Tesla's Entrepreneur Elon Musk divulges his prototype for a traffic-saving tunnel in Hawthorne, Calif. Elon Musk has unveiled a "prototype underground tunnel" in Los Angeles which is devised to transit cars at high speed around the city.
The tunnel has been built by Mr. Musk's Boring Company, which boasts state-of-the-art engineering techniques.
The goal of this network is to ease chronic traffic congestion in the country but at the moment the tunnel is only a mile of 1.6km long and modified with an electric car which would be lowered into the tunnel and travel at the speeds up to 150mph (240km/h).
Mr. Musk, best known as the head of Tesla electric cars and the commercial SpaceX programme, arrived at the launch on Tuesday in a Tesla car modified to work on the "loop" system.
Bathed in green and blue interior lights he was gladdened by a small crowd after his emergence from the car on the one end of the tunnel.
The plan foresees modified cars being lowered into the tunnel network by lifts and then slotted into tracks on the "loop".
"The profound breakthrough is very simple: it's the ability to turn a normal car into a passively stable vehicle by adding the deployable tracking wheels, stabilizing wheels so that the car can travel at high speed through a small tunnel," Mr. Musk said.
"The way the loop will work is you will have main arteries that are traveling at 150mph and when you want to go to an exit, you will have an off-ramp," he added.
"So you can travel the vast majority of your journey without stopping at 150mph and only slow down when you get to your exit, and then automatically transfer from one tunnel to another. It's like a 3D highway system underground basically."
It was almost a white-knuckle ride. A bumpy two-minute journey in a modified Model X through a concrete tunnel with a blue neon light in the ceiling. We reached a speed of 49mph, although cars will eventually travel at up to 150mph.
Mr. Musk had yet to unveil the technology that would allow vehicles to travel at such high speeds through the system at the moment he just displayed the prototype of the plan which was tested by him.
Mr. Musk first unveiled the tunnel plan earlier this year because he wanted to alleviate Los Angeles's "soul-destroying" traffic congestion.
Elon Boring Company had built the tunnel segment for $10million (£8m), adding that traditional tunnel-building technology would have cost up to $1billion.
The tunnel runs beneath the municipality of Hawthorne, where the Boring Company and SpaceX are both based.
