Elon Musk

Elon Musk Wants Your Help in Naming His New Tunnel-Digging Machine

From the Elongator to Tunnel McTunnelFace -- people are sharing their ideas.

May 5, 2017 2 min read

Want to help Elon Musk? The billionaire entrepreneur on Thursday took to Twitter to take suggestions from his 8.5 million-plus followers for the name of The Boring Company’s first tunnelling machine.

The Boring Company, which sparked from Musk’s frustration over Los Angeles traffic, is the high-profile executive’s newest venture that seeks to build underground tunnels to reduce traffic congestion in cities. In December 2016, Musk took to Twitter to share his idea to build a “tunnel boring machine,” which no one thought would actually come to fruition. That is, until a SpaceX employee posted a photo on Instagram of the company’s first tunnelling machine being built in the SpaceX parking lot and Musk shared more extensive plans during a TED talk.

Now that the secret’s out, Musk is doing some crowdsourcing for a name.

Thinking about a name for our first tunneling machine …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 5, 2017

However, when it comes to choosing names, Musk might do so with caution this time. Musk was disappointed after he couldn’t name the Tesla's upcoming sedan the Model E because Ford held the patent. It's called Model 3 instead. If Musk had been able to use the name, the Tesla models would have spelled out S-E-X.

@elonmusk If the first machine is 'the second', what is 'the first' machine? ?
— Bahubali Adi (@reviewero) May 5, 2017

I know what you're thinking … then why not "the Third"? Well, I've learned my lesson about 3's.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 5, 2017

So, if you’re going to make a suggestion, extra points for cleverness and satisfying Musk’s dirty sense of humor.

Here are some we’ve seen so far:

@keithdcohen I do love Banks, but perhaps we should reserve his names for the droneships
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 5, 2017

@hunterbarnes144 Been done
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 5, 2017

@elonmusk The Elongater
— Scott Johnson (@scottjohnson) May 5, 2017

@elonmusk William Burroughs
— Dana Hull (@danahull) May 5, 2017

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