Elon Musk unveils underground transport tunnel

A modified Tesla Model X drives into the tunnel entrance. Pic/AFP

Elon Musk unveiled his underground transportation tunnel on Tuesday, allowing reporters and invited guests to take some of the first rides in the revolutionary albeit bumpy subterranean tube, the tech entrepreneur's answer to what he calls "soul-destroying traffic."

Guests boarded Musk's Tesla Model S and rode along Los Angeles-area surface streets about a mile away to what's known as O'Leary Station. The station, smack dab in the middle of a residential neighbourhood "basically in someone's backyard," Musk says, consists of a wall-less elevator that slowly took the car down a wide shaft, roughly 30 feet (9 meters) below the surface.

The sky slowly fell away and the surprisingly narrow tunnel emerged. "We're clear," said the driver, who sped up and zipped into the tunnel when a red track light turned green, making the tube look like something from space or a dance club.

The car jostled significantly during the ride, which was bumpy enough to give one reporter motion sickness while another yelled, "Woo!" Musk described his first ride as "epic." He said the rides are bumpy now because "we kind of ran out of time" and there were some problems with the speed of his paving machine. "It'll be smooth as glass," he said of future systems.

"This is just a prototype. That's why it's a little rough around the edges." Later in the day, Musk emerged from the tunnel himself inside one of his cars. He high-fived guests and pumped his fists in the air before delivering a speech in the green glow of the tunnel.

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