I imagine it’ll also probably be hell on tires. You’d need W- or Z-rated tires to do that and those are $$. Perhaps smooth concrete will mean lower rolling friction along with lack of sudden maneouvers. Still, going that fast is expensive in all sorts of ways.
Heat kills tires. Flexing heats up tires. More load, more (rotational) speed and less pressure all increase the amount a tire has to flex.
High speed automotive tires are expensive because they need to withstand all the flexing that comes from running at high speed with the kind of inflation pressures that deliver what the owners of the high dollar cars they go on consider a reasonable ride. They have to be fairly soft/flexible tires for the same reason. A hard, stiff tire would not deliver the kind of traction people expect from a German driving machine.
Basically you have speed, weight capacity and ride quality and you only get to pick two. So long as you can compromise somewhere everything is easy and cheap. A boring old light truck tire will live a long life at 150mph so long as you run it at a very high pressure and light load.
If you want to see this principal in action look at small trailer tires (like snowmobile and jet ski trailers). They carry a ton of weight (for their size) and run at very high speeds (a sub 20" tire is really spinning fast at highway speed) by running very high pressure with a stiff sidewall and the kind of rubber that makes butter look like a high friction surface.
So yeah, tires are the least of their technical issues.
And it's best not to think about what happens if a car stops for any reason, or worse, catches fire. I do not believe any escape hatches were part of the demo and cost calculations.
Tunnels looked wide enough to get out and walk thru. They’ll need ventilation and will probably get maint / esc hatches for regs. Dunno about ADA. Didn’t seem like a detail worth hashing out in a debut tho.
True, lots of info yet disclosed & some impt questions raised. Seems like an Elon intro where it’s vision first and then lots of details sorted out later and/or changed last minute (lookin at you BFR).
Devil's advocate chiming in here... What happens if you're in an enclosed tube, like in say a commercial airliner, and it stops suddenly or catches fire?
There's escape options - whether you can use them depends on a number of factors
Challenge with Elon's tunnel is you're stuck underground with no escape options, and maybe nowhere for the smoke to go
As well as escape options most tunnels in EU, also have smoke extraction, fresh air insertion options which help make it easier for passengers to evacuate.
