a single fluorescent bar on the ceiling that lights up blue or green throughout the tunnel’s length. A pair of clamps attached to the Tesla’s front wheels keeps the car on the track as the vehicle moves under its own power. The company says speeds of 150 mph will be possible, though the test run was far slower. Until now, the company has used standard equipment, but it expects to roll out newly engineered tunnelling technology as its efforts continue. Musk said about $10 million (U.S.) was spent on the first mile of the system, which took about a year to complete, largely because of hurdles with permits and licenses. But costs are likely to rise. Subway tunnelling elsewhere in the world can cost $1 billion a mile or more; Musk has said that figure must be reduced by a factor of 10 to make his system viable on a larger scale.

Even then, the Hawthorne tunnel is at best a proof of concept. To make such a system extensive enough to serve one of the world’s biggest metropolitan areas, with private funding, seems a herculean proposition. The first hurdle may be to convince urban planners that it is a practical way of easing the traffic crush.

“I like technology,” James E. Moore, director of the transportation engineering program at the University of Southern California, said this week. “I admire Elon Musk. So I want to say, ‘Yes, this is a good idea,’ but I really can’t.” Moore said solving traffic problems did not require building anything new. He said the more important consideration was how to better manage what we already have, “before we look up or down, before I look at either one.” “We’ve never built our way out of congestion,” Moore said. “I think there are cheaper ways to provide better transportation for large numbers of people.” For example, Moore said managing highway traffic with tolls or other economic policies could help reduce congestion. During his public conversation with Musk last month, Garcetti noted that many of “the folks who make tunnels” were skeptical of Musk’s plans, but he added: “This is much larger than a tunnel. You’re talking about a transportation system.” The tunnel was first expected to be more of a mass-transit system, but that prospect seems gone with the decision not to use the 16-passenger pods. The system that Musk proposes for Los Angeles, called a loop, is distinct from the transportation mode known as a hyperloop — something he and others are also developing. The hyperloop uses a vacuum to reduce friction to achieve speeds up to 600 mph, while the loop does not require that technology because it is designed for slower speeds and shorter distances. “The loop is a step toward hyperloop,” Musk said. Richard Branson’s Virgin Group is also developing a hyperloop, called Virgin Hyperloop One. The venture has built a test track in the Nevada desert and is in talks to build a line connecting Kansas City and St. Louis. Musk said his concepts had attracted significant attention from cities across the country, and he defended tunnelling against criticism that it might be disruptive to neighbourhoods — a concern already raised in the Los Angeles region. “You cannot see, hear or feel tunnel construction,” Musk said. In addition to its efforts in the Los Angeles area, the Boring Co. is proposing lines in Chicago and the Washington-Baltimore corridor. The company raised $112.5 million in capital earlier this year, with more than 90 per cent coming from Musk, whose net worth has been estimated at more than $20 billion. The Boring Co. is still determining what its fares will be but says they will be comparable to those in other mass transit systems, or cheaper. Musk said passengers not riding in their own cars might be transported in vehicles owned by the Boring Co. for about $1 per ride. “If it’s our capital, if it’s public capital, I wouldn’t do it,” Moore said of Musk’s loop project. “But he should feel free to risk all of the capital he can assemble.”</s>What started as a joke has turned into a real-life prototype. Elon Musk japed that he'd dig tunnels under Los Angeles to avoid traffic, and on Tuesday his Boring Company opened its first prototype tunnel in LA. The entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX also provided more details on how the system works.

Musk started The Boring Company as a solution to traffic and congested cities. Machines dig tunnels to fit a vehicle, and an elevator shaft drops them down. From there, the car deploys tracking wheels that rub against the walls to guide it along the tunnel. For now, it's unclear how a vehicle will be outfitted with the tracking wheels or how it will deploy them. Musk tweeted that the retractable wheel gear "turns a car into a rail-guided train & back again." The rails are actually the sides of the tunnel and the cars remain cars.

When completely realized, the vehicles could move at speeds in excess of 150 mph. CNN Business, which was present at the opening event, said trial tests had the car moving at speeds of 35 mph in the 1.14-mile long tunnel, but the concept worked. The tunnel system is called the Loop.

The prototype featured a Tesla Model X fitted with the proper retractable running gear to work in the tunnel, but dedicated Boring Loop vehicles will circulate continuously to pick up pedestrians and cyclists, according to tweets from Musk. Additionally, Musk said the system can be applied to any self-driving electric car, not just Teslas. Privately owned vehicles outfitted with the deployable tracking wheels would also be allowed to use the Boring Loops.

The first test tunnel runs from a parking lot in Hawthorne, California, to the SpaceX headquarters. After two years or development, the tunnel reportedly cost $10 million to develop and construct as a proof-of-concept for other projects Musk plans across the United States. The Boring Company was tapped to build a Boring Loop in Chicago from downtown to O'Hare airport, a second California tunnel, and a Loop in Washington state. So far, work hasn't progressed on the Chicago or Washington Loops, and the company ditched the idea for a second California tunnel for now after a lawsuit from neighborhood groups.

However, eventually, Musk wants a full system of underground tunnels in LA.

We're a long way from any sort of massive underground system as red tape and regulatory hurdles stand in the way, but for now, we know the system works, at least at 35 mph. Maybe Musk is onto something after all.</s>LOS ANGELES (CBS SF / AP) — Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled his underground transportation tunnel on Tuesday, allowing reporters and invited guests to take some of the first rides in the revolutionary albeit bumpy subterranean tube — the tech entrepreneur’s answer to what he calls “soul-destroying traffic.”

Guests boarded Musk’s Tesla Model X and rode along Los Angeles-area surface streets about a mile (1.6 kilometers) away to what’s known as O’Leary Station. The station, smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood — “basically in someone’s backyard,” Musk says — consists of a wall-less elevator that slowly took the car down a wide shaft, roughly 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface.

The sky slowly fell away and the surprisingly narrow tunnel emerged.

“We’re clear,” said the driver, who sped up and zipped into the tunnel when a red track light turned green, making the tube look like something from space or a dance club.

The car jostled significantly during the ride, which was bumpy enough to give one reporter motion sickness while another yelled, “Woo!”

Musk described his first ride as “epic.”

“For me it was a eureka moment,” he told a room full of reporters. “I was like, ‘This thing is going to damn well work.'”

He said the rides are bumpy now because “we kind of ran out of time” and there were some problems with the speed of his paving machine.

“It’ll be smooth as glass,” he said of future systems. “This is just a prototype. That’s why it’s a little rough around the edges.”

Later in the day, Musk emerged from the tunnel himself inside one of his cars. He high-fived guests and pumped his fists in the air before delivering a speech in the green glow of the tunnel about the technology and why it makes sense.

The demo rides were considerably slower — 40 mph (64 kph) — than what Musk says the future system will run at: 150 mph (241 kph). Still, it took only three minutes to go just over a mile from the beginning to the end of the tunnel, the same amount of time it took to accomplish a right-hand turn out of the parking lot and onto a surface street even before the height of Los Angeles’ notorious rush-hour traffic.

The tunnel is just a test to prove the technology works and could one day cure traffic.

Tuesday’s reveal comes almost two years to the day since Musk announced on Twitter that “traffic is driving me nuts” and he was “going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging.”

“I am actually going to do this,” he added in response to initial skepticism. Soon after, he began The Boring Company, tongue in cheek intentional.

Since then, Musk has only revealed a handful of photos and videos of the tunnel’s progress.

On Tuesday, he explained for the first time in detail just how the system, which he simply calls “loop,” could work on a larger scale beneath cities across the globe. Autonomous, electric vehicles could be lowered into the system on wall-less elevators the size of two cars or spiral ramps. The elevators could be placed almost anywhere cars can go.

A number of autonomous cars would remain inside the tunnel system just for pedestrians and bicyclists. Once on the main arteries of the system, every car could run at top speed except when entering and exiting.

“It’s much more like an underground highway than it is a subway,” Musk said.

Cars would have to be fitted with specially designed side wheels that pop out perpendicular to the car’s regular tires and run along the tunnel’s track. They would run about $200 or $300 a car, Musk said.

The cars would have to be autonomous to work in the system but not Teslas specifically, and they would have to be electric because of the fumes from gas, Musk said.

He said tunnels are the safest place to be in earthquakes — sort of how a submarine during a hurricane is safest beneath the surface — and addressed other concerns such as the noise and disruption of building the tunnels, which he completely dismissed. When workers bored through the end of the test tunnel, for instance, the people in the home 20 feet (6 meters) away “didn’t even stop watching TV.”

Musk said it took about $10 million to build the test tunnel, a far cry from the $1 billion per mile his company says most tunnels take to build.

Musk has cut costs by improving the speed of construction with smarter tools, eliminating middlemen, building more powerful boring machines, and instead of hauling out all the dirt being excavated, Musk is turning them into bricks and selling them for 10 cents.

“I really think this is incredibly profound,” he said. “Hopefully that is coming across.”

He reiterated the simplicity of all his ideas.

“No Nobel Prize is needed here,” he said. “It’s very simple.”

And he’s not doing it for the money, he said, adding that it’s for the greater good. In his 16 years in Los Angeles, he said, traffic went from “the seventh level of hell to the eighth level of hell.”

“Traffic is soul-destroying. It’s like acid on the soul,” he said to party guests who snacked on marshmallow treats and hot dogs and hoped for a turn in the tunnel.

The tunnel will not be open to the public for the foreseeable future, just for invited VIPs, Musk said, adding that regulations wouldn’t allow for it to open widely for demo rides just yet.

Steve Davis, head of The Boring Company, said the interest in the tunnel systems has been significant — anywhere from five to 20 calls a week from various municipalities and stakeholders.

One project Musk is planning on, known as the Dugout Loop, would take Los Angeles baseball fans to Dodger Stadium from one of three subway stations. Another would take travelers from downtown Chicago to O’Hare International Airport. Both projects are in the environmental review phase.

Musk said he thinks the Chicago project has the most potential to open soonest and that he’s hoping an extensive network opens in Los Angeles before the city hosts the 2028 Olympics.

“Wouldn’t it be incredible if you could travel around LA, New York, D.C., Chicago, Paris, London — anywhere — at 150 mph?” Musk said. “That’d be phenomenal.”

The Boring Company canceled its plans for another test tunnel on Los Angeles’ west side last month after a neighborhood coalition filed a lawsuit expressing concerns about increased traffic during construction.

Musk’s vision for the underground tunnels is not to be confused with another of his transportation concepts known as hyperloop. That would involve a network of nearly airless tubes that would speed special capsules over long distances at up to 750 mph (1,200) kph), using a thin cushion of air, magnetism and solar power.

© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.</s>Tech mogul Elon Musk unveiled an underground transportation tunnel in Hawthorne, California Tuesday evening that could move people faster than subways.Musk also showed off the autonomous cars that will transport commuters through the test tunnel, which stretches about 2 miles under the city where Musk's SpaceX is headquartered. He unveiled elevators that he says will lower user's own cars from the street to the tunnel.In a grand entrance, Musk came out of the mile-long tunnel in a Tesla Model X."What I think this really amounts to is an actual solution to the soul-crushing burden of traffic," he said. "Why tunnels? Some people say, what about flying cars and all those other things and what about mass transit - I want to be clear, we're not opposed to mass transit - we think mass transit is fine. Let's try every solution possible, but the thing about tunnels is that you can go 3-D underground."Elevators will take drivers underground and back again, but much will still have to be done before any member of the public can even test it out.Musk said tunneling is slow and expensive, but the company is experimenting to create innovative technology underground to speed commute times above ground.He also said some of the dirt that's being dug up will be reused to reinforce the tunnels, but the company created an innovative brick-laying machine that will pump out bricks at a low cost. He hopes it can also be used for affordable housing.The event came almost exactly two years after Musk tweeted that "traffic is driving me nuts," adding that he intended to "build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging."Some critics were skeptical. Musk responded: "I am actually going to do this."He subsequently founded The Boring Company. Since then he has posted photos and videos on social media that showed crews making progress on the tunnel. The one that was unveiled Tuesday is being used by Musk and the company to conduct research and development for a larger system in Los Angeles and elsewhere.One proposed project, dubbed the Dugout Loop, would whisk baseball fans to Dodger Stadium from one of three Metro subway stations.
Elon Musk opens the 1.6km-long Boring Test Tunnel in Hawthorne, California, which is designed to demonstrate technology that will transport cars at high speeds below the city.