9 Things You Need To Know From Bloomberg's Elon Musk Interview

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Tesla Inc TSLA shares are down more than 3.8 percent on Thursday after Bloomberg published a new interview with CEO Elon Musk.

Musk didn’t discuss Tesla and its critical upcoming launch of the Model 3. He didn’t discuss Tesla’s controversial merger with SolarCity Corp SCTY or the construction of Tesla’s Gigafactory. He didn’t even discuss his space flight company SpaceX or his goals of putting a man on Mars.

Related Link: Tesla And The Auto Workers Union

Instead, Musk discussed a brand new company he is starting, tentatively named the Boring Company. Here are nine things you need to know from the interview.

9 To Know

1. The Boring Company will focus on building tunnels to help solve the growing traffic problem in U.S. cities. Musk wants The Boring Company to focus on improving outdated tunneling technology.

2. Musk sees tunnels as a more realistic traffic solution than flying cars. “Obviously, I like flying cars. But it’s difficult to imagine the flying car becoming a scalable solution,” Musk explained.

3. As usual, Musk is thinking on a large scale. He intends to create a network of thousands of miles of tunnels with as many as 30 different levels for cars and high-speed trains.

4. Musk is confident all that drilling will not destabilize the ground. “The earth is so big, and we’re so small,” he said. “We are so f---ing small.”

5. Musk got the idea for his tunneling company about two months ago when he was stuck in traffic. “Traffic is driving me nuts,” he tweeted in December. “Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging.”

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6. Musk believes the construction industry is ripe for disruption. “It’s the only sector of the economy that hasn’t improved its productivity in the last 50 years,” he said.

7. The Boring Company is already digging. Almost immediately after coming up with the idea for his network of tunnels, Musk began digging in the SpaceX parking lot. He hopes to have obtained the required permits by the time he reaches the property line and refused to reveal the tunnel’s destination.

8. The Boring Company has no full-time employees, and Musk did not provide a clear business model. President Trump has vowed to invest up to $1 trillion in infrastructure projects in the next decade, so government contracts would likely play a role.

9. Musk sees the tunnel network as a major jobs creator. “It would certainly create a lot of jobs. A trillion jobs. With a T,” he said with a smirk.

Image Credit: By NASA/Dutch Sleger - http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/cargo/gallery/bolden_musk_hawthorne3.html, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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