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Tag: ELON MUSK

  • Elon Musk Says Tesla Bot Can Solve Labour Shortage, But Has No Timeline

    Elon Musk Says Tesla Bot Can Solve Labour Shortage, But Has No Timeline

    Elon Musk is at it again and this time around he has said something that will ruffle many feathers considering technologies like AI and automation are displacing many regular jobs. He has claimed that the Tesla Bot which was unveiled earlier this year can solve the labour shortage problem. The Tesla Bot which was showcased earlier this year will allegedly pack in artificial intelligence capabilities aimed at completing general-purpose repetitive tasks.

    Tesla has already started hiring for this Bot and at the Wall Street Journal Conference this year, he revealed, technologies that Tesla has developed for the sake of its self-driving capability is now being adapted to this bot.

    “With the Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, I think we are creating the most advanced practical AI for navigating the real-world and you can also think of Tesla as the world’s biggest robot company – or semi-sentient robot company. The car is like a robot on 4-wheels. We can probably take that same technology and put in a humanoid robot – and have that robot be useful. Essentially, to have the humanoid part, we need to develop some custom actuators and sensors – and essentially use the Tesla Full Self-Driving and Autopilot or generally speaking real-world navigation AI in the humanoid robot,” said the world’s richest man.

    He added, ” I think this can be quite profound. I don’t know exactly when we can get this right but we will get it right.”

    Musk believes this could be a real solution to the labor shortage issue. Already in many countries, population growth is declining – Japan and China being at the forefront and even in India, the growth of the population has slowed down.

    “It has the potential to be a general substitute for human labor over time. The foundation of the economy is labor. Capital equipment is essentially distilled labour. I asked a friend of mine what should we optimize for and he said “gross profit per employee” – fully considered so you got to include the supply chain in that. The fundamental constraint is labor. There are not enough people. I can’t emphasize this enough. There are not enough people. I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low and rapidly declining birth rate,” he said.

    Many robotics and artificial intelligence experts have shown a sense of skepticism towards Tesla’s Bot project considering robotics leaders like Boston Dynamics haven’t managed to commercialize their technology which has been in development for years.

  • Elon Musk Sells $5 Billion In Tesla Shares After Twitter Poll

    Elon Musk Sells $5 Billion In Tesla Shares After Twitter Poll

    Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk sold about $5 billion in shares, the billionaire reported in filings on Wednesday, just days after he polled Twitter users about selling 10% of his stake. In his first share sale since 2016, Musk’s trust sold nearly 3.6 million shares in Tesla, worth around $4 billion, while he also sold another 934,000 shares for $1.1 billion after exercising options to acquire nearly 2.2 million shares. The 4.5 million shares equate to about 3% of his total holdings in the electric vehicle manufacturer, which makes up the vast part of his estimated $281.6 billion fortune, according to Forbes.

    Musk on Saturday polled Twitter users about selling 10% of his stake, helping to push down Tesla’s share price after a majority on Twitter said they agreed with the sale. The stock sank 12% on Tuesday in a multi-day selloff that endangered the company’s position in the $1 trillion club, but recovered 4.3% on Wednesday.

    The options-related sales were set up in September through a trading plan that allows corporate insiders to establish preplanned transactions on a schedule, the filing said. The sales of the option-related shares paid for associated taxes. It was not clear how or whether the trading plan related to Musk’s Twitter poll. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

    The additional share sales were separate and provide Musk with sizeable reserves of cash, given his wealth is largely tied to his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. Musk has more than 20 million further stock options that are due to expire in August of next year. If Musk carried out the 10% stock sale plan, it would be a slight negative near term, said Mark Arnold, chief investment officer at Hyperion Asset Management in Brisbane where Tesla is the top holding in its global fund. “But the stock is pretty liquid and its not a huge percentage of total issued shares, so it shouldn’t have that much of an impact … we’re quite comfortable with the outlook for the business,” he said.

    While Tesla has lost close to $150 billion in market value this week, retail investors have been net buyers of the stock. Some 58% of Tesla trade orders on Fidelity’s brokerage website on Wednesday were for purchases, rather than sales. Retail investors made net purchases of $157 million on Monday and Tuesday, according to Vanda Research. Tesla is now up more than 51% in 2021, thanks largely to an October rally that was fueled by an agreement to sell 100,000 vehicles to rental car company Hertz.

    “The company itself is on fire, with strong results,” said Tim Ghriskey, a senior portfolio strategist at New York-based investment management firm Ingalls and Snyder. Bullish sentiment returned to Tesla’s options on Wednesday, with about 1.1 calls traded for every put. Calls are typically used for bullish trades, while buying puts shows a bearish bias. The company’s options accounted for about $109 billion in premium changing hands over the last two weeks, or about one in every three dollars traded in the U.S.-listed options market, according to a Reuters analysis of Trade Alert data.

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  • Elon Musk Shares Secret About CyberTruck Mirrors

    Elon Musk Shares Secret About CyberTruck Mirrors

    When the CyberTruck was unveiled for the first time in 2019 it had these cameras which doubled as side-view mirrors. But at the time many believed that the regulators aren’t going to allow Tesla to pull off this stunt. So more recently, the car was indeed seen with mirrors. But these mirrors ruin the seamless symmetry and the cyberpunk futurism of the car. Now, in a tweet, Elon Musk has revealed that the mirror is required by the law but they have been designed in such a way that they can be removed easily by the owners.

    The side-view mirrors are a requirement of the US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard referred to as Rear Visibility. The side mirrors assure that the driver has a good view of obstacles around the sides and the rear of the truck.

    Tesla strived to remove the mirrors altogether as modern cars also come with blindspot detection cameras as well as rearview cameras which help in reversing. Tesla has always future-proofed its cars with advanced hardware and constant software updates and if and when the regulation is changed Tesla has added the ability for its owners to remove the mirror as the cameras are already baked in.

    Tesla’s vehicles also come with advanced autonomous capability and the Cybertruck will be the first car it releases that will come with a new generation of self-driving chips and cameras. In other words, these cars by the time they come out in 2022 will have the latest hardware and software and an old-school solution like side-view mirrors will be hugely redundant.

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  • Elon Musk Considers Tesla Making An HVAC To Advertise Car Air Purification Systems

    Elon Musk Considers Tesla Making An HVAC To Advertise Car Air Purification Systems

    Elon Musk often does weird things and the latest one is him considering making a Tesla-branded HVAC system leveraging the work Tesla has done to develop one for its cars. He also believes the system is so good that it could act as an advertisement for the system that Tesla has implemented in its cars which breaks his no-ad rule.

    Tesla was one of the first car manufacturers to improve the air quality inside the car. It was one of the first to implement a HEPA filter into the HVAC system of its higher-end electric cars. Tesla claims the system can theoretically remove 99.97 percent of the dust, pollen, mold, bacteria, and airborne particles which are of the size of 0.3 microns. All these things, the Tesla HVAC systems handle very well.

    While talking up the HVAC system on the new Model S and also talking about an update that’s inbound for the HVAC system which makes it more silent Musk also talked about how it could be scaled up for home use.

    “Oh man, home HVAC that is super energy efficient, quiet & purifies the air would be great. We developed it for the car, but it can be scaled up for home use,” said the billionaire.

    This is not the first time Musk has talked up the HVAC. He once claimed it was 10 times better than one on any other non-Tesla car. “Most people have no idea just how good the Tesla air purification system is. Literally, 10X better than any other car. Maybe we should advertise informationally just so people know stuff like this exists,” he said a while ago.

  • Elon Musk Reaffirms 1.1 Second kmph Time For Telsa Roadster EV Is Possible

    Elon Musk Reaffirms 1.1 Second kmph Time For Telsa Roadster EV Is Possible

    The second-generation Tesla Roadster was revealed about three years ago but the EV maker took quite a while to materialize it. Finally, it is expected to arrive later this year or early in 2022 but one production-ready version is already on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum with some details of its specifications. The most interesting of all is that the readout at the museum claims a 0-100 kmph sprint in an earth-staggering 1.1 seconds when the Roadster is equipped with the SpaceX package.

    Now what’s even more interesting is that Elon Musk took to Twitter to confirm the specifications. Replying to one of the tweets he reaffirmed it’s possible with “the SpaceX rocket thruster option package. The Roadster will possibly be equipped with cold air thrusters, supplied by compressed air tanks with the thrusters hidden behind the license plate, that’ll help propel the all-wheel-drive sports to manic speeds. Now without the SpaceX package, the EV maker is claiming 1.9 seconds to triple-digit speeds, which still is fast enough to give something like the mighty Bugatti Chiron with a W16 engine, a sweat.

    Now going with what Musk has claimed earlier, the Tesla Roadster is not just about speed. It will deliver quite an impressive electric range of 998 km with a tri-motor configuration. One of them will be positioned in the front and the remaining two at the rear that will power all four wheels. It will get its juices from a 250 kWh battery pack and it will put out an unbelievable 10,000 Nm of peak torque helping it to clock 160 kmph in just 4.2 seconds. Now that’s quicker than what many sportscars take to clock triple-digit speeds.

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  • Elon Musk’s tweets send Vietnamese crypto investors into spiral of anxiety

    Elon Musk’s tweets send Vietnamese crypto investors into spiral of anxiety

    Elon Musk’s recent tweets have partly contributed to sending Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies tumbling, and Vietnamese investors into losses and diminishing their hope in the future of digital currencies.

    Thien Tuan from the northern town of Mong Cai has seen his VND30 million ($1,300) investment in several cryptocurrencies depreciate by nearly 40 percent in the last few days.

    The 28-year-old had entered the crypto market in early April with no prior investment experience. Half of his savings is now in XRP, which has fallen 36 percent since mid-April, and Dogecoin, which has lost half its value in two weeks.

    He says: “Some of my friends have advised me to exit the market and look for other reliable assets like gold. I’m worried my losses will rise to 80-90 percent in the coming weeks.”

    On several Facebook groups of which he is a member, hundreds of people are expressing similar concerns about Bitcoin, Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies after their prices plunged due to the remarks made by Musk and other reasons.

    In March Mush had announced that customers could buy Tesla cars using bitcoin, but on May 13 he said in a tweet the company had suspended the plan. Bitcoin lost 12 percent almost immediately.

    In another Twitter comment on May 17 Musk seemed to imply Tesla could sell its Bitcoin holdings, which sent the cryptocurrency down another 8 percent.

    The world’s most popular coin has lost 47 percent from its peak in mid-April, while other cryptocurrencies too are down by double digits.

    Other factors that contributed to the falls are China further cracking down on digital currencies and Binance Holdings, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, being investigated by U.S. authorities for money laundering and tax offenses.

    Tran Cuong, 22, of Hanoi invested $700 in Bitcoin and Dogecoin, and says “I have lost nearly $500 due to Elon Musk’s tweets.”

    The sharp falls have raised concerns among coin miners in Vietnam.

    Viet Hung of the southern province of Dong Nai only started mining a month ago and was expecting to recoup his investment by the end of the year.

    “Now that the market has plunged, I don’t know whether to continue mining or sell the equipment and cut my losses,” he says.

    Minh Huy, a seller of mining rigs in HCMC, says many prospective buyers have suspended purchase plans to watch how the market moves before making a final decision.

    Some of these deals are potentially worth billions of dong (VND1 billion = $43,500).

    “The plunging market not only hurts investors but also hardware suppliers,” Huy says.

    Hoang Bao of Hanoi, who has years of experience in coin mining, says he has yet to see people sell off equipment, but feared that if prices keep falling the market could soon turn “chaotic.”

    “The worst-case scenario is that rigs will be left to gather dust like last time, but this time it will be on a much bigger scale,” he says, referring to the 2018 Bitcoin selloff.

    Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not recognized as a legitimate means of payment in Vietnam. The State Bank of Vietnam has warned that owning, trading and using cryptocurrencies are risky and not protected by law.

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  • Elon Musk Says Tesla Will Stop Accepting BitCoin Because Of Environmental Impact

    Elon Musk Says Tesla Will Stop Accepting BitCoin Because Of Environmental Impact

    Elon Musk’s tweets can be devastating. They have the ability to reshape markets, because of his staunch following. Now, the Tesla supremo has tweeted that Tesla will stop accepting Bitcoin payments because of its environmental impact.  This also comes at a time when Musk himself is promoting cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin and has even set out a Twitter poll asking users if they are open to Tesla accepting the currency.

    The controversial move comes as Musk has been promoting Dogecoin, acting as a catalyst behind its rise, and also has announced a rideshare mission to the Moon via SpaceX funded by Dogecoin.

    There is further criticism of the move because most EVs are still sourcing their electricity from fossil fuels as most homes are powered by the grid. Tesla however has said that its supercharger network will go fully renewable in 2021.

    Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are very power-intensive as crypto mining involves having racks and racks of GPUs and big data computing capabilities stacked together which consume a lot of power, which is more often than not sourced via a fossil-fuel-powered grid. Almost, the same logic applies to electric cars, critics claim, which makes this move even more controversial.

    The value of Dogecoin has skyrocketed since January 2021 ever since Musk started promoting the currency. Around about this time Musk became a proponent of Cryptocurrencies and opened up to the idea of Tesla accepting Bitcoin. Musk even had Tesla buy a tranche of Bitcoin and then sold it back, improving Tesla’s financial cash flow, showcasing a new form of liquidity.

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  • Elon Musk Says Next Self Driving Beta Update Will Blow Minds

    Elon Musk Says Next Self Driving Beta Update Will Blow Minds

    Elon Musk is well known for his hyperbole, especially when it comes down to Tesla and its AutoPilot technology. For the last couple of months, Tesla has been beta testing a fully self-driving feature that is available to just a few 1,000 customers as a part of its early access program. Now, the world’s second-richest man says, an incoming update to the full self-driving beta will “blow your mind”. Musk in his typical style dropped nuggets of information while replying to tweets. He said the update will come in two weeks and he said the safety would also be higher with pure vision.

    “Gating factor in achieving & proving higher safety with pure vision than with vision+radar. We are almost there. FSD Beta V9.0 will blow your mind,” Musk tweeted to a Twitter handle called @teslaownersSV.

    To another user, he even said that the feature was also coming to the Canadian market in a couple of months. He cited the delay due to the differences in driving conditions between the US and Canada.

    The incoming update called version 9 will remove reliance on radars and instead will be fully dependent on cameras that are installed in the cars. Musk for the longest time has been against radars and LiDARs stating that they are too expensive and not required.

    Tesla has been often criticised for its AutoPilot technology as experts believe that it is not fully self-driving tech. For this Tesla has also developed its chipset based on the ARM architecture and trained algorithms on the DOJO supercomputer. Musk is optimistic that he has the holy grail of self-driving, but he often overestimates things especially when commenting on Twitter.

    Recently, Tesla has also been in the news for all the wrong reasons as a Model S crashed with two fatalities while it was on AutoPilot.

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  • SpaceX satellite Internet faces regulatory hurdles in Vietnam

    SpaceX satellite Internet faces regulatory hurdles in Vietnam

    U.S. aerospace company SpaceX can only launch its satellite Internet service Starlink in Vietnam if it ties up with a local partner, Vietnam’s Department of Telecommunications said.

    SpaceX, owned by South African-American billionaire Elon Musk, recently announced that Starlink, now in its beta testing phase, would be launched in Vietnam next year and customers could preorder it for $99.

    However, telecommunications and Internet companies are in the list of conditional businesses, which requires the foreign enterprises to partner with a Vietnamese enterprise that is licensed to provide telecom services or establish a joint venture.

    According to the Department of Telecommunications, foreign enterprises are not allowed to independently provide internet and telecommunication services in Vietnam.

    The Department of Telecommunications told VnExpress that the company has yet to apply to launch the service in Vietnam.

    The department said prospective subscribers should consider carefully before making the pre-order since “it is unsure if Starlink can provide satellite Internet services in Vietnam.”

    The pre-order is currently available in 15 countries, according to its website.

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  • Tim Cook comments on Elon Musk, and AR/VR and Apple Car

    Tim Cook comments on Elon Musk, and AR/VR and Apple Car

    In case you missed it, Apple’s CEO gave a 30-minute interview with Kara Swisher, which is available on all major streaming platforms in the form of a podcast.

    The majority of the conversation revolved around data privacy and security, but they also touched on other important topics for Cook and Apple.

    The boss commented on Elon Musk’s claims that Tesla’s boss offered to sell the company to Apple, but Cook ‘wouldn’t even take a meeting with him’. Apple’s head said he hasn’t met up with Musk, but strongly admires what Tesla’s been able to achieve, touching on the company’s consistency over the years.

    He finally shed some light on Apple’s own electric car! He expressed a strong opinion that ‘autonomous cars are robots’. He said there are many things that can be done with autonomous vehicles and ‘we’ll see what Apple does’.

    When Swisher asked if it is going to be ‘a technology within a car’ or a car, he laughed and avoided answering the question. He said: “We love to integrate hardware, software, and services”. This is indeed a very Apple thing to say. He added that he wants to have complete control of all of the three components, so the final product works as seamlessly as other Apple products.

    Kara Swisher mentioned the upcoming WWDC21 conference with a tagline ‘Glow and behold’, and asked if this sentence is supposed to hint at a VR headset. Cook said that he strongly believes in AR, and he’s already seeing use for it even on a smartphone. Therefore, this is definitely part of Apple’s future plans in a big way.

    When he was questioned about the new administration in the US, Apple’s boss stayed very politically correct, and said that he’ll seek involvement in policy, and not politics (if he does at all).

    The interviewer teased him with a question about people being able to vote from their iPhones, and he was positive about it, underlining the fact that most of our data is already on our phones, so using a phone for voting for the next president, might not be so far fetched of a concept.

    Yet, he doesn’t like the idea of moving into politics, but said he wants to advance work on climate change, job creation and ‘retraining’. He is willing to work with whoever is keen on helping Apple to achieve these goals.

    He also spoke about coming out as gay, highlighting the idea of being able to help young people feel safe about being themselves. He said he is going to speak out about discriminatory laws.

  • Elon Musk’s Boring Company Proposes Citywide Expansion In Las Vegas

    Elon Musk’s Boring Company Proposes Citywide Expansion In Las Vegas

    Elon Musk’s hobby project – the Boring Company – is planning a citywide expansion of its underground tunnel system which it has been building in Las Vegas. The startup wants to build a 16-kilometer loop that serves the famous Las Vegas strip that connects the casino hotels with the downtown area of the city including its McCarran International Airport. All these loops will obviously be powered by Tesla vehicles. In addition to this, it even wants to build another loop that connects the properties owned by Caesars entertainment that includes Caesar’s palace properties. This proposal will make the tunnels that will enable transportation from the Las Vegas Convention center which is the home of CES to hotel’s like the Mandalay Bay just three minutes long as opposed to 30 minutes during peak traffic hours.

    As reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a proposal was floated to the Car County officials after the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) finished buying the Las Vegas Monorail which filed for bankruptcy in September.

    Following the acquisition, LVCVA killed a non-compete agreement that prevented the Boring Company from digging any tunnels that served the same areas as the monorail. This monorail is not expected to reopen till 2021.

    While all of this is quite impressive, the Boring Company has been laggard in completing its original project. It is still working on its first underground people-mover which will open to the public below the Convention Center. It was originally slated for a January 2021 opening in time for CES 2021, but those plans are now not in play as CES thanks to the pandemic is a virtual event and generally, work has been slower in the wake of the COVID19 crisis.

    The Boring Company has plans of shuttling up to 4,000 people per hour through its tunnels using Tesla Model 3s and Tesla Model Xs which will operate alongside a tram built on the Model 3 platform that will be able to fit up 16 people. This tram and the cars will move autonomously, though they will also have drivers.

    Originally the LVCVA paid the Boring Company $48.6 million to build tunnels, but that cost has already swollen up to $52.5 million. If this expansion goes through, the Boring Company, will not get such a sweet deal. It will have to pay for the cost of the construction of the main tunnel of the new citywide loop, while properties that want a station will have to pay to have them built. This proposal will be put in front of the Las Vegas City Council on Wednesday and in front of the county officials in February.

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  • Musk Says Tesla To Use New Batteries

    Musk Says Tesla To Use New Batteries

    Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Wednesday the company will produce Model Y with a new structural battery design and technology at its Berlin factory next year and that could result in a “significant production risk”.

    The U.S. electric carmaker plans to manufacture a new version of its Model Y crossover vehicle, and possibly even battery cells at the site. Last month, Musk said that Tesla will use its Germany-based plant to demonstrate a radical overhaul of how its cars are built.

    The company plans to start the production of Model Y at Gigafactory Berlin during the second half of 2021.

    Tesla’s new battery cell – a larger cylindrical format called 4680 that can store more energy and is easier to make – is key to achieving the goal of cutting battery costs in half and ramping up battery production nearly 100-fold by 2030.

    The company’s new structural battery pack requires the new 4680 battery cells in order to work.

    Musk said on Wednesday that it will take about two years for Tesla factories in Fremont and Shanghai to embrace the new technology.

    “Fremont and Shanghai will transition in 2 years when new tech is proven,” Musk said in a tweet.

    The company said last week that it delivered 139,300 vehicles in the third quarter, a quarterly record for the electric carmaker.

    Tesla’s delivery push has been supported by its new Shanghai factory, the only plant currently producing vehicles outside California, as it is also building a new vehicle and battery manufacturing facility near Berlin.

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  • Elon Musk Hints At The Possibility Of A New Compact Electric Car

    Elon Musk Hints At The Possibility Of A New Compact Electric Car

    American electric carmaker Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, hinted at the possibility of launching a new compact electric car that will be positioned below the Model 3. According to Business Insider, recently, while speaking to some analysts and investors, Musk expressed his opinion that Tesla cars are too expensive, stating his desire to offer a more affordable electric car. Currently, Tesla sells four electric vehicles, including the Model 3, Model S, Model Y and Model X. In the United States, Tesla’s most affordable offering right now is the Tesla Model 3 that starts at $37,990.

    Talking about making affordable electric cars, Musk said, “I think we will not succeed in our mission if we do not make cars affordable. Like the thing that bugs me the most about where we are right now is that our cars are not affordable enough. We need to fix that.” While he did not go into the specifics of the new compact electric car, he did say, “It would be reasonable to assume that we would make a compact vehicle of some kind and probably a higher capacity vehicle of some kind. These are likely things at some point. But I do think there’s a long way to go with 3 and Y and with Cybertruck and Semi. So, it’s a long way to go with those. I think we’ll do the obvious things.”

    However, it’s very much possible that the new compact electric car will not be made in the US nor in China, but rather in Germany. Earlier this month, replying to a Twitter user’s direct query about Tesla coming up with a European style hatchback, Musk hinted at the possibility of designing and developing such a car in Germany. Currently, the company is building its new vehicle manufacturing plant, better known as the Gigafactory, in Berlin.

    More recently, Tesla has finally zeroed in on the location for its second Gigafactory for the US, which will come up near Arizona, Texas. Tesla is making an investment of $1.1 billion in building the new plant, which is expected to create up to 5000 new jobs in the US state. The new factory will mainly serve the eastern part of the country and will manufacture the upcoming Cybertruck, along with the Model 3 and Model Y. Recently, Elon Musk also hinted at the possibility of coming up with a second Gigafactory for Asia, outside China, sometime in the future.

  • Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Raises $120 Million In First Outside Investment

    Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Raises $120 Million In First Outside Investment

    Elon Musk’s Boring Co. has raised its first outside investment to fund the development of tunnel-based transportation systems. The company authorized the sale of $120 million in stock, according to a securities filing that was obtained by the Prime Unicorn Index, a company that tracks the performance of private U.S. companies, and reviewed by Bloomberg News. The investment is in addition to the $113 million the company raised last year.

    “We are delighted to be an investor in Boring,” said Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist with Future Ventures and a director on the boards of Musk’s Tesla Inc. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. “Boring is a great example of the disruptive playbook we look for.”

    The investment values the company at about $920 million after the new cash injection, according to a Boring Co. spokesman. The chief investors in the round were 8VC, Vy Capital, Craft Ventures, Valor Capital and DFJ.

    Boring’s best-known funding efforts involve less traditional methods including the sale of hats and flamethrowers, which raised $1 million and $10 million, respectively, for the business.

    In May, Boring won its first commercial transportation contract, a $48.7 million mile-long project to shuttle visitors around the Las Vegas Convention Center. The project will provide an important test of whether it can really dig more cheaply than competitors and navigate the government bureaucracy involved in municipal projects.

    Boring Co. has also built a test tunnel near its headquarters in Hawthorne, California. A hoped-for tunnel in Los Angeles was scuttled after opposition from neighborhood groups. In Chicago, a proposed tunnel’s future is in doubt due to the departure of its biggest supporter, former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. A potential project connecting Washington D.C. and Baltimore is in the environmental review process.

    Jurvetson said Boring latest investment was its first big fundraising effort beyond tapping into money from Musk and company insiders.

    Jurvetson, 52, is a long-time friend of Musk’s who has invested early in his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX. Formerly a venture capitalist at DFJ, he resigned from the firm in November 2017 amid allegations of harassment that he has denied. He returned to Tesla’s board from a leave of absence in April.

    “The four-largest tunnel companies in the U.S. were founded in the 1800s,” Jurvetson said. “Like the automotive and aerospace sectors, they haven’t faced a disruptive new entrant in their management’s collective life-time.”

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  • Elon Musk Loses $1 Billion In Two Minutes

    Elon Musk Loses $1 Billion In Two Minutes

    Elon Musk saw $1.1 billion wiped from his net worth in the first two minutes of New York trading as Tesla Inc. shares sank as much as 11 percent.

    The fall cut his net worth to $22.3 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as of 9:32 a.m. The electric-car maker had reported a record decline in deliveries during the first quarter, down to 63,000 vehicles in the three months that ended in March, from 90,966 in the fourth quarter.

    About $10 billion of Musk’s fortune is derived from Tesla with approximately $13 billion coming from his stake in closely held rocket business Space Exploration Technologies Corp., according to calculations by the ranking.