Elon Musk says Boring Company completed first segment of LA tunnel, still slower than a snail

Elon Musk’s Boring Company is moving fast and yet, its boring machine is still slower than a snail.

The CEO now says that they already completed the “first segment” of the tunnel they are digging under Los Angeles.

They had already started digging in the parking lot of SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, but they had yet to start using their first boring machine.

The Boring Company took delivery of the giant machine, which is 26 feet in diameter, about 400 feet long, and weighs 1,200 tons., and named it ‘Godot’ after the play ‘Waiting for Godot’ by Samuel Beckett.

On Twitter yesterday, Musk confirmed that Godot started digging and that it even completed the “first segment” of the tunnel:

No longer waiting for Godot. It has begun boring and just completed the first segment of tunnel in LA.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2017

Musk had previously revealed the planned route of the first tunnel:

“Full length of first tunnel will run from LAX to Culver City, Santa Monica, Westwood and Sherman Oaks. Future tunnels will cover all of greater LA.”

Though the first segment appears to only link SpaceX’s parking lot to its buildings.

He also said that the speed of the machine is still not up to their standard, which is snail speed:

Gary (the snail) is a speed demon. Long way to go before we beat him/her.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2017

During a TED talk earlier this year, Musk said that he wanted to increase the speed of the machine by over ten-fold from digging about 300 feet per week to up to 1 mile per week.

They plan to achieve that by going electric and increasing the power of the machine, as well as further automating the systems on the machine in order for it to continuously bore with fewer operators.

At the Tesla shareholder meeting earlier this month, Musk said that the company is still only a few engineers and interns, but it is already gaining credibility with officials in cities with traffic problems.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti showed interest in the project and earlier this week, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel revealed that he is sending a team to learn more about the project.

It looks like good timing now that Godot is reportedly digging.