Brand recognition. A billionaire’s word. Fundraising acumen. A boring-looking project and the creation of an unstoppable momentum towards a difficult undertaking.
These are words that bespeak the current venture that Elon Musk has embarked on.
Many Americans are scared of zombies, Right? So why not sell them an outrageously priced toy to defend themselves from the zombie apocalypse, and raise a cool $10 million in the process?
Musk wants to build privately funded tunnel highways, and he has drawn first blood in an ingenious show of his fundraising capabilities.
He is making any future regulatory questions mere rhetoric in his quest.
Welcome to the Boring Company, and its CEO’s rather unorthodox way of making manufacturing popular, cool and fun.
Who is Elon Musk?
While he is not selling flamethrowers and hats, Elon is the CEO of Tesla, a company that makes electronic cars in America.
He also recently acquired SolarCity to try and proliferate solar panels for power generation and is also the owner of SpaceX, a company that is trying to revolutionize space travel.
His Boring Company wants to address megacity traffic snarl-ups by building several layers of tunnels underground. It is 3D travel redefined.
The Main Idea
Imagine a world where people keep on arriving at destinations from underground, and traffic was managed with little or no intersection of tunnels.
Could we eliminate traffic jams, reduce the loss of productive time, and have cleaner and greener travel?
To articulate the Boring Company’s idea to the stakeholders, Elon has had to fight off pessimism from local and federal governments, environmentalists, and the general public.
Where will you dump off the ‘boring dirt’?
Where will you get the funding?
What happens when we start depending on private owned tunnels?
Well. He is on the road to showing everyone why…
Flamethrowers and hats? Really?
Yes. Lighting things up, especially the walking dead is fun.
But the main reason why people are buying the flamethrower and boring hats seems to be that they are supporting the deeper idea behind the company.
This has assisted Musk in saying, Yes. I will find ways of raising the capital.
How green and fast will the tunnels be?
Jehn Balajadia, The Boring Company’s Operation Chief, has explained that they will use loops and tunnel cars that will operate on electric skates, each moving passengers from a single location to a single destination.
Loops will be for multi passengers, but the tunnel cars will be private.
These innovations will operate more like current day elevators, and because of the single destination design, they will operate at average speeds that are very near 150mph, which is their maximum speed.
Musk is an established authority in green energy with SolarCity, and one could be forgiven to believe that he could be thinking of this as he engineers the electric cars.
And what about the dirt?
There exists the technology for super-compressed soil-stabilized interlocking bricks.
The company has hinted that they will use the soil to make bricks to line the tunnels.
This will solve the twin needs for disposal of the soil and provision of underground support as they bore their way across townships and states, city to city.
Client feedback
The most important aspect of any product is customer satisfaction. Future users of the tunnels have voted resoundingly by buying an admittedly overpriced collection of toys.
The Boring Company website has created a forum for client feedback, and they are answering questions quick and fast to convince both the public and the regulators that it is doable.
Funding methods
There is no telling what Elon Musk and his company may come up with going forward to assist in funding the company.
However, one thing is for sure.
He will avoid debilitating interests from loans by fundraising on the initial projects. The flamethrowers and ‘boring’ hats have given him a head start, and the 6.5-mile proof of concept tunnel between Hawthorne and L.A. is now funded. It is a good indicator of the future intentions.
Future projects could be funded more grandly, probably by using futures and fees acquired from existing tunnels.
Is this cool or what?
Final thought
Manufacturing has come a long way, but it still has a long way to go.
By mixing crazy innovation, great forward thinking on environmental management and appealing to the current generation through cool marketing strategies, The Boring Company is showing just how to make the industry cool again.
Elon Musk is a master at creating excitement for his products, is winning over regulators, and he is running the only company that is willing to put the technology to the test.