· The Warwick Boring Team is a student-led project designing, creating and building a tunnelling machine, which they are currently racing at Elon Musk’s tunnelling competition organised by the boring company

· Whilst at the competition in Las Vegas, the team are able to unveil their innovative machine

· The team head home on the 12^th September, and hope to bring home an award with them

A team of students called The Warwick Boring Team are in Las Vegas, Nevada to competing in Elon Musk’s the Boring Company’s tunnelling competition, where they are showcasing their innovative machine for the first time.

A group of 27 students, known as the Warwick Boring Team are in Nevada, USA, competing in Elon Musk’s the Boring Company Tunnelling competition.

Current tunnelling machines are 14x slower than a snail, and cost from $100million to $1billion per mile, therefore the race to make a faster and cheaper machine is heating up.

Having been shortlisted as one of 12 teams out of nearly 400, the Warwick Boring Team aim to make our transport greener, cheaper and faster in future with their novel tunnelling machine, which will be competing against other top Universities including MIT, TUM and ETH Zurich, and industry tunnelling professionals.

With support from the School of Engineering, WMG, numerous other sponsors in the industry and the University of Warwick the students have made a machine that once scaled up the design is expected to be 80% faster than standard machines that typically dig one mile in 8-12 weeks. Moreover, the aim is to dig at a cost that is 10X cheaper than traditional machines that typically would cost $100m - $1bn per mile to construct tunnels we use today.

Sanzhar Taizhan, Founder and Co-Project Lead at Warwick Boring comments:
“After almost a year of creating, designing and building we are thrilled to see the machine here in the flesh and finished and finally in Vegas competing. The entire team have worked flat out for the last few months to get it together once we were allowed in the labs after the COVID-19 restrictions eased.

“We are so excited to see our machine working and see how it compares to other competitors. I am so proud of the team to making it to this stage no matter what the outcome is once we are out there.”

Tanner Hatzmann, the technical director at Warwick Boring adds:
“It would typically take years to create, design and build a novel machine, however we have been able to do it over the last year, even during lockdowns. The Warwick Boring tunnelling machine is exciting as it has – unique features here –. We cannot wait to see it in action and have everything crossed for a win.”

ENDS

10 SEPTEMBER 2021

NOTES TO EDITORS

High-res images available at:

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/july_2021/image_3-_warwick_boring.jpeg
Caption: The Warwick Boring team in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA with their tunnelling machine
Credit: University of Warwick

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/july_2021/image_4-_warwick_boring.jpeg
Caption: The Warwick Boring team in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Credit: University of Warwick

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/july_2021/image_2-_warwick_boring.jpeg
Caption: The Warwick Boring team in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Credit: University of Warwick

For further information please contact:

Alice Scott
Media Relations Manager – Science
University of Warwick
Tel: +44 (0) 7920 531 221
E-mail: alice.j.scott@warwick.ac.uk