This is exactly the kind of project that Elon would announce. Things with high upfront cost, nebulous goals of improving the state of the art for technology, and a gamble on future payoff, are essentially the checklist for Elon Musk projects.

Now, there’s potentially a worthwhile discussion about why Elon has seen more success with these kinds of endeavors than larger incumbents have seen, but it’s exactly an Elon-style project.

I was thinking that China will likely make the next announcement to follow this.

And likely complete it before Toyota.

Can you name a big ambitious investment Tesla has made with a nebulous goal?

"SolarCity" ...city... “People do not understand the magnitude of the business," Musk said. "Solar will be the single largest source of electricity generation".

I was talking about Elon’s overall portfolio, of which Tesla and SpaceX are both examples. But if you’re specifically curious about Tesla, I’d point out that Tesla’s mission was to give everybody an electric car, and they decided to start from ~“make a crazy fast electric sports car” and go from there. Along the way, some ancillary nebulous goals ~“also become experts in building our own batteries” and ~”also solar for everybody’s homes”.

Those goals all seem very concrete? What does nebulous mean to you?

Good question, but my first thought was to ask what is nebulous about this project. It has clearly stated goals and Toyota has identified tech and capital.

Tunnels under cities to decrease traffic?

That’s not Tesla, nor is it a big investment. Boring Co is funded by merch and client work.

The SolarCity acquisition.