Here’s one way to tell when Tesla’s earnings calls are scheduled: Elon Musk gets on Twitter to post a fanciful rendering of a Tesla-adjacent project to boost the company’s stock price. This week, just before yesterday’s call, it was a new look at the Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel transit system, which, in typical Musk fashion, is somehow more visually underwhelming than the previous version and also manages to contradict much of what he’s previously said about it. 1

The project was originally billed as a people mover, with sleek 12-passenger 'pods' that looked like minivans encased in privacy glass aiming to move 4,400 people per hour. The new rendering, however, shows Tesla Model 3 sedans instead, which could fit five passengers at most, reducing its capacity by roughly half.

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In a way, Musk’s tunnels have become the perfect metaphor for the public-private dilemmas all post-COVID cities will face. Almost 40 percent of Las Vegas’s transit funding comes from sales tax, which meant the RTC’s monthly revenue dropped from $4.7 million in February to only $398,943 in May. More cuts are needed, so a series of public meetings is scheduled for next week where passengers can provide feedback on proposed service reductions. One of the routes to be eliminated is the SDX, which links most major destinations from the airport to downtown. Passengers who used this bus to get to the convention center will have to plot out alternate routes or longer walks, as a $50 million tunnel built for a few dozen Teslas will be putting on its finishing touches right below their feet.

 

• 1. The Vegas Loop, for which ground was broken late last year, is the first — and, so far, only — paying project for Musk’s tunnel-boring outfit, which has been doing test digs outside Los Angeles since 2017. The two 0.83-mile-long, 14-foot-wide tunnels in Las Vegas will allow vehicles to travel the length of the recently expanded convention center, shortening what might be a 20-minute walk to a one-minute ride (although that doesn’t include waiting or boarding time).