I believe I'm well aware of the US' dependency on cars in all areas of life, but this sentence stil surprises me and makes me even more fortunate to never have had to rely on cars in my life (as a French, where most cities have high population density and -still- have good public transportation options).
I'm 100% behind Tesla to make the switch to EV but I wish we/Tesla would do something to reduce the reliance on cars for everything and make our cities denser / more walkable. I can't wait for all cars to be electric and autonomous but that's unavoidable with Tesla's roadmap and ambition, so I hope Tesla will next try to make transportation as unneeded as possible (in distance traveled but also in total weight transported).
That’s where Boring Company fits into this picture for our investments and the Tesla mission. Tesla is aiming for sustainable, clean, safe, high-speed, affordable terrestrial transportation.
I desperately want North American cities to become more walkable and bikeable. I spent most of the last decade not having a car and walking or biking or taking the bus as my primary means of personal transportation. Years before I began delving into Tesla, I have been asking myself how we can do this, against apparently overwhelming odds and extremely powerful cultural inertia and self-reinforcing dominance of car dependency.
Well, how
do we do it? Underground autonomous electric vehicles and accompanying cheap tunnel networks. Look at Los Angeles or Houston or Atlanta on a satellite image. The majority of the land area of these sprawling concrete jungles is allocated to roads, parking, and marginal land around the roads and parking lots that’s either boring lawns or ugly patches of weeds and invasive species. Car critics including me have been shouting about these problems and inefficiency for years. What most are missing is that subterranean AEVs, while apparently just an extension of the same badly designed system, actually have the potential to wipe out the need for about 80-90% of the need for this expensive, ugly, and generally problematic surface infrastructure and in doing so also wipe out an astonishing array of economic, social, environmental and even national security problems all in one fell swoop. High-velocity motorized transport is fine, as long as it’s cheap, organized as a Personal Rapid Transit architecture, does not emit toxic pollution, and is separated from the rest of the living space by being underground. The Boring-Tesla symbiosis could solve almost all of the problems that have befallen North America (and to a lesser extent the rest of the rich areas of the world) in the last century since the ill-advised urban planning decisions of the 1920s set into motion the development of the transportation system we now suffer from today. The only problem I don’t see it solving is obesity and sedentariness, but even that it’ll probably help with somewhat if it gets more people outside walking and biking.
Las Vegas, a typical mid-sized American city with virtually no investment or ridership in traditional mass transit solutions at any point in the last century, is suddenly moving quickly towards a huge Boring Co Loop system faster than the rate of construction of subway and light rail infrastructure on this entire continent. This is happening with enthusiastic, unanimous, bipartisan approval within the local government; no taxpayer funding; and enthusiastic support from local businesses and trade unions. It will be better, cheaper, faster, more reliable, more inclusive to all socioeconomic classes, safer, and even more energy efficient than busses and trains. This is what early stages of a huge disruption looks like.
Tesla EVs are only half of the story, and this complementary element is profoundly underappreciated by the stock market. Has any pro institutional analyst mentioned this colossal long-term tailwind even ONCE in their research notes and public interviews? Even the smart ones who understand Tesla, like Pierre Ferragu and Alex Potter and Colin Rusch? Are the big retail YouTube/Twitter/TMC analysts discussing this much? Not at all from what I’ve seen.
If I as an investor got the opportunity to ask ten questions to Tesla management, three of them would be:
- How is Prufrock development going and how do you view Boring Co’s scaling and cost trajectory in the next twenty years?
- When will autonomous operation begin and what top speeds can we actually expect?
- How close together will robotaxis in the tunnels be able to safely operate?
I’m working on essays about this to present a thesis on this topic but I urge TSLA investors to dig into this some more on their own. I’m still estimating that a robotaxi operating in a Loop has roughly triple the financial net present value compared to a surface robotaxi and Vegas Loop robotaxi service is almost certain to be the first instance of Tesla autonomous ride-hailing, possibly by several years since we still don’t really know how hard true Level 5 autonomy is with Tesla’s approach.
