Boring Company Giga Texas Tunnel Road Panel Issues, Mitigations & Probable Solutions

In this video, I thought it might be good to talk about some updates to the Boring Company tunnel and discuss some issues they have had to overcome during the construction process that has ended up delaying the operational status of the tunnel.

Although it is meant to help alleviate new vehicle transport operation bottlenecks, increase efficiency and ultimately, allow for autonomous movement of the new vehicles, the delay in getting the tunnel operational has had minimal impact to Giga Texas production to date. However, the need for getting this tunnel completed is starting to become an issue that will need to be rectified by the end of the year.

 The main issue that the Boring Company has had with the tunnel is the use of fiber reinforced concrete road surface panels meant to be installed at the bottom of the tunnel and provide the surface for vehicular traffic. There seem to have been two main issues. The first is cracking and breaking of the concrete panels after only slight use, and this may indicate a problem with the fiber mix in the concrete itself during the time of manufacture. It might also indicate the wrong type of fibers were used in the manufacturing process.

 As I discussed on my Boring Company tour video in both Part 1 and Part 2, part of the tunnel installation here at Giga Texas was for testing of new processes, materials, the Prufrock-3 and procedures, and it is possible they were experimenting with different concrete blends with these panels and discovered what did not work.

 The second big issue they had to rectify had to do with the initial pitch of tunneling and it appears the pitch was initially too shallow and they increased the tunnel boring machine pitch just a few meters into the initial process. The result was an odd double pitch to the first several meters of the tunnel on the west side, and this may have added to the road surface panel cracking as the pitch was not even and created installation issues. To correct this, the crews removed three tunnel ring segments from the west entrance, eliminating one of the two pitches and smoothing the entry into the tunnel.

 Over at the Boring Company Bastrop, Texas facility during a recent drone flight, we see they are manufacturing new road panels, but this time using rebar reinforcement. Perhaps in addition to the fiber reinforcement not being sufficient, they decided rebar offered the additional strength needed to support the weight of new vehicles coming out of Giga Texas, in particular, the Cybertruck.

 All in all, it seems the Boring Company now has a solution that is about to be implements, and hopefully we are able to see this in action soon at Giga Texas and they are able to get the tunnel finished and operational by the end for 2024.

Thank you to Patreon Dessie Doolan for his help putting these thoughts and ideas together.