【2013 Archives】

Tesla013 ArchivesSpaceX founder Elon Musk has a pretty good sense of humor, but sometimes we can't tell when he's just joking or mulling his next big idea.

For example, on Saturday Musk took to Twitter to say out loud what every traffic-plagued Los Angeles resident is silently screaming inside: The city is a gridlocked hellscape.

"Traffic is driving me nuts," wrote Musk.

But he didn't stop there. He also raised the idea of boring through obstacles to alleviate traffic woes.

Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging...

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2016

And then, because he's Elon Musk, he even came up with a name for it: The Boring Company.

It shall be called "The Boring Company"

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2016

Boring, it's what we do

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2016

And just when it seemed like he was simply trying to dull the pain of traffic with a clever quip, his next tweet took things up a notch.

I am actually going to do this

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2016

That's right, Musk just said he wants to bore though whatever it takes (mountains, etc.) to make the traffic go away. Seriously.

It would be easy to toss this off as random talk from an eccentric auto and space mogul, but Musk's last "random idea," the Hyperloop, has spawned a number of startups and millions in funding. So when Musk not only says that boring through things would be a good idea to ease traffic, but that he plans to do it himself, it's time to start paying attention.

The idea is particularly interesting when you consider that the rise of autonomous cars (Tesla's included) may put thousands more cars on the road as more people opt to take a personal, self-driving car over rapid transit.

Hey, Musk built machines to travel more efficiently onthe earth and aboveit, so traveling throughearth seems within the realm of his capabilities.

Next up? Now we wait for the inevitable series of tweets promising a business plan and technical details on just how he'll get it done. And yes, we "are" expecting those plans, Mr. Musk. Los Angeles and every other traffic-locked city could use the help.

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