Lifestyle
Boring Co’s “Loop Lift” elevator and tunnel concept are coming to life at SpaceX site
Elon Musk’s vision for an electric-powered elevator that would transport vehicles to and from a network of cost-effective, high-speed underground tunnels is quickly taking shape near SpaceX’s Hawthorne, CA headquarters.
The Boring Company released new images revealing a freshly painted tunnel in white and a shaft that’s being constructed on a private lot at 120th Street and Prairie Avenue, roughly at the halfway point of the tunneling startup’s underground 2-mile test tunnel. Dubbed O’Leary Station after Patrick O’Leary, a 13-year SpaceX veteran who transitioned in 2017 to become Structures Engineering Designer for The Boring Company, the location is part of a proof-of-concept that aims to demonstrate the efficiency of lowering vehicles into transportation systems, perhaps directly from a vehicle owner’s home garage.
It’s all part of Musk’s grander vision to counter “soul-destroying traffic”, where people either drive their vehicles or are lowered into underground tunnels in Urban Loop pods and then transported at high speed on electric skates. Prior to gaining permission from Hawthorne’s city council for the construction of a “Loop Lift” garage-elevator system at the SpaceX-adjacent testing grounds, The Boring Company highlighted the progress of development for its subterranean, electric transport system by sharing a video of a Tesla Model X being whisked away underground.
- The Boring Company has not only broken ground on its second phase in Los Angeles, but also is close to completing the first elevator depicted in a concept video last month. The system could cut 45 minute drives into five minutes. Source: The Boring Company
- A Tesla Model S inside a Boring Co. tunnel. [Credit: Elon Musk/Instagram]
The tunneling startup began construction of a tunnel entrance located directly across the street from SpaceX headquarters – Crenshaw Boulevard – in 2017. Not long after, a video showing a Tesla being lowered into the ground and images showing continued development of the tunnel walls pointed towards rapid progress at the test site. More importantly, ongoing research and development in the project would pave the way for future initiatives across the U.S., as the company looked to secure regulatory approval for city-scale projects in major metros like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
Updated October 21, 2018: Shortly after we published this story, Elon Musk took to Twitter to confirm that The Boring Company is near completion of its first tunnel and will be holding a Boring Co. opening event on Monday, December 10, 2018.
The Boring Company’s recently shared photos are a good indicator that the various components in its proof-of-concept project are starting to come together. The photo of the 20-plus-ft-in-diameter hole in the ground, or tunnel shaft, is in the same residential location where Teslarati photographers Pauline Acalin and Tom Cross recently spotted excavation taking place. The location, now understood to be O’Leary Station, will be the site for The Boring Company’s “garage-elevator” concept, as well as a more convenient point access for maintenance and eventually the permanent removal of tunnel boring machine (TBM) segments.
- The Boring Company’s proposed prototype garage. [Credit: The Boring Company]
The concept elevator when complete will not be open to the public but instead used as an internal testbed for moving vehicles in and out of the private residence, which the company acquired. Cars would enter the tunnel from the SpaceX campus near Crenshaw Boulevard, move through the tunnel and on to the garage at O’Leary Station and then back to headquarters.
“It’s an important part of the longer-term vision the company is trying to build,” said The Boring Company spokesperson Jane Labanowski.
Before and after photos of the underground tunnel, which will be used to zip vehicles on platforms powered by electric motors, show a freshly painted inner wall in white.
- The Boring Company’s tunnel under Hawthorne, CA. [Credit: The Boring Company/Twitter]
- Musk believes that TBC will finish its first test-tunnel in roughly six weeks, in early December. (TBC)
Photos of The Boring Company tunnel in July 2018 (left) and October 2018 (right)
The Boring Company looks to extend its tunneling project into the west side of Los Angeles and apply learnings from its test tunnel and streamline the process for tunnel building. Unlike traditional underground tunnels for passenger vehicles, Boring Co.’s tunnels will be smaller and able to maintain a vacuum in order to support Hyperloop transportation. Reducing the tunnel diameter by 50% will also reduce the cross-sectional area of the tunnel by a factor of four.
Musk noted in his speech at TED2017 that having a smaller tunnel just large enough for a vehicle will cut 75% of the time associated with digging, thereby introducing significant cost savings. The Boring Company’s tunnel boring machine will also look to install tunnel walls continuously while it digs, thus eliminating the need to pause operations and speeding up the process entirely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5V_VzRrSBI
Lifestyle
Tesla Cybertruck targets job site crews with new Tailgate Utility Track and Bed Gear Box accessory
Tesla launched a $350 tailgate track and a $985 lockable Bed Gear Box for Cybertruck.
Tesla’s Cybertruck team added two more items to the Tesla Shop, targeting job site crews and owners who use the truck bed for actual work rather than just showing it off. The official Cybertruck X account posted the Tailgate Utility Track and the Bed Gear Box within minutes of each other, part of a five item batch that also included a reflective jacket, a spray paint hat and an updated reflective tee.
The Tailgate Utility Track runs $350 and turns the folded down tailgate into another mounting surface. It’s a single aluminum track with a T-slot for sliding accessories and two L-track attachment points, plus two load stops included in the box. The pitch is straightforward: strap down oversized cargo, like lumber or a cooler, that hangs off the back of the bed without it sliding out mid-drive. It bolts onto the existing tailgate and works on every Cybertruck trim.
Tailgate Utility Trackhttps://t.co/PCAYXlFBvS pic.twitter.com/sCV2NVxf1W
— Cybertruck (@cybertruck) September 3, 2026
The Bed Gear Box costs $985 and is a different kind of accessory. It’s a lockable aluminum storage box, 55.78 inches long, 19.8 inches wide and 7.79 inches tall, that mounts to the bed’s L-track rails and comes with two internal bins for smaller items. According to Tesla, at just over 57 pounds empty, it’s meant to stay in place rather than come in and out with each trip, giving owners a factory-fit alternative to loose totes for tools, recovery gear or emergency supplies. Tesla’s listing notes that Long Range and Dual Motor AWD Cybertrucks need the L-Tracks accessory installed separately before the Gear Box will mount, since L-tracks come standard only on certain configurations.
Both accessories lean on the idea Tesla has been building toward since Elon Musk first described the Cybertruck’s third-party attachment strategy at the 2023 shareholder meeting, when he said the truck would ship with mounting points so outside companies, and Tesla itself, could keep adding gear without redesigning the bed. That’s the same L-track backbone underneath the tailgate shield and jumpseats Tesla launched last year, and the off-road armor package that arrived through the same X account in 2025.
Owners looking to round out the rest of the L-track ecosystem, cargo dividers, MOLLE panels, bed racks and similar gear, can find a wider range of options through our Cybertruck accessories collection.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years
Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.
Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.
In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.
The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.
But we do need to act much faster than that if people still want to live where the beach is today. We have about 50 years or so to take action, which should be more than enough time for the space satellites to solve any heating problems. https://t.co/xhrVQALwQw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 30, 2026
Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.
This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.
Lifestyle
Police sergeant recounts his Neuralink journey with Elon Musk’s brain chip
A former Vancouver police sergeant with ALS accounts his journey to become a patient for Elon Musk’s Neuralink wireless brain-computer interface technology.
“I’m texting you from my brain right now.” That was the first message Lee Marten sent after waking up from Neuralink surgery, five hours and one migraine after dozens of threads were stitched into his motor cortex.
Marten, a former Vancouver police sergeant, is one of the first Canadian ALS patients to receive Neuralink’s N1 brain implant, and the 26th recipient overall. He tells his story in a first-person account published by Maclean’s.
Marten recounts how he was a healthy, athletic Vancouver police sergeant until April 2022 when symptoms of muscle twitching and balance loss, were followed by a bad fall that broke his leg. He would eventually be diagnosed with ALS in early 2025 at the age of 47. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that progressively destroys the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement, eventually taking away a patient’s ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. There’s no cure, and most patients live two to five years after diagnosis.
He describes the devastation of the diagnosis and how he began preparing for it while connecting with other young ALS patients through a WhatsApp group called Young Guns. Through that group he learned about a Neuralink clinical trial at Toronto Western Hospital and, after a roughly seven-month vetting process (physical assessments, psychiatric evaluation, a final interview with the Neuralink team), was accepted this past April as the trial’s 26th recipient and the first Canadian ALS patient to get the N1 implant. He recounts the May surgery in detail, including the robotic system that stitched 64 threads into his brain, and describes the app, Link, translating his neural signals into cursor control, which he was using within hours of waking up.
Marten walks through what daily use looks like, including weekly “brain training” exercises, a real-time neural-activity display, charging the implant via a beanie-mounted MagSafe charger, and using the implant for emailing, texting, social media, and gaming via a “Magic Box” that connects it to other devices. He also gives brief context on brain-computer interface history and quite candid about Musk, calling him “divisive” but saying he found him “easy to admire.
The piece closes on a heavier note, with Marten seeking to pursue medical assistance in dying as his symptoms progressed, noting that he’ll be able to communicate his final words to his family through Neuralink rather than facing a silent decline. He expresses hope the data from his case will help future ALS patients, even without a cure in his own lifetime.









