- Why is Elon building bricks.
- Traffic is so destroying, acid on the soil it's horrible.
Get your discount bricks here.
- It's supposed to be way more durable.
(upbeat music)
- This is the fire extinguisher for The Boring Company.
Another one of Elon's save the world projects.
This time it saved the world from terrible traffic
and by building tunnels.
In December of 2018, so almost two years ago,
I went and saw the very first thing that The Boring Company
has ever really done.
I literally stood five feet in front of Elon
as he pulled a Tesla model X out of the boring tunnel.
And then he stood right there
and talked about the boring tunnel for like 30 minutes.
- Let's try every solution possible.
The thing about tunnels is that you can go 3D underground.
There's no limit to how deep you can go.
They're weatherproof so you will not hear, see or feel
the tunnels being created.
You have to make transport 3D.
You can weave flooring system tonal network into the fabric
of a city without changing the character of the city.
- But there was one part that he talked about
that really intrigued me, it was the boring bricks.
- About 15% of tunneling cost is just trucking the dirt out.
In other tunneling situations, they actually truck the dirt
from tunnel out and truck new dirt in which makes no sense.
So we're gonna make bricks out of the dirt from the tunnel
and then sell the bricks.
The tunnel could actually pay for itself with just bricks.
Like a lot of these things are really quite elementary,
but are not done.
If anyone shows up and as these bricks
for affordable housing, it's free.
- After we talked about it for a little bit,
I looked over at my friend, Zach,
and I was, that's pretty cool.
- I'll buy a brick.
- You'll buy one?
I'll buy a couple of bricks.
So it's been almost two years since that.
And I did buy one and actually I did buy two
then gave one to my friend Anwar back when I toured
the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin,
I thought it'd be a cool gift, it's super unique.
So these are supposed to sell for 10 cents a brick,
which is incredibly cheap.
This is the version one brick.
They made 500 of these bricks.
Some of the dirt they took out of that tunnel,
they call it the muck.
It's like this wet dirt that they get out
from under the ground.
They take that and they kind of shape it in the form
of a brick and they let it sit out for a few days
and they flip it back and forth like a patty.
- And then after that,
they take it and put it in this giant compressor machine
and it compresses it and it puts the logo on it.
Well, when Elon saw this come out
and he saw The Boring Company and how on the edges,
it's kind of like cut and ruined,
he wasn't satisfied with that.
He's like, I don't wanna sell a brick,
even if he's selling it for 10 cents,
that has this like messy edge.
This is according to an employee that told me about this.
And so he took the first 500 bricks that they made
and he just gave it to the employees
that actually worked on the tunnel.
I bought this for $200 and I bought two of them.
So I spent $400 for two bricks
that are going to cost 10 cents in the future.
I'm very good at investing and things.
Since the event that night,
The Boring Company did pick up one important customer,
the Las Vegas Convention Center.
And they're almost done with their first project.
So this is the Las Vegas Convention Center
and you can see behind me,
this is usually where all the booths are during CES
and the check-in.
And it's just shut down right now because of COVID.
They actually have a testing center here
at the convention center, but Elon Musk and
the boring tunnel is full force building their tunnel,
right there, and that is going
to be one of the main stations.
This is 24/7 building the tunnels.
Now you can see some of the drilling, boring machines,
boring like they're boring holes in the ground.
We haven't heard anything about them using the dirt from
these tunnels in Las Vegas and building bricks out of them.
Maybe they're abandoning that, I don't know,
but it is cool to see the process.
This is going to be the world's first functioning,
boring tunnel, Las Vegas, Nevada.
In the future, they wanna be able to like run it
to all the different casinos and hotels.
But for now they're working 24/7 to try to get
these tunnels built super fast so that Elon can show
the world, we can build tunnels, we can build them faster
than what most people build them for and we can build them
for a 10th of what most people build them for.
But I really wanted to test this thing out.
When Elon was talking about this,
he said that it would be cheaper than at Home Depot.
- So we'll be selling bricks at 10 cents a brick,
which is less than at Home Depot,
which I'm told is 25 cents a brick.
- Well, I went to Lowe's and I picked up some bricks.
Look at all those bricks.
(upbeat music)
- These are the four most common bricks that they had sold
at Lowe's hardware store.
This is a red clay brick, and this is 53 cents.
This is a red clay brick that is used.
This one is 58 cents, this costs 5 cents more
than a brand new brick.
So why would you buy, maybe the used ones are harder
because they've been out longer.
I'm not quite sure a brick expert can tell me.
This cinder-block brick has metal in it.
I'm not sure why it has metal in it,
but there's metal in it and this cost 71 cents.
And this is just your regular gray cinder block brick.
And this one is 43 cents.
So this one is the cheapest of all of them at that 43 cents
and the boring brick is claimed to be 10 cents.
The thing that I like about this brick
versus these other ones is you can tell,
it looks like a Lego, it really does look like a Lego.
Even on the back, Elon referenced this
when he first talked about it looking like a Lego.
- Bricks that fit into each other
and like giant sized Lego kits.
- Even though it's only 10 cents and it's way cheaper
than what these guys are,
it's supposed to be way more durable.
So drop tests off of the pool slide with each one of these,
let's start from a low height and then start dropping it
and just see what happens with it.
I'm gonna make this test very scientific.
Chest high.
(upbeat music)
- Okay, a little Hawthorne, California dust on the side.
Red brick coming down.
(upbeat music)
- Same thing, got a chip that came out of the side of it,
but nothing big.
All right, used red brick, is it stronger?
(upbeat music)
- Oh, okay, used red brick that cost more,
I wouldn't buy that one.
Cinder block brick with metal inside.
(upbeat music)
- Did not break.
Cinder block brick.
(upbeat music)
- Oh, cinder block, all right.
Two of them did not pass the test and now we go higher.
Four stairs up, no, let's go five, five stairs up
I'm gonna try and drop in that same spot.
(upbeat music)
- Did not break in half.
(upbeat music)
- Did not break in half,
but almost broke my Sony camera that's really expensive.
Oh, this one's hard to do.
The one of 500 Tesla Boring Company brick.
(upbeat music)
- Did not break in half.
(claps hands)
- We're going up to the top.
Metal brick.
(upbeat music)
- Did not breaking in half.
(upbeat music)
- Oh, boring brick.
(upbeat music)
- Oh, what am I doing with my life?
We've got some damage on here, side, it's a little beat up.
We lost a little bit of it.
This corner is broken off a little.
(upbeat music)
- Did not break.
(upbeat music)
- Oh!
(claps hands)
- That's, I mean a traditional brick,
Hunter can you move that guy?
Boring Company brick, this is sad.
If it withstands the fall from here, it is clearly stronger
than the one that costs four times more, five times more
than it at the store.
(upbeat music)
- Is that not conclusive proof that the Elon brick
is stronger for 10 cents.
If he can really sell it for 10 cents, that's pretty good.
I think just for good measure to show its durability,
we go one more time and I'm going higher.
Even higher Boring Company brick.
(gentle music)
- Kind of sad that I did the last one.
Why did I have to do the last one?
It was going so well and it looks so much stronger.
It's still beat the other one and that was a lot higher.
And I did a little spinny spin on that one.
(gentle music)
- And this one is the most durable
out of our super scientific tests.
But the one thing I'm incredibly happy about is,
check out the logo, it's still completely intact.
So I can take this, set it into my studio
and we've still got an official Boring Company brick.
All right, it's getting super sweaty let's go inside.
Bricks everywhere.
All three of these bricks that cost more broke before
the Tesla, before the Tesla,
before The Boring Company brick broke.
So we know these are just as strong
or stronger than your bricks that cost way more.
Good job, Elon Musk, a great idea
for selling bricks for cheap.
Is it just a pipe dream?
Will Elon ever come out with the boring brick?
I don't know, there's a lot of things that he says
and then he says, there'll be out soon.
And then it takes years and they never come out.
I mean, will we ever have a Tesla Roadster?
Like he announced three or four years ago, I am not sure.
Even though the employee told me that it's just about
the way that this logo is stamped.
Maybe there's more to the story about getting
into the brick business that Elon either doesn't wanna spend
the time on, cause it's going to take a lot of time
and effort and maybe not make as much money,
or maybe it's not gonna be 10 cents like he claimed
and it's gonna to cost a lot more.
Elon Musk has been tweeting a lot over the last couple
of weeks about the Las Vegas boring tunnel.
I still don't understand the logistics
of one car going through a tunnel one way
and then having to go up an elevator.
But I'm sure Elon will prove us wrong
like he's proved many people wrong over the years.
And the brick cool idea.
I'd say Elon, give to people what they want.
Give them some Boring Company bricks.
I never broke this one.
There we go.
Bye brick.
It's not that the company is super boring and it's not fun.
It's that these tools are called the boring tools.
They're like the boring machines.
Boring, they bore holes in the ground.
That's why it's called The Boring Company.
- And layers, of course, I forgot to mention layers.
- I don't know the legalities of being able to say
that we're going to sell Lego kits,
probably going to have to change the name Elon,
but maybe he'll call it not-a-Lego kit
and then he'll sell it that way, I don't know.