The Boring Company is Building an Underground Factory

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]In this episode, the Boring Company is building a factory underground. The Tesla Semi reveals its secret sauce. And actually, Smart Summon finally lives up to its name. The Boring Company had three major updates last week in Nashville and Las Vegas with everything connected to one key idea. Proof Rock is not behaving like a normal tunnel boring machine. The first update came in the form of a deceptively simple video titled The Long Journey of Rock in Nashville. The post showed excavated rock traveling through a long conveyor system deep inside the Music City Loop tunnel. On the surface, it just looked like a giant moving belt carrying broken limestone out of the ground. But that conveyor is actually one of the most critical parts of how Proof Rock operates. Here is the problem it solves.

[00:00:46]When a tunnel boring machine digs through rock, the spinning cutter head at the front continuously grinds material into smaller pieces. That debris has to be removed constantly. If it is not, the machine slows down, stops, or gets trapped behind its own excavation waste. Traditional tunnel boring projects often pause repeatedly while crews haul material away, install tunnel lining, or move equipment around underground. Proof rock is designed to keep digging through all of that. As the cutter head breaks through Tennessee limestone, excavated rock is immediately loaded onto a moving belt that stretches behind the machine and grows progressively longer as tunneling progresses. By the time the first phase of the Music City loop is complete, that conveyor will stretch roughly 10 miles between downtown Nashville and the airport. But the conveyor is only part of what makes Proof Rock different. Most tunnel boring machines follow a stop and start rhythm. The machine digs about 5 ft, stops, and waits while crews install a ring of pre-cast concrete to line the tunnel walls. Then it starts again a few feet at a time over and over. Proof Rock is designed to install that tunnel lining at the same time as it digs, eliminating those stops entirely. In many ways, it behaves less like a giant drill and more like a moving automated underground factory. And one of the most unusual features of that factory is something the Boring Company calls Zpit or zero people in tunnel. Rather than keeping large crews underground around heavy machinery, much of Proof Rock's operation is monitored and controlled remotely from the surface. Combined with the fact that Proof Rock runs on electricity rather than diesel, the entire underground environment stays cleaner, quieter, and significantly safer. The second update was quieter, but just as telling. The Boring Company shared a photo of Proof Rock after it reversed away from the rock face in Nashville so operators could inspect the cutter head and tunnel wall. That one small movement says a lot because most tunnel boring machines simply can't do it. Traditional TBMs push forward using enormous hydraulic cylinders that brace against the finished tunnel walls behind the machine. The systems are massive and tightly fitted, designed to move in one direction. Some machines are so difficult to retrieve at the end of a project that crews dismantle them underground rather than drive them back out. Proof rock can pull back deliberately and cleanly without complicated routines. That capability matters because the cutter head takes a beating during tunneling. It constantly grinds through abrasive rock and worn components need regular inspection and replacement. Being able to briefly retract from the rock face makes those maintenance stops faster and simpler, which means less downtime and more digging. The third update brought the same philosophy into full view, this time on the streets of Las Vegas. The Boring Company shared photos of Proof Rock 2 being transported across the city on a massive heavy hall platform the company calls the monster. One section of the machine alone weighed roughly 465,000 lb. The monster added another 140,000 on top of that. But the weight was not the story. To understand what came next, it helps to know how proof starts and finishes a tunnel. The process is called porposing, which is a reference to this marine animal that's like halfway between a dolphin and a whale and is known for this style of swimming where it alternates between breaching above the water and diving down again. When proof arrives at a new site, it tilts downward on its transport platform and launches directly into the ground. When the tunnel is finished, it does the reverse, emerging from the ground and mining itself onto a waiting trailer.

[00:04:26]According to the Boring Company, Proof Rock 2 will do exactly that, relaunching directly off the monster to begin digging its fifth tunnel in Las Vegas.

[00:04:36]Now, if you couldn't tell, this is a genuinely different way of treating a tunnel boring machine. Historically, TBMs have been enormous customuilt systems designed around single projects.

[00:04:47]Proof Rock is being operated more like a piece of reusable industrial equipment.

[00:04:51]The Boring Company even uses the same tunnel design across every project. So the company does not have to reinvent the wheel for every project. All three updates this week are progress reports towards the Boring Company's target for Proof Rock. The company is aiming to dig faster than 1 mile per week, which would make Proof Rock six times faster than its predecessor. For context, that is still about four times slower than a garden snail. But in the world of tunneling, that's already plat mode. AI is moving fast, faster than most people realize. Even Nvidia CEO Jensen Hang says it's starting to feel like early AGI. And that means the gap between people who use AI and those who don't is about to get very real. But here's the important part. This isn't about replacing humans or killing creativity.

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[00:06:27]So, grab your spot using the link in the description, and get ready before it starts. Speaking of companies rethinking how things are built from the ground up, Tesla had some new things to say about the semi this week. Tesla semi-program lead Dan Priestley shared some fascinating details about how Tesla approached the semi. And one thing became very clear very quickly. Tesla never treated the semi like a traditional truck with a battery shoved into it. Most heavy duty trucks on the road today still follow design rules shaped by diesel engines decades ago.

[00:06:58]The engine placement, the cooling systems, the frame structure, the aerodynamics, even the way the cab sits on the chassis, all of it was originally designed around the needs and limitations of a massive diesel powertrain. Tesla threw all of that out and started from scratch. One of the biggest places that shows up is aerodynamics. According to Priestley, roughly half of the energy required to move a heavy duty truck down the highway is spent just pushing through air. That means every improvement to air flow creates a chain reaction across the entire vehicle. A more aerodynamic truck needs less battery to travel the same distance. Less battery means less weight. Less weight means less stress on the body, and less mass makes the truck even more efficient. On top of that, that idea shaped almost every decision in the semi's design. Rather than treating the battery as a separate component dropped into a traditional truck frame, Tesla integrated the battery structure, frame rails, and drivetrain into a single unified platform, similar in concept to how modern passenger cars use a uni-body structure. Tesla also hardmounted the cab directly to the frame. Traditional trucks often allow more flex in the cab mount because they are managing constant vibration from large diesel engines. The semi does not have that problem. So, its structure can be simpler, stiffer, and more efficient. And every single one of those decisions, Priestley said, was evaluated against one question. Does this make the truck cheaper and better to operate? That matters because the semi effectively serves three customers at once. The driver who spends hours behind the wheel, the fleet owner responsible for uptime, maintenance, and operating costs, and the shipper, whose cargo needs to arrive on time. Tesla had to satisfy all three simultaneously. And that same operating philosophy shows up in one of the semiis less talked about features. And it might be one of the most practical things about the entire truck. Picture a refrigerated trailer sitting in a parking lot overnight.

[00:08:57]Inside, thousands of pounds of perishable food needs to stay cold. To keep that cargo at temperature, most refrigerated trailers carry their own separate diesel-powered refrigeration unit mounted on the front of the trailer. These units burn fuel continuously, sometimes more than a gallon of diesel every single hour while running loudly and requiring their own separate maintenance schedule on top of the truck itself. It is essentially a second engine that exists for one purpose, keeping things cold. Tesla's solution is called EPTO, which stands for electric power takeoff. Instead of relying on a separate diesel refrigeration unit, the semi powers the trailer directly from its own battery pack through an integrated electric connection capable of delivering up to 25 kW continuously. To understand why that is feasible, it helps to know just how much battery the semi is carrying.

[00:09:50]The longrange semi packs 822 kwatt hours of usable battery capacity, while the standard range version carries 548 kwatt hours. For context, a typical electric carries somewhere between 60 and 100 kwatt hours. The semi is carrying roughly 10 times that. Powering a refrigeration unit that draws 25 kW is relatively speaking not a heavy ask for a battery of that size. And since refrigeration systems cycle on and off rather than running at full blast the entire time, the semi can realistically support refrigerated cargo for long stretches. Now, while the semi is rethinking what a truck can do on the road, Tesla is also quietly pushing forward what its cars can do in a parking lot. Tesla is rolling out a small but surprisingly meaningful update to one of its oldest autonomous driving features. Actually, Smart Summon, often shortened to ask, can now move up to 8 mph as part of full self-driving version 14.3.

[00:10:49]Tesla AI confirmed this change this week, noting the feature is now roughly 33% faster than before. Now, that may not sound dramatic at first. 8 mph is still basically jogging speed, but the update matters because Summon has always been one of Tesla's clearest public demonstrations of what autonomous driving actually looks like in everyday life. The feature has a long history.

[00:11:12]Back in early 2016, Tesla introduced the original version of Summon with Autopilot 7.1. At the time, the capability was extremely simple. Owners could stand outside the car and use the Tesla app to move the vehicle slowly forward or backward into a garage or parking space. Even then, the idea felt futuristic. The car was moving without anyone inside. A few years later, Tesla expanded the feature into Smart Summon.

[00:11:36]Instead of only creeping forward or backward, the car could now navigate through parking lots toward its owner.

[00:11:42]Early versions were rough around the edges and things got even harder after Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors from newer vehicles and moved towards a visiononly system. But from that transition came actually smart summon released in 2024. The feature rebuilt Summon from the ground up using the same AI and camera systems powering Tesla's broader full self-driving stack.

[00:12:03]Instead of relying on proximity sensors, the car now interprets its environment visually much more like a human driver would. Parking lots are actually harder than they look. They are chaotic, poorly marked, and full of unpredictable movement at close range. The speeds are low, but the complexity is high. And that is part of why this Actually Smart Summon update matters. At speeds of up to eight miles per hour, Actually, Smart Summon now becomes a legitimately usable feature.