The fact that Teslas can't navigate autonomously even in these controlled, enclosed environments is also quite embarrassing.
They were trying hard to make a TBM that was faster than the current literal snails pace and cheaper than existing ones. It doesn’t appear they’ve had much success, though I’d rather they tried than just sticking with the status quo forever.
> The fact that Teslas can't navigate autonomously even in these controlled, enclosed environments is also quite embarrassing.
They can, regulations just don’t allow it yet. Coming soon (tm)
The expensive bit of building metros isn't actually boring the tunnel, generally, not anymore. It's everything around that; securing a route, the disruption while it's going on, etc etc. So the last thing you want is to have to do it twice.
Making a much faster TBM was absolutely part of the initial plan.
The problem rather appears to be with the tech itself being unable to perform "full self-driving".
Tunnel cost is mostly dependent on the volume of material removed, which means that cost goes up linearly with length but with the square of the tunnel diameter. Trains and people movers tend to require significantly larger diameter tunnels, so their costs tend to be much higher. Also Boring Company tunnels don't need much infrastructure in them, so they save money on rails, high voltage power systems, rolling stock, etc.
They even derailed (no pun intended) a train link from Building 37 to O'Hare by offering to build a train station in the cavern already dug for a high speed rail terminal that may exist someday in the future. I don't think they ever did anything there but the city was onboard (damn a lot of idioms are train related huh)
Elon Musk told his biographer that the purpose of his Hyperloop proposal was to kill CAHSR. That's not exactly apocryphal.