Elon Musk's Boring Company finishes first tunnel segment in LA

It may have a boring name, but it is getting exciting boring done. The aptly yet ironically named company has just reached an important milestone in fulfilling Elon Musk's newest moonshot. The visionary and entrepreneur extraordinaire took to Twitter to almost nonchalantly revealed that boring machine Godot has just completed the first segment underneath LA, while still leaving plenty of room for mystery and suspense.

Musk is anything but boring, of course, as can be seen by his ambitions turned into successful companies. His latest endeavor, however, is probably one of the most debated. It came out of the blue and, given the tongue-in-cheek name, not everyone might have taken it seriously at first. And some of those that did though Musk had finally lost it. Of course, it had its fair share of fans who shared a dream of escaping traffic congestion.

Musk's plan to solve the traffic problem wasn't simply to bore tunnels that cars and all sorts of vehicles would simply fill up again. Instead, the tunnels would ferry these vehicles on sleds traveling at 200 km/h. Back in April, that was nothing more than a pretty rendered animation, but last month Musk showed off a demo of just how fast that sled really is.

[Warning, this may cause motion sickness or seizures] This is a test run of our electric sled that would transport cars at 125 mph (200 km/h) through the tunnels, automatically switching from one tunnel to the next. Would mean Westwood to LAX in 5 mins.

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on May 12, 2017 at 5:48am PDT

Now that the Boring Company has actually bored a tunnel, the biggest mystery is where that first segment is. Up to now, Musk has been rather silent other than it being under LA, of course. The company only had permit to do its tests underneath SpaceX's property in Hawthorne. Anywhere else would require permits that might not be easy to come by. It seems that Musk worked his magic yet again and it's full speed ahead.

No longer waiting for Godot. It has begun boring and just completed the first segment of tunnel in LA.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2017

Except that it isn't, at least not literally. If put in a race, the boring machine Godot, named after a Samuel Beckett play and not after an actress, would probably bore you to death if not for its skull-crunching noise. Musk jokes that they have a long way to go before Godot beats Gary, an honest to goodness snail perhaps inspired by Spongebob, in any race.