Here’s our first look at Elon Musk’s Boring Co. LA tunnel

Elon Musk is digging a tunnel under Hawthorne near SpaceX headquarters in California, after receiving approval from city council to do so. Musk’s Boring Co. has already made considerable progress on the dig and tunnel build, apparently, as Musk shared an image of the tunnel from the inside showing a reinforced tube that stretches off into the distance out of sight.

The tunnel features paneled walls, cables and a large upper conduit, as well as lighting and what appear to be tracks. The tunnel just outside of LA is the first the Boring Co. has undertaken, but it recently received provisional approval to start digging in Maryland, too, on a second test dig that will potentially become part of an underground Hyperloop network.

Musk’s LA tunnel is a pilot project designed to test the feasibility of his plan to dig tunnels at a lower cost and more efficiently than current tunnel boring companies operate, with the eventual aim of supplying cities and regions with underground tunnel networks that can transport goods and services while avoiding surface obstacles and traffic.

The Boring Co. is still a long way from achieving the grand vision of constructing inter-city underground Hyperloop tubes for high-speed travel, but it’s making rapid progress on its initial test digging and tunnel construction, which should go some way to proving to its detractors that this is more than just a pipe dream.