[senthil_rajasek]

"Which is why they need to get their first paid job so they can prove it."

Shouldn't the boring company prove that it works before they get offered the job?

[Bromskloss]

Is that necessary? If it turns out that their machine isn't 10 times faster than others', that's just their own problem.

[buvanshak]

Not sure. Did finishing in 1/10th time part of the contract? If not, then it we can think of the '10 times faster' claim to be bullshit which was only meant to win the bid...

[Dylan16807]

There's no advantage to promising more than needed to get the contract, and there's a big disadvantage in that projects universally tend to take too long, whether the tech is 10x better or not.

[Johnny555]

Based on other transit tunneling projects, even if it just came in on time and on budget, that'd be a huge win.

[Obi_Juan_Kenobi]

They're making tunnels in LA. Presumably some results from that were used as part of the proposal.

[lallysingh]

Isn't it prohibitively expensive to make a tunnel yourself?

[ceejayoz]

Musk has posted video from the tunnel they made themselves.

[mlindner]

They're not being paid for the job so why shouldn't they be allowed to try?