That Time Elon Musk Scammed Investors

I want you to envision $675 million in your head. Got it? Great. Now think, if you had to spend that money on an efficient, mass transportation system, how would you do it? Maybe you would build a subway or a train, or if you were feeling really frisky, a high-speed rail system similar to Japan’s Shinkansen system, that being an extremely fast, efficient, and safe modern-day public transport system. But what if you don’t care about being efficient? What if you don’t care about safety? And most importantly, what if your real goal is to spend the least amount of money so you can pocket the rest?

Introducing the Las Vegas Loop. An incredibly stupid, slow, and most importantly, unsafe mass transit system. Do you know how subways and trains are built with multiple cars with multiple seats so they can hold a lot of people? Well, what if we replaced that with Tesla’s that can hold a maximum of 5 people? That seems like a good idea. Speaking of cars, you know how the main benefit of cars is that you can go wherever you want, whenever you want? Well, despite the fact that we’ve replaced subway cars with actual cars, this is still a public transportation system, so have fun waiting.

But Tesla’s are fast right? Sure it might not be as efficient, but at least the car is going at max speed, right? Sorry, but wrong again; the cars are maxed out at approximately 30 mph. That’s right, the new era of transportation will be conducted entirely within the speed limits of a school zone baby.

Ok, but Tesla’s are self-driving, and machines don’t make mistakes, so at least the system is safer than your average train right? WRONG. So wrong, in fact, that it could quite literally kill somebody. The fact that the cars aren’t even self-piloting is the least dangerous thing about this joke of a transportation system. The cars are driven in a claustrophobic one-way tunnel, which means if there’s an accident or backup of any kind the entire system is backed-up. And if you happen to be in an accident, good luck even getting out of the car. The tunnel is so tight that there isn’t even enough space to open the door to escape. And even if every single Tesla driver is perfect and never speeds or gets into an accident with another vehicle, Tesla’s are still terribly built. They have one of the lowest ratings among car stability and have an incredible propensity to spontaneously catch fire, so something is inevitably going to go wrong with this system given enough time.

The moral of the story? Just ride a train.