Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) founder Elon Musk isn’t just satisfied with being an electric car, solar power, and rocket tycoon. He’s set his sights on something else.
Tunnels.
This doesn’t sound very interesting at first, but it’s truly fascinating. Musk envisions a world where traffic congestion is solved by going underground. Putting highways underground would free up surface roads for local traffic. Imagine such a system combined with autonomous cars that can zoom at speeds that are considered unsafe today.
There’s just one problem. Our tunneling capability isn’t good enough to make this happen. Not even close.
Musk took the first steps towards trying to solve this problem over the weekend, announcing plans for a 50-foot long, 30-feet wide, and by 15-feet high tunnel to be dug just outside SpaceX’s headquarters in Los Angeles.
Musk is calling it a test trench, and is quick to downplay the project itself. "We’re just going to figure out what it takes to improve tunneling speed by, I think, somewhere between 500% and 1,000%."
"We have no idea what we’re doing," he was quick to add. In short, people shouldn’t expect a breakthrough anytime soon.
Improving tunneling technology won’t just benefit drivers. It could also have a huge impact on public transportation, allowing municipalities to dig subways both cheaper and faster than today.
While such news isn’t likely to impact Tesla’s bottom line in the near future -- or ever -- it outlines one of the biggest reasons many Tesla bulls are so positive. There aren’t many tech leaders who think as grandly as Elon Musk does.
