上海的月亮: EN — LARRY ROMANOFF: Debunking Elon Musk – Part 10

WATERLOO, ON – FEB. 17:Elon Musk speaks at the Hyperloop pod competition on January 29, 2017. To accelerate the development of a functional Hyperloop prototype, a high speed transportation system that Musk proposed in 2013, SpaceX staged a student pod competition. Source

Hyperloop

Hyperloop had grand plans to transport passengers from NYC to Washington, DC, in just 30 minutes, down from the typical journey of three hours and 30 minutes. Source

This subject is a bit complex because Hyperloop isn’t a single company or project; it is simply a concept that was explored by various parties over the years. However, to set the record straight, Elon Musk DID NOT create the “Hyperloop” concept, and he did NOT found, incorporate, or participate in, any company dedicated to building the Hyperloop concept, nor was he directly involved in any related projects. Hyperloop One/Virgin Hyperloop and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies were founded independently by others, but were ultimately unable to make the technology commercially viable. Hyperloop One quietly sold off its assets, closed its doors and went out of business in 2023.

Hyperloop Alpha

Here is a render of the transport capsule. Source

Elon Musk produced a paper titled Hyperloop Alpha in August, 2013 on the concept of a vacuum tube train, [1] which he published on both the Tesla and SpaceX websites and otherwise promoted. In that paper, Musk identified himself as the originator and proponent of the specific technical concept of a Hyperloop, but the concept was plagiarised. Musk merely repackaged multiple existing ideas with high-profile marketing provided by the media who totally ignored all the historical precedents and credited him with “inventing” the Hyperloop.

That paper was grossly over-rated, more of a thought exercise than a serious document, written at a high-school level by someone who clearly had no understanding of the scientific complexities involved. Musk seemed to approach it at almost the level of a child: “We will make a steel tube like a gas pipeline, suck out the air, and put little maglev cars in it that will go really fast.” It was neither a vision document nor an engineering proposal, and Musk clearly didn’t appreciate the problems much less offer solutions. To say that Musk’s paper was shallow, would be an understatement of some magnitude; it seriously underestimated the technical challenges of maintaining a near-vacuum over long distances, the problems of thermal expansion, safety, and much more.

Musk clearly understood almost nothing of consequence and simply glossed over all his misunderstandings. His “estimates” of (low) cost and (high) speed were either wishful thinking or childish foolishness. He is credited as the originator and proponent of the specific technical concepts detailed in the paper, except that those concepts were nonsense ideas that proved to be unworkable and were abandoned.

Actual Hyperloop History

William Heath’s satirical 1829 colored etching was in reaction to a less ambitious, but still impossible, project of using a vacuum tube technique to move people between London and Edinburgh. Source: William Heath, A Futuristic Vision (etching) (London: Thos. McLean, ca. May 1829), Wellcome Library no. 37252i. Reprinted under Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 license. Source

Media coverage consistently attributes the Hyperloop to Elon Musk, but this attribution is deliberately false and misleading since the concept and technical DNA predate his involvement by centuries. The idea of vacuum-tube transport actually pre-dates trains and railroads. [2] The Scientific American published a vactrain proposal by Robert Goddard in 1909 in an article titled, “The Limit of Rapid Transit”. [3] The Frenchman Jean Bertin floated the idea of an Aérotrain in the 1950s. [4] There was the Swissmetro project in the 1990s, and researchers from MIT tried to bring this dream to fruition, but abandoned it as unworkable; see the BBC article titled “High-Speed Pipe Dreams“. [5] Yet Musk persisted (and still persists) – with full media support – in the false claim that “I Invented the Hyperloop”.

“The idea dates back to 1799, when British inventor George Medhurst patented his “atmospheric railway” to conduct commuters along pressurized pipes under London. After Medhurst’s original invention, pneumatic railways were built in Ireland, the UK, France and New York – all before the end of the 19th century. As well as experimental passenger trains, smaller tube systems were created to transport mail, messages, parts for factories and medical documentation in hospitals. There have been numerous attempts to build Hyperloop-style systems since 1900, from researchers at MIT in the 1990s to a transportation startup called ET3, which designed a system for smaller car-sized pods in the early 2000s.” [6]

“In 1844, Medhurst built a railway station (for passenger carriages) in London that relied on pneumatics. Throughout the mid-1850s, several more pneumatic railways were built in Dublin, London, and Paris. The London Pneumatic Despatch system was meant to transport parcels, but it was large enough to carry people, too. To mark its opening, the Duke of Buckingham traveled through it in 1865.”

The Beach Pneumatic Transit, which operated in Manhattan from 1870 to 1873, was New York City’s earliest subway predecessor. Designed by Alfred Ely Beach, it had one stop and a one-car shuttle that used compressed air to move riders. Source

“In the mid-1860s, South London constructed the Crystal Palace atmospheric railway, which ran through a park. A fan, which measured 22 feet in diameter, propelled the train. On return journeys, the fan’s blades reversed, sucking the carriage backwards. The Beach Pneumatic Transit, which operated in Manhattan from 1870 to 1873, was New York City’s earliest subway predecessor. Designed by Alfred Ely Beach, it had one stop and a one-car shuttle that used compressed air to move riders.” [7]

“Projects like ET3 (founded 1997) actively promoted evacuated tube transport before Musk’s paper. Physicist James R. Powell (co-inventor of the maglev) published vacuum tube maglev concepts in the 2000s. There was also a large amount of what we might term “Pre-existing Interest”: the ET3, many academic papers, and articles by futurists kept the idea alive long before Elon Musk appeared as a sudden “visionary”. As well, the existence of Shanghai’s Maglev and great strides in materials science created a fertile ground for further examination of the concept.”

The Hyperloop was Political, not Scientific

Realistically, the Hyperloop is just hype. The concept might be technically feasible. But Mr. Musk’s proposal will cost a lot more and do a lot less than he claims it will. Source

The official narrative was that Musk positioned the hyperloop as a “futuristic alternative” to California’s high-speed rail project. But Musk is on record as stating that he wanted to kill the California high-speed rail project, and promoted the Hyperloop only as a means to accomplish this.

Musk’s own tweets and interviews from 2013-2014 are damning. He openly called the HSR project “one of the most expensive per mile” and “the slowest bullet train,” framing Hyperloop as cheaper/faster. The timing was strategic too – releasing his “white paper” just as the California HSR faced scrutiny. Even the paper itself contained direct cost comparisons positioning Hyperloop as superior. But the most telling proof is Musk admitting in 2020 he “wanted to show it could be done better”, and he admitted in an interview that his purpose in releasing the paper was to “shame” California into abandoning its HSR project. In fact, the evidence is clear that Musk’s intention with his paper and the attending publicity were strategically designed to undermine California’s HSR. Musk’s actions were not “visionary”; they were deliberate sabotage. Here is an important article that I strongly recommend reading by anyone interested in the concept. The article is easy to read, and nicely outlines the major issues. [8]

Alon Levy, a transportation economist, argued that the Hyperloop was a “pipe dream” designed to sabotage HSR by diverting attention and resources. He wrote, “The Hyperloop proposal is a specific form of lobbying by Elon Musk against high-speed rail … It’s not a real proposal. It’s a PR stunt.” Another transportation critic wrote, “Musk used Hyperloop to poison the conversation around high-speed rail … It gave politicians an excuse to avoid funding real infrastructure.” This wasn’t innovation advocacy; it was infrastructure disruption via a glossy, unbuildable concept. The Hyperloop saga remains a case study in how tech celebrity can be leveraged to influence public policy – even without delivering a functional product.

Musk didn’t just “position” Hyperloop as an alternative – he weaponised it to derail California’s high-speed rail project. The evidence shows:

Explicit Intent: Musk admitted Hyperloop was designed to shame and derail HSR proponents.

Strategic Timing: Launched during HSR’s most vulnerable political moment.

Rhetorical Sabotage: Framed HSR as wasteful/outdated to sway public opinion.

Real-World Impact: Sowed doubt about HSR, delaying progress while Hyperloop itself failed.

The Sole Survivor

There is an apparent agreement to build a real hyperloop in Italy, but only for freight. [9][10] However, this is over-hyped because the agreement is in stages: a feasibility study which, if successful, would lead to a design phase which, if successful, would lead to a prototype which, if built, would lead to a “field test”. And still no hyperloop. That is a long way from a contract to build a functioning system.

Hyperloop’s collapse wasn’t due to lack of effort but to fundamental physics gaps in Musk’s schoolboy vision. For one thing, solar-panel-topped pipes expand and contract dramatically, risking vacuum breaches. There was no safety protocol, no credible plan for decompression emergencies at high speeds, and no idea how to maintain a near-vacuum over a 600-Km length. Plus, Musk’s cost estimate of only 10% of HSR was delusionary, as was his lack of appreciation of operating costs both to maintain a vacuum and to achieve very high speeds.

The Boring Company

If nothing else, the lighting is particularly impressive. Source

Elon Musk founded something he called “The Boring Company” in 2016, which proposed the construction of underground tunnels for carrying vehicle traffic, similar in concept to an overhead roadway, but underground. The company has completed only one project, a 1.7-mile tunnel under Las Vegas (the Loop) that opened in 2021. It is merely a roadway at normal air pressure using ordinary Tesla autos to carry passengers between various halls of the Las Vegas convention center.

There is no sensible reason for this company’s constructions to be referred to as a “Loop”. Musk is clearly trying to confuse a simple auto tunnel with whatever magic remains of the Hyperloop concept. He still tries to market these underground tunnels trading on the “Hyperloop” name for brand recognition, and sometimes presenting these “Tesla Tunnels” as “scaled-down” versions of a Hyperloop, but that is just fraudulent marketing. It is due to this false marketing thrust that much of the mass media and the public at large still don’t understand and cannot differentiate these ordinary tunnels from high-speed vacuum train travel. This is what some observers have termed “leveraging buzz”.

Musk heavily promoted (and promised) this concept as “high-speed transit”, but it consists only of ordinary Teslas driving slowly underground, plagued by safety issues and trespassers. In a 2016 statement, and also on the company website, Musk claimed “The Boring Company Will Solve Traffic”, that his tunnels would “end traffic”, [11] but this is just more Elon Musk delusional nonsense. He did manage to drill one of his tunnels under Las Vegas, but it is just a subway without a train, moves far fewer people than would a subway, and is generally regarded as a useless idea. The UK Independent published an article titled “Elon Musk’s ‘Vegas Loop’ called a ‘death trap’.” [12][13] And another titled, “Two of Elon Musk’s Terrible Ideas Both Flopped in Las Vegas This Week“. [14] One of the reasons for the death trap adjective is that the tunnels lack emergency exits, ventilation, and evacuation protocols. The narrow, single-lane design prevents rescue access during fires or accidents, and have no procedures (or, apparently, possibilities) for rapid mass evacuation in case of fire. [15] And, if you are riding in Teslas, that risk of fire is always present.

Musk sold the idea to Las Vegas on the promise of autonomous pods in the tunnel moving at speeds of ~150 mph, when in real life the human drivers can average only about 35-40 mph. And the maximum throughput is only around 1,200 passengers per hour, far below the 4,500/hour that Musk was claiming, and very far below the passenger capacity of a subway system that can easily move 20,000+ passengers/hour. Even worse, only 800 people can actually be transported per hour due to fire safety regulations. [16]

The performance of this Musk project is totally underwhelming. It was advertised as a simple and more affordable point-to-point underground transit system, but it hasn’t proven to be simple, and other systems are more affordable while carrying far more traffic. Using Tesla vehicles as “pods” is a cost-cutting stunt, not a scalable solution, and the system itself has no unique value. Musk’s Las Vegas “Loop” operates well below initial promises and with huge congestion during peak times or events.

The Prufrock Boring Machines

One of Elon Musk’s signature behavior patterns is to leverage his social media access and his mass media supporters to create huge amounts of public confusion to mask the constantly-appearing negatives in his various enterprises. He has done this repeatedly with his Boring Company, attempting to mask (or drown out) all the negative news about the Las Vegas project – and lack of other projects – with reams of news, some true but mostly false, about the machines that drill the tunnels. It is a simple (and cheap) way to take the heat off a poorly-conceived, expensive, and only marginally successful project. Since Musk has taken us there himself, let’s have a look at these boring machines that create the tunnels for his low-speed, fire-prone Teslas to navigate.

First on our list would be this hagiographic claim: “Elon Musk has reduced tunneling costs by 95%.” Wow. People have been drilling expensive underground tunnels for hundreds of years, and very expensive subway tunnels for at least 150 years, and no one ever thought to ask “Is there a cheaper way to do this?” And then along comes a little Jewish sex pervert from South Africa who can drill tunnels for only 5% of the usual cost. Unfortunately, that’s not brilliant science but fraudulent marketing. Most subway and other tunnels are 26 or 28 feet in diameter, while Elon Musk’s tunnels are only 12 feet. To save you the πr² math, a 12-ft tunnel has 85% less area than the larger ones, and removes 85% less material, so there is 85% of the 95% saving. Also, tiny boring machines are cheap; very large ones are horribly expensive, and that accounts for most of the missing 10%. So, it seems that Elon Musk, the great innovator, hasn’t actually innovated anything.

Next, tunnel-boring machines are rated on the speed with which they can drill underground tunnels, measured by meters per day or miles per week. The speed obviously depends on whether you are drilling through granite or beach sand, but let’s ignore that. Elon Musk repeatedly claims his Prufrock boring machine has a capability of drilling 1 mile of tunnel per week, and at one time he even claimed 7 miles per day. However, he refuses to provide any validation and his claims remain unverified despite years of operation. This demonstrates perfectly Musk’s persistent pattern of extravagant promises vs reality, with constant shifting of goalposts where he then promised 1/10th of walking speed as an “achievement”.

In May of 2025, Musk “confirmed” Prufrock’s tunneling speed at “over 1 mile per week”, framing this as an “historic milestone”, ignoring the fact that it fell drastically short of all his earlier promises. But where are we in the real world? Well, Musk never quite reached his promises. In fact, to say that he fell short would be a bit of an understatement, since the 1.7-mile tunnel in Las Vegas took 18 months to complete. That doesn’t quite fit the one mile per day claim, much less the 7 miles per day. Musk claimed his Prufrock machine was 8-14 times faster than traditional boring machines, but refused to provide any verified data. And, in a damning comparison in Las Vegas, his Boring Company managed only 20 meters/week while industry leader Herrenknecht does that daily. If you’re interested in the math, Musk “confirmed” a tunneling speed of about 1,600 meters per day (1 mile) but he actually achieved only 20 meters.

Deflecting Hype

Billionaire Elon Musk revealed yesterday that “this year – 2023” he will equip the first human being with brain implants from his company Neuralink, whose technology has just been approved in the United States. Source

I mentioned above that one of Elon Musk’s signature behaviors is to leverage his social media access and his mass media supporters to create huge amounts of public confusion to mask all the constantly-appearing negatives in his various enterprises. This pattern mirrors Musk’s Robotaxi/Neuralink launches—diverting attention from crashes, deaths and underperformance. When his Robotaxi or Tesla’s so-called “Self-Driving” software was being pilloried in the media, Musk suddenly made grand and false “revelations” about his Neuralink developments or a SpaceX Mars claim, done entirely to deflect public attention from those failures.

When his Boring Company began receiving bad press for its failures, Musk suddenly claimed TBC would develop hyperloop systems (600 mph pods), a typical PR pivot from his failing transit tunnels. Well-financed competitors like Hyperloop One had already tested similar tech and failed, and TBC lacks capital or expertise to attempt such a venture. Musk’s announcements are 100% PR diversion. His pattern of overpromising—especially regarding this new Hyperloop pivot is merely a distraction from TBC’s underwhelming Vegas Loop. Musk’s TBC Hyperloop announcement is a survival tactic, not a credible plan. This fits perfectly Elon Musk’s pattern of distraction: His Hyperloop announcements consistently coincide with TBC’s setbacks.

As the Financial Times wrote on TBC’s strategy in 2024, “Musk’s projects follow a pattern: sell a sci-fi vision, underdeliver with off-the-shelf tech, then pivot to the next shiny object when scrutiny hits.”

Prognosis

Technically, TBC’s Vegas track record doesn’t inspire confidence. The existing Las Vegas Loop operates at very low speeds with human drivers, not the promised 150 mph autonomy, and with serious problems. The Prufrock boring machines have unproven capabilities and appear to be substandard. There have been no material changes to justify optimism. Sub-surface tunnels are not new technology, having been built for more than 200 years, and using Tesla cars is just a stunt. The Boring Company’s prognosis remains highly uncertain; with what we could term “significant contradictions” between its fantasy claims and operational realities. [17][18] One observer termed TBC as “A Tunnel Vision with No Light at the End”. Another said TBC’s biggest problem is not to drill more tunnels but to dig itself out of the hole it’s already in.

Moreover, TBC’s flaws are structural, not temporary. There have been no significant developments or breakthroughs in autonomy or tunnel speed after 8 years of operation, and the “Death trap” incidents and broken promises have seriously deterred municipal customers. The bottom line is that TBC survives only as a Musk-subsidized vanity project, not a transformative transit solution. The company has a brief cash lifeline that buys a bit of time, but without delivering safe, scalable tunnels beyond Vegas conventions, collapse is inevitable. The most likely scenario is that TBC will be absorbed into SpaceX or quietly shuttered by 2027, and Hyperloop will join Tesla, Robotaxis and Neuralink in the graveyard of overhyped Musk ventures. For now, it survives—but barely.

The $200 million lifeline in funds diverted from SpaceX suggests TBC cannot survive independently. The company has no major revenue streams beyond Vegas, and all other projects like the Chicago O’Hare tunnel, D.C.-Baltimore loop, and L.A. Dugout Loop were canceled due to regulatory hurdles or feasibility issues. Or lack of interest.

Musk managed to raise $6.75B in investment in 2022, which helped to sustain the operation and prevent it from having to close its doors, but revenue is minimal. Another part of what appears to be almost an obsession with fraudulent valuations, that ~$7 billion investment magically created a sudden increase in the “value” of The Boring Company from about $5 billion to a surprising $56.75B. How do we turn a $7 billion investment into a value of about $55 billion? Simply by saying so; no accounting evidence required. Musk is famous for this: Tesla, Neuralink, xAI …

Musk has made continued intermittent noises about “exciting new projects” in other cities, but none of that was real and, at the time of writing in July 2025, there were no live prospects on the horizon. The Las Vegas project has requested permits for some additional stations, but physical progress appears minimal beyond the permit requests. Indeed, Elon Musk appears to have given up on the domestic US market and accompanied Donald Trump to Dubai in the hope of selling his “tunnel-vision” somewhere in the Middle East. Again, some noise, but no more.

It was reported in February of 2025 that Musk’s Boring Company signed an agreement with Dubai to construct a similar tunnel system as Las Vegas, with a capacity of more than 100,000 travelers per hour. [1] One article said the system was already under construction, but there is no evidence of that, the timeline was suspiciously vague, and current information is that the Dubai project is effectively shelved, though not officially canceled. Dubai will almost certainly join Miami and Chicago as abandoned concepts. The project is typical for Elon Musk: A “vaporware” pattern. Big announcements of grandiose projects, vague timelines, reliance on unproven tech, and quiet deprioritisation when new opportunities arise.

Stealing Money to Survive

Source

There are two items relating to TBC revenue that received little or no attention from the mass media, both of which might easily be categorized as criminal fraud. The first was that Elon Musk diverted $200 million from SpaceX to TBC to drill “something” for SpaceX, this done without a tender and the necessity of which was questionable at best. The issue is that this would have been DoD funds that were transferred to TBC as a temporary lifeline, and that means Elon Musk was funneling taxpayer money into one of his failing private companies. [19][20] Interestingly, the only persons who seemed to notice and complain were shareholders of SpaceX. The US government, who should have been screaming at this diversion, were apparently asleep. [21] The other is that TBC was paid some millions by Tesla to drill a completely unnecessary tunnel from the factory as a way to move Cybertrucks. [22] This means that Musk was diverting funds owned by Tesla’s shareholders to prop up one of his private ventures.

Next Essay: OpenAI

Mr. Romanoff’s writinghas been translated into 34 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chap. 2 — Dealing with Demons).

His full archive can be seen at

https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com

NOTES

NOTES: Part 10

[1] Hyperloop Alpha

https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/hyperloop-alpha.pdf

[2] The Hyperloop: A 200-Year History of Hype and Failure

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-hyperloop-a-200-year-history-of-hype-and-failure/

[3] The Limit of Rapid Transit

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-limit-of-rapid-transit/

[4] Jean Bertin’s Aérotrain

https://www.midnight-trains.com/post/jean-bertins-aerotrain

[5] High-Speed Pipe Dreams

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120601-high-speed-pipedreams

[6] A scramble of innovation that could make the Hyperloop train a reality

https://www.rolandberger.com/en/Insights/Publications/Hyperloop-Crowdsourced-vs.-In-House-Strategies.html

[7] The Hyperloop is a lot older than you think

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2017/08/the-history-of-hyperloop-it-goes-back-much-further-than-you-might-think/

[8] Musk’s Hyperloop math doesn’t add up

https://ggwash.org/view/32078/musks-hyperloop-math-doesnt-add-up

[9] Hyperloop TT gets Italy deal

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-05-13/elon-musks-hyperloop-vision-italian-deal-for-htt

[10] HyperloopTT-Powered Joint Venture ‘Hyper Transfer’ Begins in Italy

[11] Musk claimed tunnels would “end traffic” (2016).

https://www.boringcompany.com/

[12] Elon Musk’s ‘Vegas Loop’ called a ‘death trap’

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/elon-musk-vegas-loop-traffic-b1988974.html

[13] Shock! The Boring Company: Musk’s underground high-speed rail dreams of leading the future transportation revolution

https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1784341773994412237

[14] Two of Elon Musk’s Terrible Ideas Both Flopped in Las Vegas This Week

https://www.curbed.com/2022/01/elon-musk-las-vegas-tunnel-ces.html

[15] Elon Musk’s Boring Company plans to expand its Lackluster Vegas tunnel project

https://hitechglitz.com/china/elon-musk-%e7%9a%84-boring-company-%e8%ae%a1%e5%88%92%e6%89%a9%e5%a4%a7%e5%85%b6-lackluster-vegas-%e9%9a%a7%e9%81%93%e9%a1%b9%e7%9b%ae/

[16] Musk Las Vegas underground highway broken promise?

https://www.sycaijing.com/news/details?id=95418

[17] Musk’s innovative plan to control the blockade was slapped in the face! The first underground tunnel was stuck in traffic as soon as it was put into operation

http://keji.smartjx.com/zx/2022/0213/25304164.html

[18] Musk Boring’s two major underground tunnel projects have been stalled for a long time

[18] Transferring SpaceX resources to support Boring profits Musk was questioned by investors

https://news.ifeng.com/c/7ijAHcDXF20

[20] Musk transfers money to dig tunnels? Space X investors are skeptical

https://www.d1ev.com/news/qiye/84329

[21] Elon Musk’s SpaceX investors question financial overlap with Boring Company

https://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/elon-musks-spacex-investors-question-financial-overlap-with-boring-co-report

[22] Tesla paid for Elon Musk’s Boring Company to dig a tunnel under Giga Texas, but why?

https://electrek.co/2024/06/11/tesla-paid-elon-musk-boring-company-to-dig-tunnel-under-giga-texas-why/

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