Less known than Twitter or Tesla, Elon Musk also owns The Boring Company, a tunnel company that wants to revolutionize travel in the city. In the project, these tunnels house autonomous Tesla cars that would provide rides. Objective, avoid traffic jams.
But, in recent months, The Boring Company has failed several American cities at the last minute, and its promises seem to be falling apart fast. as pointed out Wall Street Journal.
Last example, the city of Ontario in California. The municipality had abandoned its idea of a very expensive rail link between Ontario International Airport and a station ($1 billion) in favor of The Boring Company’s $45 million project. Except that after meetings and negotiations, Elon Musk’s company simply didn’t submit an offer before the January 2022 deadline.
Meanwhile, cost projections had risen to more than $500 million. In addition, the city requested an environmental impact review of the project. It was then that the process visibly stopped between the two parties.
This is not an isolated case since it has already been observed in cities of Maryland or Chicago. Also in Los Angeles, The Boring Company announced to much fanfare a 3.6-mile high-speed subway link between the Hollywood subway line and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. A project that is not finished yet.
For these stops, several reasons are mentioned by the Wall Street Journal and former employees of The Boring Company. The company has faced bureaucratic obstacles such as obtaining work permits and carrying out environmental reviews. And the unsustainable promises refer not only to the costs but also to the delivery times of the works.
So far only one project has been successful: a tunnel under the Las Vegas Convention Center.
The company continues to attract investors and is currently valued at $5.7 billion. Major real estate companies including Brookfield, Lennar and Tishman Speyer are among the investors.
The irony of Elon Musk’s character is at the very origin of The Boring Company. He launched the company with a December 2016 tweet: “Traffic is driving me crazy. I’m going to build a tunnel boring machine and start digging…” Elon Musk wrote. “I’m actually going to do this,” he added in a second tweet. And the company was born a few months later.
The Boring Company is obviously linked to the other companies of the billionaire: the cars that circulate in the tunnels are Teslas, in front of Boring is an old friend of Elon Musk, who comes from SpaceX. Which earned him some setbacks as some investors complained that Bored absorbs SpaceX resources, including employees and equipment purchased with space company funds.
Similar to the management policy imposed on Twitter since its takeover, Boring employees are working long hours and on weekends, and the company is struggling to retain employees, notes the Wall Street Journal.
Source: BFM TV
