How Boring Company Could Become Bigger than Tesla Within Four Years

Boring Company is Elon Musk’s third-highest value company after Tesla ($39 billion valuation as of Aug 28, 2019) and SpaceX ($33 billion). They just raised $120 million with a valuation of $920 million (just short of $1 billion).

There are several big developments over the next 16 months that could propel Boring Company to higher valuation.

The Las Vegas project is expected to be complete in time to be used at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2021, LVCVA told me in March. Then, Musk got on Twitter and suggested the project could be running by the end of the year. The public contract suggests that tests will start by November 2020.

It is a two-mile-long tunnel with three stations. Elon did tweet he thought it could be completed by the end of 2019. I would expect it will be done and operating by June 2020.

The completion of the Vegas project could set up a follow-up project to connect the convention center with the rest of the Vegas Strip. It would be the first completed and operating commercial Boring Company project.

This could lead to completion of contracts for tunnels in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington and Austrlia.

A couple of new billion or larger contracts could come from a Vegas Strip tunnel, Washington Tunnel, Chicago, Australia and/or Los Angeles.

One or two billion dollar or larger contracts would send Boring Company to a $16+ billion valuation.

New Technology and China Contracts

Elon Musk and Boring Company had targeted development of new tunneling machines that would be ten to fifteen times faster than existing technology. Boring is still using its first-generation machine which is basically tweaks on current technology. The third generation tunneling machine will be operating by the end of 2020.

Elon Musk and Boring Company are setting up an office in China. China spends tens of billions of dollars on subways and tunnel infrastructure.

China moves very fast on infrastructure and they helped Tesla with billions of dollars in funding for the Tesla Shanghai car factory. This factory building was built in 9 months.

Boring Company has weak competition. None of the existing tunneling companies have strong research and development or history of strong innovation.

Once Boring Company has third-generation tunneling machines then it is unlikely any competitors will be able to respond on cost and speed for 5 to ten years.

SOURCES- Boring Company, Twitter
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

35 thoughts on “How Boring Company Could Become Bigger than Tesla Within Four Years”

  1. Its passenger flow rate per volume of dirt removed. A double decker wouldn’t need 4x the dirt. It would be more line 1.5 x the dirt. Its by cross-section.

    And I do agree that you need to size the route based on demand. Not all routes need double deckers but some do. I can tell by how crowded the trains are.

  2. Oddly easier to build 2 sets of one-decker trains/tunnels. Double decker Bore hole would require 4x the earth removal and you wouldn’t be able to adapt to slow traffic days, making power consumption high. 2 seperate tunnels would require 2x the earth removal and be able to adapt better to traffic load. The A380 aircraft was a victim of a similar issue. (ie – it was expensive to build and expensive to run when 1/2 full). Despite the city size, large varience in traffic loads between rush hours and dead of night would still exist. Also the Pods don’t Need to use elevators in many situations ramps would work and could be strung into trains with more or fewer pods depending on hour of day.

  3. Not quite.

    This was doing the fracking only on the next couple of metres or so of tunnel face. The fractured rock would then fall away from the face, get scooped up and removed, and then you start drilling on the next section.
    You never need a TBM.

  4. Cutting through various sorts of rock will destroy even diamond coated wire very quickly.

    One thing I saw once and haven’t seen again (not that I’ve looked) was drilling a narrow hole, and then plugging in a hollow tube and filling it with water that is then pumped to extremely high pressures.
    This bursts the rocks from internal tensile stresses, just like the old approach of drill, fill with explosive, set off. But unlike the explosive the high pressure water has negligible energy stored elastically in it. Once the rock fractures the wate loses all pressure and the (wet) rubble collapses instead of sending fragments off at high speed.

  5. Combine a tubular lance (like a nuclear subterrene, with perhaps a pure electrically driven heat lance instead), and twin robot arm manipulated diamond coated wire saw garrote to slice chunks of the center tube of rock into managable chunks for transport, rather than letting it snap off by it’s own weight unexpectedly?

  6. There just isn’t enough area for that. There is a limit to how deep you can dig. And walking a few blocks to the station is good for you.

  7. Here’s my idea:

    To speed up the digging, all the power of the machine should be used to cut only the circumference of the tunnel to a depth of 3 to 6 feet (The maximum depth should be calculated so that the cut-out part does not collapse.) Then an Electromagnetic Railgun or an Helical Electromagnetic Launcher would propel a tungsten spear into the center of the cut-out (or in multiple locations simultaneously), causing it to explode into small fragments.

    Everything would work with electricity, which is convenient when humans are working in tunnels…

    What do you think?

  8. I was thinking “A” in the diagram below, which now seems wacky; are you talking about “B”?

  9. I think Mark Russell, CEO of Hypersciences, of Spokane, WA could add a reusable “hammer drill” feature to the Boring company’s big electric drills. They might become ten times faster and cheaper.

  10. you should really drop the ‘prolific business-oriented writer’, it’s pure cringe. this site is purely for tech fantasies and ewon cheerleading

  11. Thats a very medieval view – similar to a hub and spoke model. What every large city in the future needs is small tunnel every few hundred meters or even closer. I want to go directly from my home to my office and there should be a tunnel for that. Or at least from the street that I live in to the street that my office is in.

  12. Does Boring Company plans on getting alone on foreign markets or will they do joint ventures and deals with established construction companies in other countries?

  13. Yes, this approach has been tried fairly regularly for tunneling and mining.

    And not just recently, when I was a student I worked a bit on a project that was doing much the same for mining purposes.
    (I got to use a shovel and a pick a fair bit in that job.)

    It worked. But there were continuing problems in controlling how the big rock chunks broke off. Remember that’s a couple of tonnes of rock suddenly falling at your equipment.

    Shear energy considerations means that people will go this way eventually.

  14. Interesting idea. Maybe a little boring unit that would go round and round in the circumference, in a spiral moving forward? With a trailing line for power at the top of the arc, so it would not get crushed? Could enough force be applied at the cutting head? Maybe. Would breaking up the center plug into manageable pieces be more efficient than crushing each square inch of it? Probably. Hmm…

  15. Spacex should skyrocket with the launch of starlink and starship staring operations offering costs that undercut every one else. All the space business will go Spacex way. Tesla will grow as well with new gigafactory in China and then Europe and new car models as well as utility scale storage battery business. Both companies should be over 100 billion within 5 to 8 years. And boring company has huge potential. Elon is a genius in disruption technology. He knows exactly where to enter and turn the industry upside down.

  16. The Boring company needs to be able to dig tunnels for double decker trains. That is what every city with a population over 5 million needs.

  17. Boring machines seem extremely inefficient. They expend a huge amount of energy grinding up the whole width of the tunnel.

    They should only need to grind up the circumference. The center cylinder – 80-90% of the mass – could be broken off (or wait until it breaks off under its own weight) and hauled out more or less intact.

  18. I think where the Boring company is going to make serious bank is in utility tunnels. A lot of infrastructure (water, power, sewage, etc.) should be buried for storm (solar and weather) and security issues. The next time a Carrington-like event happens we don’t want our power lines and transformers in the open.

  19. SpaceX is quickly catching Tesla in value and the company is still private. SpaceX could hit 100 billion in a few years once Starlink is operational.

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