
The Boring Company raises $112M from Musk, early employees - rory096
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1737630/000173763018000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml
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capkutay
I hope that this would be a boon for transit costs in America which are
ridiculous compared to Europe [0].

But part of the problem lies with transit advocates in the US, who think tech
and Elon Musk are a threat to transit. [1]

0: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/nyregion/new-york-
subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-
construction-costs-
congress.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=CEC730A179DCBAF18A6F6273514862D7&gwt=pay)

1:
[https://twitter.com/humantransit/status/941386665519595521](https://twitter.com/humantransit/status/941386665519595521)

~~~
DmenshunlAnlsis
It’s hard to take him seriously in terms of mass transit when he talks about
vacuum trains as though they’re not a terrible idea. Then you remember he owns
a company that plans to ultimately replace airlines in some markets with
rockets, and a car company, and a person not overly taken with his “charisma”
wonders if his interest in mass transit is in scuttling it.

If he was serious about mass transit there are existing, proven technologies
he could get behind with his billions, rather than hyperloop. Instead he
proposes a technology that is entrancing to people who don’t know enough about
engineering and physics, and that is exciting. Unfortunately the tech isn’t
workable, it’s just exciting, but it could take a decade or more for that to
become apparent to most people.

Wikipedia has an excellent article which lays out the history of the concept
going back to the 18th century.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain)

I love the understatement of “prohibitively expensive” too, very droll. Any
experimentalist who has worked with strong vacuums knows how absurd the idea
of a hyperloop is at this point. The expense, the maintence costs, the
airlocks, the pumps, all would be an incredible expense that could never be
recouped in the builder’s lifetime. The actual tunneling would have to be
totally revolutionary too, with incredibly long, nearly straight sections. The
turning radius would have to be on the order of of a commercial airliner’s
turning radius, which is absurd.

Credit to the man though, it hits that sweet spot requiring specialist
knowledge to see through the hype, much like promises of nuclear fusion as a
major power source within a couple of decades. The big idea is so attractive,
and the problems all involve technical details. It’s not quite a con, but it’s
close.

~~~
flexie
Hyperloop is near vacuum, not vacuum.

When assessing Musk's success, note that Tesla has singlehandedly pushed the
entire auto industry towards electric vehicles. Before Tesla, electric
vehicles were funny experimental things for hipsters. Very few people bought
electric cars, and when they did it was usually only as a second car that
could drive 100 miles around town. Virtually no major manufacturer were
planning on changing that.

After Model 3, all major car manufacturers are changing their product
development and production lines to make electric vehicles. It's now clear to
everybody involved that in a number of years, it will only, or almost only, be
electric vehicles.

Even if Tesla were to end up being a company that only sells a few hundred
thousands cars per year, their impact will have been several orders of
magnitude bigger. At the end of the next decade, tens of millions of electric
cars will be produced every year and Tesla is the company that not only showed
the way but forced an entire industry to go in that direction.

Now, why on Earth would Musk not be interested in promoting mass transit?
Tesla is unlikely to produce 50 million cars yearly anyways, and - so far -
electric vehicles are more expensive than ordinary cars and not much more
suitable for dense city traffic than ordinary cars (although the cost is going
down and although self-driving capabilities may change that a bit). But for
many years to come, it's unlikely that the Boring Company or the Hyperloop is
going to cannibalize on Tesla's market.

~~~
rohit2412
> Tesla has singlehandedly pushed the entire auto industry towards electric
> vehicles.

I would say they led the industry by 2-3 years because of capabilities of
making losses (actually not, Chevy bolt came before model 3).

What made electric cars possible is cheap batteries, otherwise they'd have
built model3 right out the gate. And Tesla didn't make batteries cheap,
consumer electronics did. Tesla doesn't even make battery cells, they buy them
from panasonic

~~~
flexie
That’s like saying Apple didn’t transform the cell phone industry but only led
the industry by 2-3 years before Android followed.

Or that Apple didn’t innovate because they merely used known technologies like
phones, batteries, and touch screens.

~~~
rohit2412
Except apple made products for profit which others could have but didn't.

Tesla made cars at loss, which others really couldn't.

But at the core of it, Tesla has the hype of Elon musk, and no other car
manufacturer can pull that off.

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simonebrunozzi
Some back of the napkin calculation that I made some months ago, hopefully
still useful to think about where the Boring Company is going :
[https://medium.com/the-naked-founder/elon-musks-boring-
compa...](https://medium.com/the-naked-founder/elon-musks-boring-company-is-
boring-for-now-f778d382971b)

~~~
dx034
Nice article but I would point out that many of the very long and/or deep
tunnels are built for railroads instead of cars, precisely to lower the
diameter necessary (no exhaust needed, no hard shoulder).

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marze
$100M. Same amount at Musk’s personal investment in both SpaceX and in Tesla.

~~~
aerovistae
Same _initial_ investment. Both Tesla and SpaceX have far more from him now.

~~~
marze
Really? Musk started with $200M from PayPal, invested half in each, according
to reports. There is nothing left to invest after doing that.

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Trisell
I think the huge thing that most people miss is that Elon isn’t trying to fix
the earth’s problems. Elon is using the earth and other people’s money to
bootstrap all of the things he needs to live on Mars. Every single one of his
projects is in some facet working on a tech that is needed on Mars.

SpaceX gets you there.

Tesla gets you around there and batteries store power.

Solar City because batteries.

Boring Company to dig tunnels and create radiation safe locations for humans
on mars.

Hyperloop cross country transport that doesn’t work well in our atmosphere but
makes much more sense on Mars.

I think he is all consumed by his vision of humans surviving on mars and
thriving. And when you look at things from this view suddenly his crazy
becomes less crazy.

~~~
twtw
"most people miss" that because that isn't what he says he is trying to do.
Musk has said on several occasions that he _is_ trying to fix some of the
earth's problems.

By all means, speculate on Elon Musk's hidden psyche, but don't expect
everyone to agree when the man himself says something different.

~~~
Trisell
I could agree with some of it. But he’s also said many times that he feels the
only way to keep humans from going extinct is to make humanity a multi-
planetary species, so while he maybe trying to fix some things his pretty
clearly stated goal is to get humans off this rock permanently.

[http://earthsky.org/space/elon-musk-mars-manifesto-humans-
mu...](http://earthsky.org/space/elon-musk-mars-manifesto-humans-multi-
planetary)

~~~
itslennysfault
> _multi_ -planetary species

...That means fix Earth too. We / he certainly doesn't want to trade Earth for
Mars. Mars is just a good place to store a backup of humanity.

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keyle
What does the boring company make? I saw bits of it as a bit of a joke... ?

Is it Musk's approach of making a traditional company and flipping it on its
head?

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aerovistae
they make tunnels and outfit them for various modes of transportation. it's
not a joke. i can't imagine any better way to make it clear that something
isn't a joke than to put $100 million into it.

~~~
dx034
Is $100m really enough to build a state of the art boring machine and get all
equipment/labour to actually build a tunnel?

~~~
aerovistae
I have no idea what $100m is enough for, all I know is that Elon Musk gets
more done per dollar than anyone else alive.

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AsyncAwait
Really? Care to give some examples?

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aerovistae
Yes, SpaceX and Tesla.

~~~
AsyncAwait
You said words, but there's no substance, how does SpaceX and Tesla in any way
prove that "Elon Musk gets more done per dollar than anyone else alive"
exactly?

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nodesocket
Elon is doing way too much context switching between Tesla, SpaceX, and The
Boring Company even though he is no ordinary human.

Recently in an interview he said he was sleeping on the factory floor of Tesla
because he didn't have time to go home. That's going to lead to burnout,
mental and physical issues. I am a big advocate of work smarter not harder.

~~~
twtw
I'm a big advocate of "don't tell people what to do." Musk seems to have a
pretty good handle on his own limits. He's been doing crazy work hours and
sleeping under his desk occasionally for over a decade. Just because it hits
the news doesn't mean he should change his habits if it works for him.

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Animats
If they ever develop a cheaper tunneling technology, they could bid on some
sections of the Tokyo to Osaka maglev. That's under construction now. For one
tunnel, 5 meters a day, 25000 meters to go. Test trains have been running on a
41km track for years. 500km/h is normal cruising speed. They've reached
600km/h in tests.

~~~
kamaal
In India, cheaper tunneling technology would be a boon the impossibly chaotic
cities. Acquiring private properties to build urban metro transit systems is
prohibitively expensive and so is tunneling.

A cheaper tunneling technology would be very much solving plenty of transit
problems in a country like India.

I hear TBMs are just crazy expensive. They used two TBMs for the Bangalore
Metro. One broke down and it took them months to fix it.

As of now cheaper tunneling tech would be the greatest thing ever for may
cities in non developed countries.

~~~
rohit2412
I'm surprised they used tbm in Bangalore, but I think tbm aren't required. Cut
and cover works well and is primarily used

For example, Mumbai Metro's line 3 is totally underground, and is in the
costliest City of India. It is planned at 3.5 billion $ for 33 know. Around
100 million $ per km. And this includes the cost of stations, rails etc.

In comparison, recently completed Delhi metro phase 4 took 6.7 billion $ for
100 km at 67 million $ a km. A proposed Delhi metro project to UP outside the
city (and hence cheaper) is around 1 billion $ for 35 km (and fewer stations).

From the looks of it, I don't think cut and cover for making tunnels has any
significant expense at all. It looks like India can construct metros
(including stations which are the bigger costs) at 30 million $ per km. This
is far lower than the tunneling costs of 100 million $ per mile that Elon
plans to achieve, and 1 billion $ / mile that he thinks it costs (it doesn't,
the major cost is stations and labor, and he can't bypass unions with
political access).

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_3_(Mumbai_Metro)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_3_\(Mumbai_Metro\))

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Metro](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Metro)

Edit: Looks like India does use tbm. The cited Mumbai metro line is using 17
tbm.

[https://m.hindustantimes.com/mumbai-news/tunnel-boring-
machi...](https://m.hindustantimes.com/mumbai-news/tunnel-boring-machines-
used-for-mumbai-metro-work-named-after-rivers/story-
xdnu6LoI9bKxs65RkX1VXI_amp.html)

~~~
rohit2412
Got interested, crunched some numbers.

A TBM costs like 10 million euros to buy, 5 million euros per month to
operate. And move 50 feet a day. So, all combined it costs like 14 million
dollars per mile to tunnel. But as in Mumbai's case (17 tbm for 33 km!), These
are done in parallel for speed and to reduce costs, it's sound 30 million
dollars per km. Which is almost the difference for mixed grade Delhi phase 4
and Mumbai's line 3 costs.

TLDR: tunnel boring costs 15 million dollars per km in material/operation
costs, rest is probably rails+stations etc.

[https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-a-tunnel-boring-
machine-...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-a-tunnel-boring-machine-cost)

[https://www.quora.com/How-fast-can-a-tunnel-boring-
machine-d...](https://www.quora.com/How-fast-can-a-tunnel-boring-machine-
drill-under-good-conditions-How-does-it-go-that-fast)

~~~
kamaal
Mumbai and Delhi comparisons are pointless. They get whatever funds they ask
from the center. At the same time for cities like Bangalore, they have to work
with leftovers.

People complain the pace of Metro construction is low. But for the money these
people get, its already nothing short of a miracle that they are even building
this much.

~~~
rohit2412
The question isn't Mumbai vs Delhi. It is how costly is tunneling.

And I'm just pointing out that in India we are tunneling at around 10-15
million dollars per mile, far cheaper than what Elon musk thinks it costs (1
billion per mile), and what he plans to achieve (100 million dollars per
mile). Essentially, the breakdown is complex and different for different
geology, labor prices, tunnel sizes etc. Musk's salesmanship of selling byte
sized numbers without context is stupid.

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rory096
>Who’s behind the $112.5 Million In fundraising for The Boring Company?

>Over 90% came from Elon Musk, with the rest from early employees. No venture
capitalists or outside investors are involved according to the company.

[https://twitter.com/Lebeaucarnews/status/985994145805238273](https://twitter.com/Lebeaucarnews/status/985994145805238273)

~~~
rajacombinator
Odd ... why put your own money at risk when you have access to unlimited blank
checks? Some kind of weird personal asset defense play?

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sbinthree
I have no idea why people take outside money. If you can't afford to build it,
start smaller, get rich, go bigger. What is the purpose of personal capital if
not to bet on yourself?

~~~
maehwasu
Another huge reason is to prove concept and make sure you're not fooling
yourself. If you can get others to put in large amounts, it's an (imperfect)
indicator of a kind of traction.

Musk probably doesn't feel like he needs that validation, so the main reasons
to take outside money would be leverage and diversification. The downside is
some loss of control.

~~~
bobsil1
Nobody else understands it or believes in it like you do.

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Symmetry
Elon is getting into a lot of high risk ventures. That's good, people ought to
push themselves and if someone in his position never fails they probably
aren't challenging themselves enough. But I hope that he's able to let go if
this does fail, instead of having Tesla buy the company or something _a la_
Solar City.

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bobsil1
Guess merch funding wasn't enough :)

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samnwa
How do I get in on this investment??

~~~
asdsa5325
Be Elon Musk or an early employee.

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dixie_land
sure let's ban AR15s and give our money to a flamethrower company

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Grovara123
Guaranteed this is an Artificial Intelligence company.

