News
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.
Investor's Corner
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Elon Musk says Starship Flight 15 will try to catch the ship itself, a first.
Elon Musk says SpaceX’s next Starship flight will try something nobody has done before, by catching the ship itself. Speaking to roughly 2,000 people at the X Takeover event at Giga Texas on Saturday, Musk said Flight 15 is about four to six weeks away and “probably launches a little bit before Thanksgiving, is my guess.”
That is a slip from earlier reporting, which had pointed to a launch as early as October 19. Musk explained why the date keeps moving. “We’re making a bunch of improvements to the rocket between every flight,” he said, adding that there are often hundreds, sometimes thousands, of small changes. This time the list is short, “but some of them take a fair bit of work and we’ve got to go inside the tank to make some of these changes.”
“We’re going to try to catch the ship, which is a super big deal,” Musk said. “If we do so, that’ll be the first time that there’s been full recovery of an orbital class rocket.” SpaceX has already caught the Super Heavy booster with the tower’s mechanical arms, and has talked about catching the ship since late 2025, but the upper stage has never been caught.
Musk also laid out what comes after. “The next big milestone would be to refly both the booster and the ship,” he said, describing a Flight 16 where “all parts of an orbital rocket are reflown.”
The reason SpaceX wants this comes down to cost and cadence. Every Starship ship so far has ended its flight in the ocean, and SpaceX expects most of those water landings to end in fireballs. A ship that returns to Starbase intact can be inspected and flown again. SpaceX’s IPO filing, says Starship V3 is designed to deliver 100 metric tons to orbit in a fully reusable configuration, that SpaceX aims to cut the cost to reach orbit by 99% or more versus the historical average, and that tower catches should allow “multiple launches per day.”
The payoff goes beyond cheaper launches. The next generation Starlink V3 satellites are too large for Falcon 9 and can only fly on Starship, which can carry up to 60 per flight. Flight 14 on September 28 deployed the first 26 of them after Starship reached orbit despite an early engine shutdown, as Teslarati reported. Musk blamed engine computer software, and said the heat shield “was extremely robust,” which he claimed in August had solved Starship’s biggest challenge.
NASA’s Moon plans depend on the same capability. NASA’s inspector general has described a lander mission that needs a propellant depot in low Earth orbit and more than 10 tanker flights, with SpaceX targeting one tanker launch every six days. That schedule only works if ships and boosters come back fast and fly again. Also, ship to ship propellant transfer has not been attempted yet.
One interesting hurdle yet to be explored is bringing the ship back to the launch site, with reentry over land, which will undoubtedly come with a lot of aviation safety reviews.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.
Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.
The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”
The Tesla UI team absolutely crushed it with the infotainment software. Nicely done @CarCoder!
One feature request: Allow folks to pull up the rear & repeater cameras on demand. This would be great especially for peace of mind. https://t.co/mNAOSLx6pE
— Dan Burkland (@DBurkland) October 10, 2026
The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.
It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.
The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.
For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.
News
Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next
Tesla confirms its first official Cybercab fleet number as Austin scales fast and Dallas looms.
Tesla says more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, the first time the company has put an official number on its active Cybercab fleet. The figure came from the Robotaxi account on X on Saturday, which wrote that one month after launch the service had “scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days.”
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI software, quoted the post with a line that carried the bigger news. “Two years since the 10/10 Cybercab WeRobot event, the cabs are everywhere in Austin now. Dallas soon,” he wrote. It is the first time Tesla has named the next city for public Cybercab rides.
One month after launch, we’ve scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days https://t.co/EagJy2JAsm
— Robotaxi (@robotaxi) October 10, 2026
Tesla opened Cybercab rides to the public in Austin on September 4, as Teslarati reported, a day after an invite only launch event. The ramp since then has been steep. Our September 28 report had the fleet at well over 100 units after availability jumped from 58 to 125 in a single week. On Thursday, Tesla added 150 Cybercabs to the Texas automated vehicle registry, lifting its registered count to 319 from 169. The first seven appeared on the registry on August 31.
RobotaxiTracker, a community site that counts vehicles from sightings and state records, listed 275 vehicles in unsupervised service in Austin on Saturday, 105 of them Cybercabs, which is well below Tesla’s figure. Tracker counts can lag official numbers, though Sawyer Merritt noted that Cybercab wait times in Austin stayed short on Saturday evening even with more than 2,000 fans in town for X Takeover.
Regulators are watching the rollout. NHTSA opened an audit query into Tesla’s certification that the Cybercab meets federal safety standards, and sworn answers are due October 30. Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21, which gives the company a natural venue to define its fleet numbers and put a date on Dallas.
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next
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