People made electric cars before Tesla and they'll make cars after. People made rockets before SpaceX and they'll make them after.

He's cut component costs on the Tesla by maybe 70%. On the SpaceX project it's more like 80% compared to the highest cost competitor. Both of these are huge achievements.

The problem with tunnels is they're not cars, not rockets, not anything like he's ever done before. If he had a functioning Hyperloop system, if he'd proven he can build out infrastructure on a geographic scale and not just product from a factory I'd be more likely to agree with you.

This is a bad idea, a bad project, and a total waste of time.

I really, really hope I get to see you eat your words in 30 years.

I have to struggle to think of a dystopian future any more hellacious and soul-crushing than Musk's vision here. It's just tripling down on the concept of living a life centered around the car. Another step to eliminating all human interaction in the course of your daily life.

If, by some stroke of genius and fluke of luck, this thing does get built it will go down in history as the most absurd thing ever constructed.

Then perhaps a hundred years after it goes bankrupt someone will be drilling down there and hit a tunnel that nobody knew existed and re-discover its brief and absurd history just like Chicago has done with their own boring company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company