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Musk’s Boring Co reveals plan to support Hyperloop in published FAQ
Elon Musk’s plan to integrate Tesla electric sleds traveling through underground tunnels dug by The Boring Company will also include support for vacuum-sealed tunnels used by 600+ mph Hyperloop Pods.
The reveal comes from the company’s newly published Frequently Asked Questions page that does away with introductions and cuts straight to the chase.
“A large network of road tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels). The key to making this work is increasing tunneling speed and dropping costs by a factor of 10 or more – this is the goal of The Boring Company. Fast to dig, low cost tunnels would also make Hyperloop adoption viable and enable rapid transit across densely populated regions, enabling travel from New York to Washington DC in less than 30 minutes.” reads the FAQ.
The company isn’t even traveling at a snail’s pace, yet it has big plans to do just that – dig tunnels faster than a snail travels. In this case, resident snail Gary (who lives in a pineapple under the sea) can move at 14 times the speed of a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) and represents the target speed for the company’s boring machines.
The Boring Company’s pet snail named Gary
The Framework for Hyperloop
The FAQ sheet broke news that Musk and the team at The Boring Company, in cooperation with Tesla, are planning to build tunnels that can support multi-payloads including that of a Hyperloop Pod. In addition to enabling travel and transport at much higher speeds, this addition is likely to set the Tesla electric sled platform as the standard track that will be used to support mobility of the Hyperloop Pod.
Certain segments of the underground tunnels will have a vacuum shell, if not the entire track, that will allow the tunnel to be held at vacuum. Long distance travel would likely be performed in tunnels held at vacuum, enabling for higher speeds of travel. This format of local versus long distance is the same used by train systems in Europe that have different trains and tracks depending on train speed and distance of travel.
Converts Internal Combustion Vehicles into EVs
Another upside of the system is that it enables the conversion of internal combustion vehicles into zero emission vehicles. When a traditional petroleum powered vehicle is moved onto an electric sled, it will be moved through a system that emits zero emissions. This eliminates the emissions these vehicles would have emitted if they would had ordinarily travelled by road to their destination.
Many people will take Hyperloop Pods to their destinations due to the lower cost of travel. Logistics companies will also shift payload transportation to the tunnel system due to the lower cost as a result of not having a driver, higher speed and automated control over the load. With all of this traffic moving to the conceptual tunnel-based transportation system, it has the potential to radically slash the amount of transportation related emissions and demand for fossil fuels.
If the petroleum industry wasn’t paying attention to Musk and the impact Tesla may have on automotive related fuel consumption, this announcement is surely the wake up call they needed.
Earthquake!
Hollywood thrillers over the years have cast subway systems as the perfect set for apocalyptic thrillers where only a muscular hero armed with backpack full of lithium ion batteries, a stick of bubblegum and the copper from the wiring for the lights can save the day.
The truth, it turns out, is much different. The FAQs relay the facts that structural engineers have know for ages – that properly designed tunnels are one of the safest places to be during an earthquake. The tunnels is not subject to surface forces and instead of resisting the movement of the earthquake, moves with the ground.
Dirty Business
When tunneling in the Minecraft video game, the tunnel materializes and the blocks smashed with a pickaxe or sword simply disappear or move into inventory. The real world is unfortunately not so simple, but The Boring Company has plans to make it just a bit more like Minecraft.
Two major challenges with traditional tunneling are the massive amount of earth being displaced by the tunnel and the equally as challenging amount of concrete that is required to seal the circumference of the tunnel. To solve these challenges together, The Boring Company hopes to develop a process for using the resulting soil to produce earthen bricks. These bricks could even be used as a component of the tunnel lining itself or simply sold as a product.
This is yet another piece of evidence that Tesla truly is attempting to create Minecraft in the real world, reviving the ancient practice of crafting bricks from dirt.
In addition to turning a liability into an asset, this has the potential to drastically cut the amount of concrete used in the production of the tunnels it is constructing. Because of the sheer mass of concrete and the effort required to extract its components, and ship them to the destination, concrete production accounts for a staggering 4.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The Boring Company hopes to take a chunk out of those emissions by using bricks where possible in the construction of its tunnels.
Where The Boring Company will go from here is anyone’s guess but this latest update makes it clear that Musk is never willing to settle for the status quo, and always begins working from the ground up – or in this case, from the ground down – when moving into a new business.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship Flight 13 aborted at Zero and Musk just told us what broke
Four Raptor engines failed to ignite at T-zero, forcing SpaceX to scrub Starship Flight 13 Thursday.
SpaceX scrubbed the Starship Flight 13 launch attempt Thursday evening at the last possible moment, after four of the Super Heavy booster’s 33 Raptor 3 engines failed to ignite during the startup sequence. The 90-minute window had opened at 6:45 p.m. EDT from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, and the countdown had proceeded without issue all day, with more than 11.5 million pounds of liquid methane and liquid oxygen being fully loaded into the rocket before the automated abort triggered. SpaceX’s launch directors posted on X, “Standing down from today’s flight test attempt,” and shut down the livestream shortly after.
Musk confirmed the root cause within hours. “Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort,” he wrote on X. “To be confident of a good flight, 2 Raptors will be removed and replaced. Most probable launch timing is early next week.” SpaceX engineers began draining propellant tanks immediately and Booster 20 was rolled back to its hangar for inspection.
The timing adds a layer of significance that did not exist during any of the previous 12 Starship flights. This is the first time SpaceX has attempted to launch Starship since the company made its stock market debut in June, listing under ticker SPCX at $135 per share. Public investors are now watching every Starship outcome in real time, and a last-second abort carries more visibility than it would have six months ago.
Flight 13 was designed to be one of the most consequential tests in the program’s history. It was set to carry 20 Starlink V3 satellites, the first operational payload Starship has ever attempted to deploy. Six of those satellites carried external cameras to photograph Starship’s heat shield from the outside during flight, which would act as a self-inspection approach SpaceX has never attempted before. The mission also needed to complete a Raptor engine relight in space, a step SpaceX skipped on Flight 12 in May after losing an engine during ascent. That Flight 12 booster also flipped 90 degrees off course during its boostback burn when five engines failed to reignite.
SpaceX has not announced an official next launch date. Musk’s “early next week” window points to July 21 or 22 at the earliest, pending the engine swap and a return to the pad.
Elon Musk flew under the radar with his recent purchase of a $1 billion energy company, according to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) documents.
Transaction number 202612350 listed Tesla and SpaceX frontman Elon Musk as the acquiring party and CF APR Super Holdings LLC as the seller, with New APR Energy, LLC as the acquired entity. The deal, which closed without public announcement, came to light on May 14.
BREAKING: Elon Musk acquires Jacksonville power company APR Energy in a deal valued at more than $1,000,000,000.00.
— Polymarket Money (@PolymarketMoney) July 15, 2026
Analysts inferred the deal’s scale from minority stakeholder disclosures, including one report of a 5 percent interest sold for approximately $50.4 million. Fortress Investment Group had purchased APR’s assets in late 2024, rebranded the operation as New APR Energy, and subsequently transferred ownership to Musk.
APR Energy specializes in rapidly deployable power infrastructure. The company maintains one of the world’s largest fleets of mobile gas and diesel turbines, with more than 1.1 gigawatts of generation capacity. Its modular units, which are often trailer-mounted, enable turnkey installations ranging from 20 MW to over 500 MW.
APR provides full engineering, procurement, construction, operation, and maintenance services for behind-the-meter power plants, serving everything from data centers, utilities, and industrial clients.
The firm has expanded aggressively to meet surging demand, recently adding turbines and deploying over 100 MW for a major AI hyperscaler. Its solutions bridge critical gaps where grid interconnections face delays of two to five years, according to Yahoo.
The acquisition means something more for Musk. As he continues to expand projects in artificial intelligence, especially xAI, his AI venture, there is a greater need to supply energy-intensive supercomputing clusters, including the Colossus project, with what they need: reliable and high-capacity power.
Ownership of APR provides immediate access to flexible generation assets that can be deployed adjacent to data centers, reducing dependence on a strained infrastructure. It also complements Tesla’s energy storage business, so Musk will be able to pull from his own entities to address the rapid scaling demands of AI training and compute.
Tesla had a petition protesting a recall to fix a potential issue with 2017-2023 Model Y and Model 3 vehicles’ headlights was denied, as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) disagreed with the company’s opinion of things.
The recall covers approximately 19,917 Model Y and Model 3 vehicles built from 2017 to 2023. Tesla initially submitted a noncompliance report for the headlights on these vehicles on March 15, 2024. Tesla then petitioned for an exemption from the fix, which violated FMVSS No. 108 (40 CFR 571.108), arguing that the “noncompliance is inconsequential as it relates to motor vehicle safety.
🚨 Tesla was denied a petition by the NHTSA to avoid a recall of 19,900 2017-2023 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
The NHTSA found that the vehicles’ headlights may exceed maximum lighting levels. Tesla argued it was inconsequential and did not require a recall. pic.twitter.com/m8Jmm1teLL
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 16, 2026
The NHTSA disagreed, stating that Tesla’s conclusion that the headlights do not increase any risk was not an opinion it shared. The agency said it disagreed with Tesla’s assumption that glare is not increased to surrounding traffic. This issue could be highlighted even more in certain weather conditions.
Tesla will be required to remedy the issue, the NHTSA ruled:
“In consideration of the foregoing, NHTSA has decided that Tesla has not met its burden of persuasion that the subject FMVSS No. 108 noncompliance is inconsequential to motor vehicle safety. Accordingly, Tesla’s petition is hereby denied, and Tesla is consequently obligated to provide notification of and free remedy for that noncompliance under 49 U.S.C. 30118 and 30120.”
The issue here appears to be the angle of the headlights and the brightness they emit during operation. The NHTSA report states that:
“Tesla’s headlamp supplier, Marelli Automotive Lighting, tested 25 right-hand and 25 left-hand lamps, and for this sample, found the maximum photometric intensity measured in the 10°U to 90°U and 90°L to 90°R zone was between 136.2 cd and 230.1 cd for the right-hand lamps and between 117.5 cd and 160.3 cd for the left-hand lamps. According to Tesla, these tests revealed that the photometric intensity of the right-hand and left-hand headlamp lower beam on the subject vehicles may measure as much as 230.1 cd in the 10°U to 90°U and 90°L to 90°R zone, exceeding the maximum photometric intensity by 105.1 cd. Additionally, Tesla states that a left-hand lamp tested by a Transport Canada recognized laboratory measured a maximum of 171.27 cd in the 10°U to 90°U and 90°L to 90°R zone. Despite these measurements exceeding the allowed photometric maximum of 125 cd, Tesla believes that the subject noncompliance is inconsequential to motor vehicle safety.”
Tesla also argued at some points that the headlights had not been deemed responsible for any complaints, accidents, or injuries related to the noncompliance.
SpaceX Starship Flight 13 aborted at Zero and Musk just told us what broke
Elon Musk secretly acquires $1B energy company to power the AI future
