Minutes From New York to Washington? Elon Musk Teases a New Hyperloop

Pretty good-but remember you’ll still have to take the F home, which will probably take twice as long.

Musk, also the CEO of rocket manufacturer SpaceX and electric auto giant Tesla and a co-founder of PayPal, served on the administration’s advisory council until Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accords.

In a tweet on Thursday, Musk said he’d received “verbal government approval” for this so-called underground hyperloop, and boy do we have a lot of questions. Speed-wise, he claims this will cut a journey from NY to Washington, DC down to a mere 29 minutes. Total travel time, Musk estimated, would be just 29 minutes, or a fraction of what it today takes even by air, never mind the fastest conventional trains operated by Amtrak.

Musk’s been active on Twitter following the announcement, saying the NY to DC tunnels will be built simultaneously to the L.A. project.

The news comes after Musk announced last month that The Boring Company completed the first segment of its tunnel under Los Angeles. Up to a dozen additional entry/exit elevators for the Hyperloop would be built in each city as well. In a later tweet, Musk said there’s “still a lot of work needed to receive formal approval, but [he’s] optimistic that will occur rapidly”.

However, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was apparently uninformed of any tunnel approval, according to a tweet from his press secretary, Eric Phillips.

It still isn’t clear which government official Musk spoke to or what sort of timeline he has in mind.

“You make it capable of doing Earth orbit activity as well as Mars activity”, he said.

At a test for the vacuum-based tube system this May in Nevada, hyperloop advocates claimed success after the pod traveled above the track for 5.3 seconds, reaching 70 miles per hour. A number of startups have begun to develop the technology, despite concerns about the cost and practicality.

On its website, the Boring Company says its goal is to lower costs by a factor of 10 or more. He first proposed it in 2013, outling a system whereby passengers would be transported at super high speeds via tubes that are constructed above or below the ground.

Having lost his patience with legendary California traffic, Musk recently pledged to build a short tunnel from his office to the Los Angeles airport before building a network of tunnels throughout the city.