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The Boring Company skeptics are making the same mistakes as Tesla and SpaceX critics
The Boring Company is truly becoming an Elon Musk-founded company in more ways than one. Apart from developing quite rapidly for a startup of its nature, the tunneling firm is also receiving quite a lot of criticism from avid skeptics, many of whom seem to be under the impression that the Boring Company’s projects are pointless, or badly-planned at best.
Earlier this month, CNN Business published a piece on The Boring Company’s Las Vegas Convention Center loop system, which is poised to be opened early next year. The project was granted a $48.6 million contract but is expected to cost a total of $52.5 million, and it involves two mile-long tunnels where Teslas could ferry passengers from one side of the Las Vegas Convention Center complex to the other.
Needless to say, several individuals consulted by the news agency were extremely skeptical of The Boring Company’s vision. Christof Spieler, a lecturer at Rice University who researches transit and urban planning, sharply criticized the tunneling startup’s concepts, arguing that the Loop system seems poorly thought-out. “These feel like the kind of renderings an architecture student would do for their one-semester project. I don’t see any evidence that this has really been thought through in terms of how it would function,” he said.
Explaining further, Spieler remarked that the LVCC Loop’s renderings make the system look more like taxi-loading areas. With such a system in place, the lecturer noted that issues would likely arise when the system is in operation, such as cars jockeying past each other to pull in and out, which would, in turn, adversely affect the system’s operations. He also noted that the renderings do not seem to show any barriers that would block unauthorized cars from entering the tunnels.
Ultimately, Spieler noted that a standard people mover is still a superior solution, as passengers do not need to duck to board vehicles and they could also hold their luggage instead of accessing a car’s trunk. “It seems like car-thinking applied to a transit problem that we already know how to solve,” he said.
Gerry Tierney, who co-directs the mobility lab at Perkins&Will, which has designed transit systems in North America and the Middle East, was bolder in his criticism of The Boring Company. He took issue with the system’s use of Teslas, calling the idea “comically inefficient” and refusing to call the LVCC Loop a transit system. “This is not a transit system. It’s a system for driving electric vehicles underground,” he said, adding that Musk’s idea is pretty much what would happen if intricate transit systems like the London Underground replaced its subway trains with cars.
While The Boring Company’s technology is yet to be proven, it also seems pretty careless to completely discount the LVCC Loop’s potential even before it could be tested. The Boring Company and its technology are not being developed by a random group of unqualified individuals, after all, and Elon Musk himself has proven over the years that even conventionally insane ideas–such as landing the first stage of an orbital rocket on a drone in the middle of the ocean or scaling the production of a mass-market electric car–could be feasible if enough work is put into them.
Overall, the tunneling startup’s skeptics seem to be making the exact same mistakes as those who were also critical of Musk’s previous projects in SpaceX and Tesla. Musk was not joking when he remarked that the idea of using Teslas in tunnels is more profound than it sounds. This is partly because The Boring Company’s innovations are not really its people-movers, it is the tunnels themselves. While the use of all-electric vehicles in the Loop systems is a key part of the Boring Company’s vision, the startup’s true disruption lies in the ways that it could build tunnels far quicker and far cheaper than any other company in the industry.
The Boring Company intends to accomplish these goals with rather simple solutions. Smaller tunnels are faster to build, so the tunneling startup designed its tunnels to accommodate smaller vehicles. All-electric cars are used so that the tunnels do not require an extensive system designed to handle emissions from vehicles that use it. The Boring Company’s tunnel boring machines (TBMs) are also optimized consistently, making them progressively faster and cleaner to use. These may all seem like little adjustments to conventional tunneling practices, but each one represents a step towards a potential future where tunnels could be built at scale rapidly, and perhaps even autonomously.
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It is easy to mock or dismiss the ideas of people like Elon Musk and his teams at The Boring Company, SpaceX, and Tesla. But inasmuch as Musk’s companies make it pretty easy to target them due to their goals and nature, SpaceX and Tesla’s history shows that more often than not, it is a mistake to bet against Musk and his team of visionaries, almost all of whom seem to have the tendency to think outside the box by default. As for the Boring Company’s LVCC Loop, there seems to be a good chance that it could outperform expectations, with recent simulations showing that the system could move about 13,000 people an hour, and that’s with the system operating nowhere near their limit.
Tesla has revealed plans through permit submissions for a massive Robotaxi charging hub in Austin, Texas.
Tesla plans to build the Supercharger hub in multiple phases, with the second phase potentially introducing wireless induction charging, something the company has been developing for the Robotaxi fleet.
Initially, 48 Tesla Robotaxi-geared Superchargers will be built on a lot just across from the St. Elmo, Texas, Service Center. There are about 80 additional spots that will not be impacted by phase 1 of the construction process.
Filings show that the second phase of the project will turn those 80 additional spots into wireless charging for Robotaxi, but it might be an error. The Key Notes state that item 3 is listed as “V4 Charging Cabinet to Support 80 Wireless Chargers in Phase 2. However, the drawings point to V3 Cabinets that are already tied to Superchargers:
There are roughly 128 total spots in the lot, but it is unclear if they will all be used for charging based on what appears to be some sort of typo in the blueprint.
A new Robotaxi fleet charging hub is coming soon to Austin, Texas!!
Permits have been filed for the installation of 48 (V3) stalls in a vehicle storage lot across the road from Tesla’s St Elmo service center. pic.twitter.com/xwRgSWDqht
— MarcoRP (@MarcoRPi1) August 18, 2026
This is among the first Robotaxi charging hubs Tesla has started to develop, as it currently has four others planned throughout various areas: one in Phoenix, one in San Antonio, another in Irving, which will serve the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and another in Las Vegas.
These projects are necessary as Tesla expands its Robotaxi program. Now that preparations have started for the public launch of Cybercab, Robotaxi will likely be expanding aggressively, especially over the next two to three years.
Last night, The Information reported that Tesla was planning to launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Hours later, Tesla then announced it was launching a competition for fans to potentially ride in Cybercab during its first public rides.
Tesla’s plan to expand its charging infrastructure in the regions where Robotaxi will initially operate is great preparation for the expanding service. There is still a lot to do, including launching the Cybercab on time.
Tesla got its largest order for the all-electric Class 8 Semi yet, a 500-unit order from Einride AB, a Swedish trucking company.
Einride made the announcement this morning following its second-quarter earnings call. The company said it plans to use 500 Tesla Semi units on its fleet intelligence platform, called Saga AI. The deployments will serve large companies like Amazon and will extend Einride’s electric freight network across logistics routes in California, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, and Georgia.
🚨 Tesla has received a MASSIVE order from Swedish freight company Einride AB, which placed an order for 500 Tesla Semi trucks
Tesla’s biggest order for the Semi yet! pic.twitter.com/PrtLp5yzvh
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 18, 2026
The deployment is being carried out in several phases over the next two years as Tesla ramps production of the Semi at its dedicated production facility in Sparks, Nevada. Einride will receive its first Semi units in September.
Saga AI
Saga AI is Einride’s dedicated fleet intelligence platform. It enables scaled adoption of electric trucks for freight use and allows shippers to integrate electric capacity without the operational burden or capital risks of managing a fleet. This helps integrate cost-efficient logistics and makes budgeting and forecasting much more accurate.
Tesla Semi’s Adoption
The Tesla Semi is now gathering large-scale clients past those who have helped the company operate a Pilot Program to gain initial information and feedback from real-world drivers.
Perhaps the biggest and most notable is that of Frito-Lay and PepsiCo., who have worked with Tesla for the past several years to dial in the finer details of the truck, including its efficiency and operation-related components.
Tesla Semi gets strange-but-understandable comparison from Jay Leno
There has been tremendous progress in that time, and it even catalyzed Tesla to make some design changes, which were unveiled earlier this year.
But Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli says his company’s partnership with Tesla will continue to push those things forward:
“This deployment is yet another proof point that we can execute at the scale our customers demand. Working closely with Tesla to bring next-generation Semis into active operations quickly and at scale is a testament to the strength of that partnership, and how quickly this technology is maturing from promise to daily operations.”
Additionally, Dan Priestley, the Director of the Semi Program at Tesla, said the partnership is ideal due to Einride’s focus on sustainable transport:
“Einride is at the forefront of sustainable freight, and we are thrilled to deepen our relationship with them through this order of 500 Semis. EV heavy trucks provide lower costs per mile from fuel savings, reduced maintenance, and better uptime over diesel trucks. These savings increase further through operational efficiency when deploying EV trucks at scale, and we are excited that Einride recognizes this and look forward to supporting their deployments.”
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
Tesla reveals plans for Robotaxi charging hub in Austin
Tesla Semi gets its largest order yet
