Elon Musk has a history of challenging conventional limits in transportation and infrastructure. From electric vehicles at Tesla to reusable rockets at SpaceX, his projects have consistently pushed into new territory. The Boring Company, his tunneling venture, has so far focused on short-range systems like urban loops and convention center transit. Now, with rising infrastructure costs and growing interest in high-speed travel, there’s renewed attention on long-distance tunneling.
What is Elon Musk planning that could connect continents?
The Hyperloop—first introduced by Musk in 2013 as a high-speed vacuum tube system—has yet to move beyond prototypes. No commercial system exists, and progress has been slow. Still, Musk has suggested a far more ambitious idea: building a tunnel beneath the Atlantic Ocean to connect New York and London.
According to reports, he claims it could be done at a fraction of traditional costs—up to “1,000 times less.” That estimate raises questions about feasibility, scale, and whether tunneling could move beyond city transit into large-scale international projects.
The $20 trillion plan to connect two continents
Elon Musk is backing a $20 trillion project to connect New York and London through a tunnel under the Atlantic. The idea is to cut the trip to under an hour using magnetic trains inside a low-pressure tube. The Boring Company, Musk’s tunneling venture, claims the construction could cost 1,000 times less than traditional methods. At full speed, the trains would move at nearly 4,800 km/h.
Musk introduced this concept in 2013, when he published a paper outlining the Hyperloop—a high-speed transit system that initially focused on connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles. Since then, the Hyperloop has stayed in the experimental phase. While he’s company and others have built test tracks in places like India and China, none have gone beyond trials. Cost and technical hurdles remain major barriers. In recent years, The Boring Company has turned its attention to building more traditional underground tunnels for cars.
The concept of a transatlantic tunnel has been around for more than a century. Engineers and futurists floated the idea as early as the 1900s, but it never moved forward due to overwhelming costs and engineering limitations. Stretching over 3,000 miles, such a tunnel would need to run either beneath the seabed or be suspended underwater. For comparison, the Channel Tunnel between France and the U.K. is 23 miles long and took six years to build. At this pace, an Atlantic tunnel could require centuries to complete.
Reducing costs and attracting investments
There’s still no clear plan, budget, or schedule for the project. Even with the tech moving forward, the idea of racing under the Atlantic remains mostly theoretical. If ever built, a tunnel like this could do more than shorten travel times. It might change global trade routes, influence economic ties, and alter how nations connect. From an engineering perspective, it would be a huge step, pushing the limits of what’s possible in building infrastructure beneath the ocean. But the scale of the technical, financial, and political challenges makes it a long shot for now.
The ocean floor pressure is a setback
The extreme pressure deep beneath the Atlantic poses a major challenge for any tunnel design. Skeptics argue the cost estimates defy established engineering and logistical realities. The extreme pressures of the ocean floor, the sheer scale of excavation, and geopolitical hurdles would present enormous challenges for any such endeavor. Yet the surrounding conversations are no longer limited to hypothetical forums or distant-future speculation. With global transportation in search of its next leap forward—and the billionaire track record of making the improbable seem inevitable—this idea is starting to gain traction in places that matter.