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Elon Musk Demos Futuristic Car-Transporting Sled

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Instead of being stuck in traffic for hours on the I-5 in Los Angeles, inventor and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk wants everyone to hop in their car and then zoom on a sled at heart-pounding speed to their destination.

Musk posted a demo of one of these car-carrying electric sleds on his Instagram page. The idea is that these sleds would race through a network of subterranean tunnels at about 125 mph (200 km/h) before automatically switching from one tunnel to the next. [6 Ways Entrepreneur Elon Musk Is Changing the World]

"Would mean Santa Monica to Westwood in 5 minutes," Musk posted with the picture. The current travel time from Santa Monica to Westwood is about 20 minutes.

The sleds are part of his concept of building tunnels underneath Los Angeles to more rapidly transport people around the city, which he detailed in a recent TED talk.  The project will be called the Boring Company – after the boring process used to create the tunnels.

This isn't the only futuristic transit concept Musk has dreamed up. Musk is of course the mastermind behind the Tesla electric car. He's also proposed a superfast hyperloop, which would transport people through a giant tunnel from Los Angeles to San Francisco on a cushion of air. Prototypes of the hyperloop are currently being tested on a full-scale track in the desert in Nevada.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Tia Ghose
Tia Ghose
Managing Editor

Tia is the managing editor and was previously a senior writer for Live Science. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, Wired.com and other outlets. She holds a master's degree in bioengineering from the University of Washington, a graduate certificate in science writing from UC Santa Cruz and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Tia was part of a team at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that published the Empty Cradles series on preterm births, which won multiple awards, including the 2012 Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.