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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.
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.
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Tesla FSD (Supervised) fleet passes 8.4 billion cumulative miles
The figure appears on Tesla’s official safety page, which tracks performance data for FSD (Supervised) and other safety technologies.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system has now surpassed 8.4 billion cumulative miles.
The figure appears on Tesla’s official safety page, which tracks performance data for FSD (Supervised) and other safety technologies.
Tesla has long emphasized that large-scale real-world data is central to improving its neural network-based approach to autonomy. Each mile driven with FSD (Supervised) engaged contributes additional edge cases and scenario training for the system.
The milestone also brings Tesla closer to a benchmark previously outlined by CEO Elon Musk. Musk has stated that roughly 10 billion miles of training data may be needed to achieve safe unsupervised self-driving at scale, citing the “long tail” of rare but complex driving situations that must be learned through experience.
The growth curve of FSD Supervised’s cumulative miles over the past five years has been notable.
As noted in data shared by Tesla watcher Sawyer Merritt, annual FSD (Supervised) miles have increased from roughly 6 million in 2021 to 80 million in 2022, 670 million in 2023, 2.25 billion in 2024, and 4.25 billion in 2025. In just the first 50 days of 2026, Tesla owners logged another 1 billion miles.
At the current pace, the fleet is trending towards hitting about 10 billion FSD Supervised miles this year. The increase has been driven by Tesla’s growing vehicle fleet, periodic free trials, and expanding Robotaxi operations, among others.
With the fleet now past 8.4 billion cumulative miles, Tesla’s supervised system is approaching that threshold, even as regulatory approval for fully unsupervised deployment remains subject to further validation and oversight.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk fires back after Wikipedia co-founder claims neutrality and dubs Grokipedia “ridiculous”
Musk’s response to Wales’ comments, which were posted on social media platform X, was short and direct: “Famous last words.”
Elon Musk fired back at Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales after the longtime online encyclopedia leader dismissed xAI’s new AI-powered alternative, Grokipedia, as a “ridiculous” idea that is bound to fail.
Musk’s response to Wales’ comments, which were posted on social media platform X, was short and direct: “Famous last words.”
Wales made the comments while answering questions about Wikipedia’s neutrality. According to Wales, Wikipedia prides itself on neutrality.
“One of our core values at Wikipedia is neutrality. A neutral point of view is non-negotiable. It’s in the community, unquestioned… The idea that we’ve become somehow ‘Wokepidea’ is just not true,” Wales said.
When asked about potential competition from Grokipedia, Wales downplayed the situation. “There is no competition. I don’t know if anyone uses Grokipedia. I think it is a ridiculous idea that will never work,” Wales wrote.
After Grokipedia went live, Larry Sanger, also a co-founder of Wikipedia, wrote on X that his initial impression of the AI-powered Wikipedia alternative was “very OK.”
“My initial impression, looking at my own article and poking around here and there, is that Grokipedia is very OK. The jury’s still out as to whether it’s actually better than Wikipedia. But at this point I would have to say ‘maybe!’” Sanger stated.
Musk responded to Sanger’s assessment by saying it was “accurate.” In a separate post, he added that even in its V0.1 form, Grokipedia was already better than Wikipedia.
During a past appearance on the Tucker Carlson Show, Sanger argued that Wikipedia has drifted from its original vision, citing concerns about how its “Reliable sources/Perennial sources” framework categorizes publications by perceived credibility. As per Sanger, Wikipedia’s “Reliable sources/Perennial sources” list leans heavily left, with conservative publications getting effectively blacklisted in favor of their more liberal counterparts.
As of writing, Grokipedia has reportedly surpassed 80% of English Wikipedia’s article count.
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Tesla Sweden appeals after grid company refuses to restore existing Supercharger due to union strike
The charging site was previously functioning before it was temporarily disconnected in April last year for electrical safety reasons.
Tesla Sweden is seeking regulatory intervention after a Swedish power grid company refused to reconnect an already operational Supercharger station in Åre due to ongoing union sympathy actions.
The charging site was previously functioning before it was temporarily disconnected in April last year for electrical safety reasons. A temporary construction power cabinet supplying the station had fallen over, described by Tesla as occurring “under unclear circumstances.” The power was then cut at the request of Tesla’s installation contractor to allow safe repair work.
While the safety issue was resolved, the station has not been brought back online. Stefan Sedin, CEO of Jämtkraft elnät, told Dagens Arbete (DA) that power will not be restored to the existing Supercharger station as long as the electric vehicle maker’s union issues are ongoing.
“One of our installers noticed that the construction power had been backed up and was on the ground. We asked Tesla to fix the system, and their installation company in turn asked us to cut the power so that they could do the work safely.
“When everything was restored, the question arose: ‘Wait a minute, can we reconnect the station to the electricity grid? Or what does the notice actually say?’ We consulted with our employer organization, who were clear that as long as sympathy measures are in place, we cannot reconnect this facility,” Sedin said.
The union’s sympathy actions, which began in March 2024, apply to work involving “planning, preparation, new connections, grid expansion, service, maintenance and repairs” of Tesla’s charging infrastructure in Sweden.
Tesla Sweden has argued that reconnecting an existing facility is not equivalent to establishing a new grid connection. In a filing to the Swedish Energy Market Inspectorate, the company stated that reconnecting the installation “is therefore not covered by the sympathy measures and cannot therefore constitute a reason for not reconnecting the facility to the electricity grid.”
Sedin, for his part, noted that Tesla’s issue with the Supercharger is quite unique. And while Jämtkraft elnät itself has no issue with Tesla, its actions are based on the unions’ sympathy measures against the electric vehicle maker.
“This is absolutely the first time that I have been involved in matters relating to union conflicts or sympathy measures. That is why we have relied entirely on the assessment of our employer organization. This is not something that we have made any decisions about ourselves at all.
“It is not that Jämtkraft elnät has a conflict with Tesla, but our actions are based on these sympathy measures. Should it turn out that we have made an incorrect assessment, we will correct ourselves. It is no more difficult than that for us,” the executive said.
Tesla FSD (Supervised) fleet passes 8.4 billion cumulative miles
Elon Musk fires back after Wikipedia co-founder claims neutrality and dubs Grokipedia “ridiculous”
