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Why The Boring Company’s $10 million dollars per mile price tag is a game changer
With The Boring Company, Elon Musk hopes to overcome the pitfalls that drive up the costs of underground rail transport construction using good old-fashioned innovation with a dash of Silicon Valley startup dust (dirt?). Currently, most U.S. local and state governments (i.e., tax payers) hand over an average of $200-$500 million dollars per mile to construct a subway system, with hundreds of millions more per mile a common occurrence and even a $1 billion dollars per mile price tag having happened a few times already. The reasons for such expense seems to be multi-faceted and stubborn: regulations, unions, and project management. So, when the Tesla CEO and Boring Company founder cited $10 million dollars as the final price of their mile-long demonstration tunnel, including internal infrastructure, lighting, comms/video, safety systems, ventilation, and tracks, he seemed to be threatening to completely upend yet another industry, this one having been at the core of transportation for nearly 200 years.
“I like trains, by the way. I really like trains a lot,” Musk assured his press audience at the company’s recent demonstration tunnel opening event. The Boring Company (TBC) began as a Twitter discussion wherein the tech mogul was venting about “soul-destroying” traffic in Los Angeles. A concept animation followed soon after (as well as hats and not-a-flamethrowers), imagining a transportation system where cars would be shuttled around at high speeds underground on electric skates. Ideas flowed, tunneling began, and the result of all those efforts went on display December 18, 2018, demo rides included. A rideable 1.14 mile tunnel had been constructed from Crenshaw Boulevard across from the Hawthorne, California headquarters of SpaceX, Musk’s private rocket company, to the 120th Street/Prairie Avenue crossroad of Hawthorne.
Around this time last year, Brian Rosenthal of the New York Times exposed several astonishing factors that added up to a $3.5 billion dollars per mile cost to construct a 3.5 mile tunnel to connect Grand Central Terminal to the Long Island Rail Road in New York City, aka the “East Side Access”. An infamous “first”, this price tag is 7 times more than the average of anywhere else in the world. A combination of trade union, construction company, and consulting firm practices, including significant staff redundancy, bred an environment ripe for cost pile-ups, and both incompetence and the lack of oversight within New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) added significantly to the issue. While the specific amount of money spent made the system’s cost unique in the world, the general underlying issues were not uncommon.
New York may be an exception to the already high-cost of rail construction rule, but there’s the rub: It’s already incredibly expensive. As documented in numerous articles by Alon Levy, an independent journalist whose 2011 blog post on the topic inspired the research that eventually led to the Times piece, $100-$500 million dollars per mile is a typical cost for building railed transporation worldwide. “These are crazy numbers,” Musk exclaimed at the tunnel opening event after summarizing the multiple billions of dollars short tunneling projects cost to complete in L.A. and New York. If the building cost wasn’t enough sticker shock, it gets worse: The daily operating costs of rail systems in the U.S. exceed the amount earned.
Another metric that is used to estimate the true cost of rail construction is cost per rider. After the time and money is spent building a public rail system, it needs to be staffed and repaired, expenses which are difficult to match with revenue without a large number of riders. As cited by Alon Levy in an article Elon Musk tweeted recently, New York’s Second Avenue Subway will cost $25,000 per rider to complete 200,000 trips per day. In Los Angeles, the Purple Line will cost $45,000 per rider for 150,000 trips per day as will Boston’s Green Line Extension for 52,000 trips. Looking at rider fares, New York loses a bit less than $1 per ride taken and L.A. loses over $2 per ride.
So, how will The Boring Company “do” underground transportation system building better than the traditional, money-heavy methods? To put it simply: Be efficient.
Building a better mouse snail trap
They’ve designed their tunneling machines to bore faster and more efficiently. While the first generation machine is conventional and named Godot after the Samuel Backett play, Waiting for Godot due to the length of time it took to understand the machine’s functionality and assemble it, two other improved generations will be part of the Boring family.
The second generation machine, named “Line-Storm” after a Robert Frost love poem with the same phrase in its title that’s about overcoming hardships, is a conventional boring machine that has been highly modified. It uses a redesigned cutting head that takes in significantly more dirt and is 2 times faster than Godot.
The third generation machine, named “Prufrock”, will be a ground-up, fully designed TBC machine that’s 15 times better than the next best boring system, and that means 15 times faster than the next best machine out there, period.
Improved construction practices and project management
During construction, TBC reinforced tunnel segments as they were dug, those reinforcements being created on-site out of materials comprising 70% of the dirt dug and the remaining 30% primarily cement. This recycled material, as-you-go system enabled quick construction with cost efficiency, the demo tunnel taking 2 years almost to the day from Musk’s initial Tweet that inspired the undertaking.
Function-focused engineering
TBC’s tunnels are smaller than the typical underground rail system because they’re designed for specific types of vehicles that are smaller than traditional transports (autonomous electrics) and don’t require extra space for maintenance. This in itself reduces costs by 3-4 times.
Although The Boring Company has the advantage of being the new kid on the block whose founder has a unique background in shaking up traditional systems, there may still be a few hangups that will never quite go away. Anything involving the general public, especially public transit, will have serious bureaucracy involved. To achieve the company’s mile-long demo track feat, it had to face the extreme regulatory environment of Los Angeles. California overall has earthquakes, is a methane zone, and has oil and gas fields, all which add to a long list of rules to be followed for any construction projects to commence. “The amount of paperwork we had to go through to do this was enormous,” Musk said at TBC’s recent event.
Additionally, a lawsuit filed last year by the Brentwood Residents Coalition and the Sunset Coalition objecting to the company’s Sepulveda tunnel eventually led to their abandonment of that leg of the demonstration project. The coalitions primarily alleged that TBC was skirting environmental review requirements by “chopping large projects into smaller pieces that taken individually appear to have no significant environmental impacts”, citing a conceptual map the company released showing its planned Los Angeles tunnel system. Musk hasn’t let these hurdles damage his confidence, however. While speaking with press at TBC’s opening event, he added his own spin to the Broadway mantra (and Frank Sinatra hit, “New York, New York”) about “making it” there : “If you can build a tunnel in L.A., you can build it anywhere.”
As CEO of an innovative electric car company and a commercial rocket company set on sending humans to Mars, Musk is known as an industry disruptor. Even if the cost of boring tunnels for public transportation projects rises somewhat above the $10 million per mile price demonstrated with the LA/Hawthorne tunnel, it will be still be well under the typical costs in the boring industry. It’s obvious already that a potential disruption is underway. “We have people hounding us to invest nonstop…it’s kinda ridiculous how much interest we’ve had in investing in Boring Company,” Musk stated at the tunnel unveiling. Steve Davis, president of the company, added that they receive “greater than 5 and less than 20 requests per week from different municipalities and stakeholders.”
Also in the works for the tunneling newcomers: A transport line connecting downtown Chicago to Chicago O’Hare International Airport. The company won a contract to build a transport system for the city’s fliers in June 2017, and ground breaking is planned for sometime in the next few months. The Boring Company’s calendar still includes plans for an “urban loop system” as well, an underground network of pod-type buses for pedestrians and cyclists connecting numerous points throughout city centers.
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Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.
The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”
We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized.
Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2026
That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.
Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.
SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.
The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.
Tesla will resolve its massive recall of nearly three million vehicles in China with stickers and a software update.
On Friday, Chinese regulators filed recall plans against Tesla, Xiaomi, Leapmotor, Xpeng, Chery, Geely, Dongfeng, Arcfox, and FAW to resolve what is essentially a carbon-copy issue throughout each of the companies’ vehicle models: emergency door release latches are simply not visible enough.
Tesla door handle saga gets its latest chapter and a big change is coming
The companies will be required to add things that will make these latches, which will open the door in the event of an emergency, more visible. Of the 7 million vehicles impacted, Tesla accounts for 2,975,910 units. More than 1.9 million of those are Model Y vehicles, with the rest, just over 970,000, being Model 3s.
To resolve the issue, Tesla is going to add warning labels to the emergency latches free of charge, and then utilize an Over-the-Air update to add a post-crash window-lowering strategy, according to CNEVpost.
This massive effort to fix the all-electric Model Y and Model 3’s emergency latch system comes just months after several probes across various markets identified the trouble some had identifying this latch. Those who had gotten involved in car accidents that stripped the vehicle of its power were not aware that every Tesla has emergency door latches.
China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said that severe crashes that disable a vehicle’s low-voltage system could not only hinder occupants from getting out, but also make it more difficult for emergency response workers to gain entry.
SAMR is starting to tighten the regulations it has on door handles on vehicles. A new mandatory national standard will take effect for all models starting January 1, 2027, and will require all doors to be equipped with mechanical release mechanisms. This will effectively end purely electronic door handles. Models already on sale with type approval have been granted a two-year transition period, which will enable things to change until January 2029.
Tesla has officially confirmed plans to bring its all-electric Semi truck to Europe, with full specifications and market-launch details set for unveiling at the IAA Transportation trade fair in Hannover, Germany.
The event runs September 15–20, with a possible press preview on September 14. The announcement, shared via Tesla’s Semi account, marks a significant expansion beyond North America nearly nine years after the truck’s original 2017 reveal.
🚨 Tesla Semi is coming to Europe!
Sustainable logistics is a huge market internationally, and now Tesla is involved in it outside of the U.S. market! https://t.co/q3hjX6ybMv pic.twitter.com/mxTaVY3UsE
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 20, 2026
In the United States, the Semi’s path has been gradual. Limited pilot production and customer deliveries began in late 2022, primarily to fleets such as PepsiCo. After years of refinement, high-volume manufacturing started on April 29, 2026, at a dedicated facility adjacent to Gigafactory Nevada.
The plant targets an annual capacity of 50,000 units, though the ramp is expected to be gradual, with “many thousands” of trucks projected by the end of 2026.
Demand is building, with recent orders including 500 units for Einride (deliveries starting September 2026, serving Amazon and others) and hundreds more from operators such as WattEV. Pricing stands at approximately $260,000 for the Standard Range and $290,000 for the Long Range before incentives.
Tesla Semi pricing revealed after company uncovers trim levels
Earlier in 2026, Tesla finalized production specifications that incorporated substantial updates. In February, the company detailed two variants designed for a full 82,000-pound gross combination weight.
The Standard Range offers about 325 miles of range with a 548 kWh battery and curb weight under 20,000 pounds. The Long Range delivers roughly 500 miles with an 822 kWh pack and a 23,000-pound curb weight. Both use three independent rear-axle motors producing up to 800 kW (about 1,073 horsepower), achieve energy consumption of around 1.7 kWh per mile, and support megawatt-class charging at up to 1.2 MW—recovering about 60 percent of range in 30 minutes through the MCS standard.
Additional refinements include a roughly 1,000-pound weight reduction versus earlier prototypes, improved aerodynamics, a 48-volt electrical architecture, electric power take-off up to 25 kW for refrigerated trailers, and fleet management software with over-the-air updates.
These advances position the Semi as a competitive option against diesel trucks on operating costs and performance. For Europe, adaptations such as lighting, cab configurations (including potential sleeper options), and regulatory compliance are anticipated.
With series production underway in Nevada and major fleet commitments secured, the upcoming IAA reveal will clarify timelines, European-specific specs, and pricing, potentially accelerating electrification of heavy-duty freight on both continents.
SpaceX and a new Trump order that could rewrite the next decade of launches
Tesla will resolve massive China recall with stickers and a software update
