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A couple of weeks ago, IONITY revealed their new “Halo” charger rated at 350 kW that’s supposed to charge EVs 220 miles in ten minutes at some point in the future. It sounds pretty great on the outset, and when claims of “more”, “faster”, and “better” are rewarded with headlines, there’s no wonder that this type of tech is being produced well before any electric cars can actually utilize it. Three cheers for progress, yeah?
I’m not so sure.
While I understand the push to make EV charging faster so drivers can have a one-to-one trade off with their gasoline fill up experience, is that what’s going to be in demand as battery-powered transportation takes off? There’s also the question of whether battery health is going to take a huge dive with that sort of charging. I’m probably a bit biased towards Elon Musk’s opinion on such things (Tesla is leading the battery revolution, after all), so when he says 350 kW is a battery killer, I believe him. Will the tech catch up? I don’t know. But, I’m more questioning whether it needs to.
There are some considerable differences and advantages that electric cars have over ICE cars, and I don’t just mean in the emissions sense. With an ICE vehicle, it’s not (realistically) possible to have a nozzle attached to your gas tank in your garage overnight while you sleep, enabling you to wake up to a full tank each morning. You can’t do that while you’re at work, either, nor while running errands. Swap “nozzle” for a charging cable and you can with an EV, though. I really think this is going to be the biggest distinction in our ICE-driven world today and the battery-driven one in the future. Fast charging is great while you need it, but someday we won’t need it. Will we ever need “Halo” charging?
There’s still some time yet before EV chargers are as ubiquitous as wall chargers (and I guess technically those can be EV chargers, too), but hey – if airports and coffee bars can finally catch up to laptop and smartphone needs (plugs everywhere!), so can entities with parking lots. Not to mention, all that happened as a team effort by the tech companies and the plug-providing businesses: Better batteries plus better access to electricity equals electronic happiness (and expansion) for the consumer.
I know there was a period of time when longer cables were phone companies’ answer to portable phone conversations before cordless phones came along, which I admittedly only know because I like classic movies and TV shows. To me, this is a bit of a metaphor for what’s going on with EV charging. “Halo” type chargers are kind of the equivalent to longer telephone cords, and history shows that more of one thing isn’t always better.
The cordless phones are kind of a good metaphor, too. I remember (first hand) how long it took before static issues were eliminated. “Hold on, let me switch to the other phone because I’m too far from the base,” was a frequent conversation comment, and then multi-base systems were offered to solve that one, too. I see the static as the issue of long charging times and the phone base in every room as the faster and faster chargers. We’ve kind of foregone home phones altogether now thanks to cell phones, but to me that’s kind of like imagining an EV plug in every parking spot regardless of whether you’re a homeowner or a renter or a parking garage frequenter.
Once upon a time, cell phone batteries were huge, heavy, and held very little charge. We still complain about them since there are more and more power-hungry features added, but do we opt for a rotary phone over the issue? Nah. We keep chargers in our cars, in the wall at work, in our bags, and so forth. I think ultimately we’ll go in that direction with EVs rather than the hypercharger one, and it will change the landscape. Literally.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company clears final Nashville hurdle: Music City loop is full speed ahead
The Boring Company has cleared its final Nashville hurdles, putting the Music City Loop on track for 2026.
The Boring Company has cleared one of its most significant regulatory milestones yet, securing a key easement from the Music City Center in Nashville just days ago, the latest in a series of approvals that have pushed the Music City Loop project firmly into construction reality.
On March 24, 2026, the Convention Center Authority voted to grant The Boring Company access to an easement along the west side of the Music City Center property, allowing tunneling beneath the privately owned venue. The move follows a unanimous 7-0 vote by the Metro Nashville Airport Authority on February 18, and a joint state and federal approval from the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration on February 25. Together, these green lights have cleared the path for a roughly 10-mile underground tunnel connecting downtown Nashville to Nashville International Airport, with potential extensions into midtown along West End Avenue.
Music City Loop could highlight The Boring Company’s real disruption
Nashville was selected by The Boring Company largely because of its rapid population growth and the strain that growth has placed on surface infrastructure. Traffic has become a persistent problem for residents, convention visitors, and airport travelers alike. The Music City Loop promises an approximately 8-minute underground transit time between downtown and the Nashville International Airport (BNA), removing thousands of vehicles from surface roads daily while operating as a fully electric, zero-emissions system at no cost to taxpayers.
The project fits squarely within a broader vision Musk has championed for years. In responding to a breakdown of the Loop’s construction costs, Musk posted on X: “Tunnels are so underrated.” The comment reflected a longstanding belief that underground transit represents one of the most cost-effective and scalable infrastructure solutions available. The Boring Company has claimed it can build 13 miles of twin tunnels in Nashville for between $240 million and $300 million total, a fraction of what comparable projects cost elsewhere in the country.
Image Credit: The Boring Company/Twitter
The Las Vegas Loop, The Boring Company’s first operational system, has served as a proof of concept. During the CONEXPO trade show in March 2026, the Vegas Loop transported approximately 82,000 passengers over five days at the Las Vegas Convention Center, demonstrating the system’s capacity during large-scale events. Nashville draws millions of convention visitors and tourists each year, and local business leaders have pointed to that same capacity as a major draw for supporting the project.
The Music City Loop was first announced in July 2025. Construction began within hours of the February 25 state approval, with The Boring Company’s Prufrock tunneling machine already in the ground the same evening. The first operational segment is targeted for late 2026, with the full route expected to be complete by 2029. The project represents one of the largest privately funded infrastructure efforts currently underway in the United States.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s $10 Trillion robot: Inside Tesla’s push to mass produce Optimus
Tesla’s surging Optimus job listings reveal a company sprinting from prototype to one million robot production.
Tesla is accelerating its push to bring the Optimus humanoid robot to high volume production, and its recent job listings tells the story as clearly as any earnings call.
With well over 100 Optimus related job openings now posted across its U.S. facilities, Tesla is signaling a critical pivot for the program, moving it from a captivating tech demo to a serious manufacturing endeavor. Roles span the full spectrum of the product lifecycle, from Robotics Software Engineers and Manufacturing Engineers to Mechanical Integration Engineers and AI Engineers focused on world modeling and video generation. One active listing for a Software Engineer on the Optimus team asks candidates to build scalable and reliable data pipelines for Optimus manufacturing lines and develop automation tools that accelerate analysis and visualization for mass manufacturing.
Tesla is racing toward a one million unit annual production target. The clearest signal yet that Tesla is treating Optimus as its primary business came on January 28, 2026, during the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call. Musk announced that Tesla is ending production of the Model S and Model X, and will repurpose those lines at its Fremont, California factory to build Optimus humanoid robots.
A production intent prototype of Optimus Version 3 is planned to be ready in early 2026, after which Tesla intends to build a one million unit production line with a targeted production start by the end of 2026. To support that ramp, Tesla broke ground on a massive new Optimus manufacturing facility at Gigafactory Texas in late 2025, with ambitions to eventually reach 10 million units per year.
Tesla Giga Texas to feature massive Optimus V4 production line
The business case for scaling this aggressively is rooted in labor economics. Musk has stated that “Optimus has the potential to be the biggest product of all time,” reasoning that if Tesla can produce capable humanoid robots at scale and reasonable cost, every task currently performed by human labor becomes a potential application. In a separate statement, Musk framed Optimus’s long term importance even more bluntly, saying it could surpass Tesla’s vehicle business in scale with the potential to generate $10 trillion in revenue.
The industries Tesla is targeting first are those most burdened by repetitive physical labor. Early applications include manufacturing assembly, material handling and quality inspection, as well as logistics tasks like loading, unloading, sorting, and transporting goods in warehouses and distribution centers. Longer term, Tesla’s vision is for Optimus to penetrate household, medical, and logistics scenarios at the scale of a smartphone rollout.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Tunnel Vision Challenge ends with a surprise for Louisiana, Maryland and Dallas
The Boring Company stunned three cities today, awarding New Orleans, Baltimore, and Dallas free underground Loop tunnels.
Elon Musk’s The Boring Company (TBC) announced today that it is building free underground Loop tunnels in three American cities: New Orleans, Louisiana; Baltimore, Maryland; and Dallas, Texas. The company had promised one winner when it launched the Tunnel Vision Challenge in January. After receiving 487 submissions, it selected three, committing to fund and construct all of them pending a feasibility review, entirely at its own expense. For a company that has faced years of skepticism over the gap between its promises and its delivered projects, choosing to expand its commitment rather than narrow it is a notable shift in both scale and accountability.
All three projects will now enter a rigorous, fully funded diligence phase that includes meetings with elected officials, regulators, community and business leaders, geotechnical borings, and a complete investigation of subsurface utilities and infrastructure. TBC confirmed that all costs associated with this diligence process are 100% funded by the company. If all three projects pass feasibility, all three get built. If only one clears the bar, that one gets built. The company’s willingness to fund the due diligence regardless of outcome removes one of the most common early-stage barriers that kills promising infrastructure proposals before they leave a spreadsheet.
Beyond the three winners, TBC announced it will continue working with two additional entrants it found compelling enough to pursue independently: the Hendersonville Utility Tunnel in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and the Morgan’s Wonderland Tunnel in San Antonio, Texas, which would notably serve one of the nation’s premier theme parks built specifically for guests with special needs.
The challenge also coincides with TBC’s most active construction period to date. The company recently began drilling on the Music City Loop near the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville, and in February it broke ground on a Loop in Dubai. Musk has long argued that the fundamental problem with urban infrastructure is cost and bureaucratic inertia, not engineering. “The key to solving traffic is making going 3D either up or down,” he said in 2018, a conviction now reflected in a company structure built to absorb the financial risk that typically stalls public projects for years.
Music City Loop could highlight The Boring Company’s real disruption
The Tunnel Vision Challenge’s most underappreciated element may be what it produced beyond three winners. Submissions came from individuals, companies, and governments across states including Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, and Texas, as well as from international entrants. Musk captured the underlying logic years ago when he said, “Traffic is driving me nuts. I’m going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging.” Today, three American cities are counting on exactly that.
Tunnel Vision Challenge results!
We’ve been overwhelmed with the amazing submissions…so we are announcing three winners!
The Thrilling Three are:
– NOLA Loop (New Orleans, LA)
– Ravens Loop (Baltimore, MD)
– University Hills Loop (Dallas, TX)What happens next? TBC and the… https://t.co/cY2ULftfiK
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) March 24, 2026
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