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The sham is that he's creating hype in future nonexistent tech to distract government officials from investing in current infrastructure that would compete with
by Tiktaalik 9y ago
The sham is that he's creating hype in future nonexistent tech to distract government officials from investing in current infrastructure that would compete with automobiles.
Governments could build high speed rail right now and significantly improve transportation options, but with the promise of some better Hyperloop system in the future, they could be encouraged to hold off. Of course Hyperloop may never appear at all.
Similarly with the Boring Company Musk is asserting that increasing road capacity with tunnels will reduce congestion and improve the transportation system, when in reality this issue has been studied at length and has been proven false. Due to induced demand increasing road capacity simply encourages more people to drive, which Musk would of course be in favour of. Yet again by putting forward a zany idea and additionally hand waving about the future promise of autonomous cars, Musk distracts government officials from real transportation solutions that can be implemented today.
- oh_sigh 9y agoYour first paragraph doesn't make any sense. Our government could have built high speed rail any time in the past 30 years if there was the political will to get it done. There wasn't. The fact that someone is offering alternatives at this point just means that they realistically see that no one has no desire to build high speed rails in the US.
- mikeash 9y agoI'd say the history of our public transport infrastructure over the past few decades demonstrates the utter unnecessity of this scheme, since it happens all by itself anyway.
- mtotheizhphenom 9y agoHe's open sourced all of Tesla patents with the goal of accelerating the transition to EVs. For that and many other reasons it's obvious his intentions are pure. Not to mention failures in regard to high speed rail are nothing new in the US. To think this "announcement" was derived to thwart those efforts is delusional. Hope you find a way to channel your nefarious thinking toward something positive.
- Tiktaalik 9y agoEV patents are irrelevant to the discussion. EVs are still cars. Public Transport offers an alternative to automobile based transportation. It is in his best interest for governments to invest their infrastructure dollars in automobile based infrastructure instead of alternatives.
- mtotheizhphenom 9y agoOther car companies developing EVs are a bigger threat to Tesla than government spending on high speed rail. Sorry you didn't make the connection.
- api 9y agoTunnel systems like this would be for long distance transport. This competes with airlines, not Tesla. Total red herring.
- mikeash 9y agoI think the proposed scam is bizarre, but the DC-NYC corridor discussed here is a distance where cars are still competitive. Travel time is longer but overhead is much lower, leaving the total transit time fairly similar.
- api 9y agoNot if you factor in charge times for EVs which even with improvement are not likely to be as rapid as gasoline car refueling times. EVs and trains are a great match. Self-driving EV takes you to train, train takes you to another city, and another self-driving EV picks you up.
- mikeash 9y agoEVs are fine for DC-NYC. The higher-end Teslas can do the trip in one shot. My S85 could too, if I were willing to arrive running on the electrical equivalent of fumes, but I'd probably take 15 minutes to stop in Delaware to top up the car and driver. With charging, my total trip time would be about four hours, which compares pretty favorably with making the trip by air.