Brett Williams Brett Williams is a Tech Reporter at Mashable. He writes about tech news, trends and other tangentially related topics with a particular interest in wearables and exercise tech. Prior to Mashable, he wrote for Inked Magazine and Thrillist. Brett's work has also appeared on Fusion and AskMen, to name a few. You can follow Brett on Twitter @bdwilliams910. Sign Me Up By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up! “This is basically interns and people doing it part time,” Musk said of his time commitment to the Boring Company. “We bought some second-hand machinery. It’s kind of puttering along but making good progress.” He estimated he only spends about "two or three percent" of his time on the tunneling project. It's fair to say that with Musk spending so little time and few resources on the project, we are a long ways off from zipping past traffic underground. Beyond just making the technology work, The Boring Company will likely be hamstrung by mountains of permits and environmental impact reports, you know all the general government hurdles you have to deal with when you want to dig underground. Musk also discussed his desire to develop a new boring machine that could potentially dig tunnels and reinforce them simultaneously, which would be much more efficient than the current rigs that spend their time split between the two tasks. “We have a pet snail named Gary,” he said to illustrate just how slow the machines work. “Gary is capable of currently going 14 times faster than a tunnel boring machine. We want to beat Gary. He’s not a patient little fellow, that will be victory. Victory will be beating the snail.” After the presentation, Musk tweeted out a link to the new company's website.