The Boring Company to Host Tunnel Construction Competition

By TBM Staff July 10, 2020

The Boring Company’s goal is to build the tunnel infrastructure necessary to enable fast, safe, and comfortable transportation, including Loop and Hyperloop. To feasibly build a large network of tunnels, one must first rapidly innovate to increase tunneling speed and reduce tunneling costs.

As such, The Boring Company is hosting a competition for tunnel building. This competition challenges teams to come up with tunneling solutions and answer the question, “Can you beat the snail?”. The Boring Company is gauging interest from everyone (students, companies, hobbyists, etc.) from around the world to design, build, and race their own tunneling solution at The Boring Company’s Dig-a-Factory in the first Not-a-Boring Competition in Spring 2021.

Teams will compete to bore a 30-meter tunnel with a cross-sectional area of 0.2 square meters (equivalent to a circle with a 0.5-meter diameter). Winning categories will include:

Fastest to complete tunnel
Fastest to complete tunnel and a driving surface (we will drive a Tesla remote controlled car through the tunnel)
Most accurate guidance system – how far away is the tunnel from its target?

Interested parties can register on the website.

The Boring Company’s first venture is the construction of a new people mover at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The company has expressed interest in building vehicular tunnels as well as hyperloop systems across the country including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. It also completed a one-mile test tunnel at its Hawthorne, California, facility.