Elon Musk unveils underground tunnel

Elon Musk unveiled his underground transportation tunnel, allowing reporters and invited guests to take some of the first rides in the revolutionary albeit bumpy subterranean tube—the tech entrepreneur's answer to what he calls "soul-destroying traffic."

Guests boarded Musk's Tesla Model S and rode along Los Angeles-area surface streets about a mile away to what's known as O'Leary Station. The station, smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood—"basically in someone's backyard," Musk says—consists of a wall-less elevator that slowly took the car down a wide shaft, roughly 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface.

The demo rides were considerably slower—40 mph (64 kph)—than what Musk says the future system will run at: 150 mph (241 kph). Still, it took only three minutes to go just over a mile from the beginning to the end of the tunnel. The tunnel will not be open to the public for the foreseeable future, Musk said, adding that regulations wouldn't allow for it to open widely for demo rides just yet.

Read more at Tech Xplore

Image Credit: Robyn Beck/AP

-jk-