I’ve heard people theorize that at some point the banks will sell off Musk’s collateral to secure what they can; I’m not familiar with those types of loans (not being rich enough) but if anyone here is I’d be curious if that’s even a possibility.
Multiple other companies are operating real robotaxi services now with hundreds of cars on the road without drivers and public disengagement numbers that shame the FSD beta. The Vegas tunnel Teslas are on a fixed single lane loop and still need drivers.
Boring bought an existing sewer pipe drilling machine and got a multibillion valuation out of it. They claimed making bricks from the dirt would pay for the tunnels: then why not excavate instead and make bank making bricks? Because it was just hype. It still might be worth something in that a 3-person-per-train-plus-operator monorail salesman might get continued subsidies from various municipalities where the politicians want to affiliate with a celebrity.
There are still projects where the TBMs are considered disposable and the projects have them dig further than the required end of the tunnel and they just build a wall at the end of the tunnel and basically brick up the TBM like medieval monk… it’s becoming much less common as companies who build them have been designing machines to avoid such wasteful practices in order to hopefully decrease the cost of their own future machines by having parts to refurbish and reuse from TBMs that have finished digging… but for large TBMs it’s not a given that the TBM will ever dig another tunnel.
Just like reusable all weather, airliner style rockets make it possible to decrease launch costs, the more standardised, all rock and soil capable, and reusable, a Tunnel Boring Machine can be made, the cheaper it should become to dig tunnels with it. It should come down to operating crew costs, worn cutting head part replacement costs, tunnel construction material (the tunnel lining) costs, and some transportation and logistics costs. With all the non recurring engineering cost cut away.
https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/equities/elo...