Local media in Las Vegas have been invited for a preview of Elon Musk’s new form of ‘public transportation’ on Thursday. But how futuristic is this technology, which Musk’s Boring Company called the ‘Loop’? It depends on how futuristic you think a car inside a tunnel is slowly being driven.
The $ 52 million Las Vegas Loop, a tunnel that sits 40 feet underground, is about 2.5 kilometers long and has three stops around the Las Vegas Convention Center: the Central Station, which is underground, as well as the West Station and South Station, which both are above ground.
Mick Akers, a Review Journal reporter, tweeted a handful of videos Thursday showing the Boring Company’s Las Vegas transportation system in action. And it seems, to say the least, pretty overwhelming.
According to the Review Journal, it is shown that a Tesla car is driven by a human driver and that it drives a top speed of only 35 miles per hour. And while yesterday’s media preview would have been a special look for Las Vegas media exclusively, it sounds like reporters on the ground have not received much new information at all.
G / O Media can get a commission
‘Now we have to see a lot on this tour. Heck, I’m currently in a Tesla running it, ‘said reporter James Schaeffer, trying to sound like this tour was worth his time.
“But there are some details that we’m not so sure about … that we’ll learn more about, such as the loading and waiting procedure and about the 16-passenger vehicles that will come through these tunnels,” Schaeffer said. prosecute. “Until then, we will ride together just like everyone else.”
Whatever happened to that 16-person vehicles? When Musk announced the Loop for the first time, it really looked like an exciting new transportation system. Musk promised that each vehicle could seat more than a dozen people inside and that everything was autonomous.
But it does not seem to be much more automatic. You even have to tell your human manager where you want to go. The Boring Company uploaded a video to Vimeo with instructions for the Las Vegas Loop with the exact instructions.
The biggest selling point is that your 15-minute walk from one side of the conference center to the other is shortened to ‘just a few minutes’, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. But, again, questions about loading time are still very much in the air.
“With full capacity, the Boring Company’s Convention Center Loop can transport 4,400 people per hour in its 62 vehicles,” Akers tweeted, seems to contradict with his colleague who reported that it is still unclear. Gizmodo could not confirm anything, given the fact that Musk is notoriously hostile to journalists and even shut down Tesla’s PR department. last year.
We still have quite a few questions that cannot be easily answered by the colorful videos of the Boring Company. And hopefully these questions will be answered when the Loop opens, probably sometime in the next few months.
What did reporters see at the end of the day on Thursday? Colorful lights. Very colorful lights, wants to prevent it. And not much else. We’re not saying Las Vegas wasted $ 50 million on a stupid tunnel, but we are not. not does not say that either.