The Boring Company Uses Tesla Model 3 Sleds To Shuttle Shipping Containers Through Its Tunnels

The shipping containers fit "like a glove."

The Boring Company Liner Truck

Photo by: The Boring Company

Nico DeMattia

By: Nico DeMattia

Oct 20, at 2:19pm ET

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The Boring Company found an interesting use for Tesla Model 3s that weren't being driven: use them as freight sleds. Back in August, the Elon Musk-backed company showed off a remote-piloted sled called a Liner Truck made using a Tesla Model 3 battery pack and powertrain. It brings preformed concrete tunnel segments through the tunnel to the boring machine. Now, though, TBC shows that it can even pull a standard shipping container through the tunnel, even if it only has about an inch worth of room to spare on either side.

TBC posted a clip to X, showing off the Liner Truck carrying a shipping container through the tunnel, and it looks like its top corners are going to scrape against the inside walls. A pebble in the pavement could cause a big enough bump to make the container and tunnel connect. So the Liner Truck better drive perfectly, but that will be tricky because the Liner Truck is remotely operated. TBC doesn't want anyone in the tunnels, as part of its Zero-People-In-Tunnel philosophy. So it might be tough to operate that Liner Truck and its freight with such a small margin of error.

The Liner Truck is a strong little thing, though. Despite using a Model 3 battery pack and powertrain, this little guy is capable of towing more than a some heavy-duty pickups. According to TBC, it can haul 22,000 pounds, which is how much each load of those preformed concrete tunnel sections weighs. That's about as much as an F-250 Super Duty with a Power Stroke V8.

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Admittedly, the little Liner Truck can only go 12 mph while towing that much weight, and it has 28 miles of range. It is a Model 3 powertrain after all. But it isn't built for speed or distance, it's built to carefully, slowly bring heavy freight through very narrow tunnels.

With TBC just raising $3 billion in September, pushing its evaluation to $23 billion, it has a lot of tunneling to do. Most of that $3 billion came from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), so it now plans to dig 150 kilometers (93 miles) of tunnels there. Additionally, it just begun digging another 10 miles in Nashville, Tennessee. All of those tunnel-digging machines need those concrete tunnel liners, so they need more of these Liner Trucks if it wants to "solve traffic." That sound you just heard was all of our eyes collectively rolling, because TBC's only functional tunnels are the few miles worth in Vegas, but hey at least these little sleds are neat.

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