lol the dude couldn't even finish the concrete properly and had to apologize for a bumpy 50mph ride.
Comparing the cost of boring an empty tube with a rail in it is laughable compared to the civil engineering of a functioning public tunnel run with regulated light, power, finishing etc...
Musk sat around giving nonsense tours to all the major media outlets of a halfbaked hole because this is his advertisement. You realize most car companies spend over a billion dollars a year of ads right? BMW does 2-3 billion a year in ads and they have a paper value right now LOWER THAN TESLA. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are earned every time a Public Relations person at a car company can land this type of coverage. It's worth far more than the cost of the tunnel. This "make bricks" thing is effing hilarious too because of how desperately he is grasping at the Henry Ford charcoal comparison (the precursor to Kingsford Charcoal). What is this...the 20th different fake product/idea he has floated while still figuring out how to build cars?
It's because CBS or NBC has zero reason to come to give him free coverage if he doesn't have a zany stunt to show off. If there was simply progress toward making a high range battery, or improved software, or autonomous driving upgrades, all of which cost hundreds of millions or billions to develop, they'd have no excuse to put stuff on social media because people are dumb as shit and can only digest so much technical data but love videos of stuff that looks cool. Instead he can piece together a series of promotions using a few million here and a few million there.
Kids trapped in a cave getting worldwide coverage while I'm on a trip to China? Spend a million outsourcing a sub design to a random company and then claim credit for it:
https://www.times-standard.com/2018/07/06/wing-inflatables-assisting-with-thai-soccer-team-rescue/
The "but wait there's more!" gag only goes so far, or maybe not since our country is dumb as rocks.