We knew that Elon Musk’s Boring Company is planning to use Tesla’s technology for the powertrain of its “electric skate” system, but now they are apparently also using Tesla’s technology in a different way.
Musk released a video of a Model X electric SUV pulling 250,000 lbs muck rail cars out of the Boring Company’s tunnel in Los Angeles.
With a mere 5,000-lb rated capacity, the Tesla Model X is already the passenger electric vehicle with the highest towing capacity currently available on the market.
But some owners have been pushing the capacity of the vehicle recently.
Earlier this year, a truck was stuck on a snowy road in Raleigh, North Carolina and a Model X driver showed up and helped the truck by pulling it up the road. It was captured in an impressive video.
Norwegian Model X owner Bjorn Nyland also performed several other Model X towing stunts including pulling a 95,000-lb semi truck in the snow.
Musk was boasting about the vehicle’s performance on Twitter this morning and shared our article about it:
Model X pulls a 95,000 lb (15,000 above US road legal limit) semi truck on a pure snow surface https://t.co/AqmvgMXIYo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 22, 2018
He then “one-up” the feat by releasing a video of a Model X pulling four muck rail cars out of the Boring Company’s test tunnel.
The CEO claims that added up to about 250,000 lbs:
No real surface is perfect, but it did pull about 250,000 lbs of muck rail cars out of a tunnel pic.twitter.com/wlKbLwd0f7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 22, 2018
It was in response to the Model X’s capacity on an almost perfect surface, as opposed to snow, and rail is about as good as it gets.
It’s all about torque and traction since the Model X really only need to get the thing moving and then maintain the momentum.
With the Model X’s 9,500 Nm of wheel torque, it’s actually not that surprising albeit still an impressive use of the all-electric vehicle.
As we previously reported, Musk’s Boring Company reportedly already completed a 305-feet (100 meters) tunnel with an entrance in SpaceX’s parking lot in Hawthorne and they have received the green light to extend the tunnel by 2 miles in Hawthorne toward the Los Angeles International Airport.
It looks like the operation requires moving a lot of muck and they even put a passenger vehicle like the Model X to work.
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