Elon Musk’s Boring Company, self-tasked with burrowing a tunnel under Los Angles that would enable cars to pass under existing infrastructure, finally gets to live the Silicon Valley dream of working in a garage.
Boring has bought a small house in Hawthorne, Calif., according to the Los Angeles Times, where it plans to build and test an elevator that transports cars down 140 feet to a subterranean tunnel. While the company is building other tunnels, this will more specifically test the elevator component of the system, as well as house a test track for transport. The results of these tests are key to the Boring Company’s goal—after all, if you can’t get the cars into the underground tunnel, then there’s no next-generation transportation system.
Given the scope of Musk’s plans for Boring, which include metropolitan elevators for shuttles and entire vehicles, the Hawthorne test house will likely serve as a trial balloon for how inconspicuous, and involved, the installation process for Boring elevators will be. Despite the excavation of an enormous elevator shaft, followed by tunneling under the neighborhood, Boring says the tunnel will be discrete enough to rent out the house on the property.
“We’ll be completely contained within the garage,” Boring facilities director Brett Horton told city officials last month, according to the LA Times. “You won’t be able to see or hear it.”