A concept rendering of an EV driving through a Boring Co. tunnel. Photo: Boring Company
2021 will see Elon Musk’s The Boring Company host its first tunnel construction competition, dubbed the “Not-a-Boring Tunnel Competition”, in which everyone from students and companies to hobbyists will race to devise and deploy their own tunneling solutions.
According to The Boring Company’s official page for the competition, participating teams will be tasked with boring a 30-meter tunnel with a cross-sectional area of 0.2 square meters.
The competition will feature three categories that winners will be chosen for: the fastest team to complete their tunnel, the fastest team to complete a tunnel with a driving surface which a remote controlled Tesla car will be driven on, and building a tunnel that gets as close to its target as possible.
The competition started out with a total of 390 teams from across the globe submitting their designs to The Boring Company for technical review.
In a tweet published yesterday, The Boring Company revealed that the review process had come to a close, and 12 finalists, aptly crowned The Digging Dozen, had been selected to advance.
Congrats to the advancing teams in the Not-a-Boring Tunnel Competition! Started with 390 competitors, down to the 12 finalists, aka The Digging Dozen.https://t.co/pgFoYqLU8H
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) February 12, 2021
Here’s a list of the 12 teams that passed technical design reviews and will be invited to compete for the three categories:
Biggus Diggus – Hobbyists – United Kingdom
CU Hyperloop – University of Colorado Boulder – United States
Dirt-Torpedo – DHBW Mosbach – Germany
HyperloopUC – University of Cincinnati – United States
MIT Hyperloop III – Massachusetts Institute of Technology – United States
Paradigm Boring – Memorial University of Newfoundland and Northeastern University, St. John’s – Canada and United States
Swissloop Tunneling – ETH Zurich – Switzerland
Team Badgermole – Hobbyists – India and United States
The Diggeridoos – Virginia Tech – United States
The Warwick Boring Team – University of Warwick – United Kingdom
TUM Boring – Innovation in Tunneling – Technical University of Munich (TUM) – Germany
UMD Loop – University of Maryland – United States
