These will supposedly make roads redundant
If we are to take Elon Musk’s word for it, the future of transportation lies nowhere near the current road network. And by nowhere near we mean deep down below. Or up in the sky, as others suggest.
Companies that see flying cars as a solution to bottlenecking traffic are popping up like mushrooms. Elon Musk’s Boring Company, on the other hand, wants to bury city traffic. Literally.
For that to happen, humanity would need underground tunnels. Lots of them. Inside those tunnels, cars and passengers would travel on electric pods, which Elon Musk calls skates.
A skate is basically a fully-autonomous flat plate on wheels, powered by an electric motor. Judging by the looks of one such skate, the battery pack would fit nicely under the floor. Add a vacuum shell to it and you get a Hyperloop pod that can travel at over 600 mph (965 km/h).
Without the shell, each skate can zip through the urban landscape at 125 mph (200 km/h). Furthermore, its shape allows a smaller tunnel diameter (somewhere under 14 ft/4 m), thus less building costs and more room for other tunnels. Oh, and the whole concept involves zero emissions.