Tunnelling contract - The Boring CompanyInitially I was a bit skeptical… but after looking into it I actually do think there’s a decent chance this Tunneling contract is with Elon Musk’s 'The Boring Company'.
The agreement with Pyrogenesis specifies it is an exclusivity agreement that restricts both the supplier and the buyer; this tunneling company has agreed to only purchase torches from Pyrogenesis, but also Pyrogenesis will sell torches for tunneling purposes to
ONLY this client. The tunneling company surely saw that Pyrogenesis is one of the world’s leading experts in torch technology, and building an exclusive relationship with them puts them at a competitive edge over others in the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) industry.
On the other side, for Pyrogenesis to agree to this, given that they know there is a market for torches for tunneling, they had to have checked the market for TBM manufacturers. I firmly believe that this company is a
manufacturer and not only an end-user, as most Engineering & Construction companies who use tunneling in their business purchase the TBMs from manufacturers and do not do R&D and design of their own machines. The list of tunneling companies is quite long, however the manufacturer list is much shorter.
Examples of TBM manufacturers from around the world:
- Robbins (USA)
- Herrenknecht (GER)
- Akkerman (USA)
- Hitachi Zosen Corporation (Japan)
- Terratec (Australia)
- Seli (Italy)
- NFM Technologies (France)
- The Boring Company (they only manufacture for themselves)
- Long list of Chinese manufacturers as well (several American/Canadian/European companies’ TBM segments were bought up by Chinese Companies)
From the above list, the number American manufacturers is
VERY SHORT:
- Robbins
- Akkerman
- The Boring Company
Those are 1/3 odds.
PYR management surely did their DD and strongly believe or have been given assurances that their client will have a large future demand of torches, enough to warrant the two-way exclusivity agreement. Having said that, Elon Musk is one of the foremost innovators of our time. For one of his companies to innovate once again, using plasma torches as opposed to the conventional disc cutters mounted in the cutter head, makes a lot of sense. And when it comes to demand, the company is in it’s infancy stages, and there are already plenty of projects popping up all over the USA where cities want in on the public transportation systems
Loop & Hyperloop. China is also a very interested market, and Musk announced in 2019 that he would be launching ‘The Boring Company China’.
FROM THE BORING COMPANY WEBSITE (boringcompany.com/faq):
Currently, tunnels are really expensive to dig,
with some projects costing as much as $1 billion per mile. In order to make a tunnel network feasible, tunneling costs must be reduced by a factor of more than 10. Second, we’re working to significantly increase the speed of the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM). TBMs are super slow.
A snail is effectively 14 times faster than a soft-soil TBM. Our goal is to defeat the snail in a race. Ways to increase TBM speed [most important one listed below].
- Tunneling R&D. In the United States, there is virtually no investment in tunneling Research and Development (and in many other forms of construction). Thus, the construction industry is one of the only sectors in our economy that has not improved its productivity in the last 50 years.
The Boring Company recently put out their 3
rd generation boring machine, called the ‘Prufrock’, which they worked specifically on increasing the power of the machine,
modifying the cutter design, and adding an automated segment erection system.
https://electrek.co/2020/02/25/elon-musk-boring-company-third-generation-machine/ Acquiring and testing PYR’s torches may be early work on their 4
th generation boring machine. As Peter stated in the NR,
An important benefit in using plasma-based tools versus traditional methods, is its potential to drill through all geologies with greater flexibility in size diameter, while at the same time being more economical, efficient and environmentally friendly. If it really is Elon Musk’s company that Pyrogenesis has teamed up with, that is a MAJOR win both financially and in the PR department. No entrepreneur brings about as much hype and technology awareness as he does.
MazerRR