- Why is Elon building bricks. - Traffic is so destroying,
acid on the soil it's horrible. Get your discount bricks here. - It's supposed to be way more durable. (upbeat music) - This is the fire extinguisher
for The Boring Company. Another one of Elon's
save the world projects. This time it saved the
world from terrible traffic and by building tunnels. In December of 2018, so
almost two years ago, I went and saw the very first
thing that The Boring Company has ever really done. I literally stood five
feet in front of Elon as he pulled a Tesla model
X out of the boring tunnel. And then he stood right there and talked about the boring
tunnel for like 30 minutes. - Let's try every solution possible. The thing about tunnels is
that you can go 3D underground. There's no limit to how deep you can go. They're weatherproof so you
will not hear, see or feel the tunnels being created. You have to make transport 3D. You can weave flooring system
tonal network into the fabric of a city without changing
the character of the city. - But there was one part
that he talked about that really intrigued me,
it was the boring bricks. - About 15% of tunneling cost
is just trucking the dirt out. In other tunneling situations,
they actually truck the dirt from tunnel out and truck new
dirt in which makes no sense. So we're gonna make bricks out
of the dirt from the tunnel and then sell the bricks. The tunnel could actually pay
for itself with just bricks. Like a lot of these things
are really quite elementary, but are not done. If anyone shows up and as these bricks for affordable housing, it's free. - After we talked about
it for a little bit, I looked over at my friend, Zach, and I was, that's pretty cool. - I'll buy a brick. - You'll buy one? I'll buy a couple of bricks. So it's been almost two years since that. And I did buy one and
actually I did buy two then gave one to my friend
Anwar back when I toured the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin, I thought it'd be a cool
gift, it's super unique. So these are supposed to
sell for 10 cents a brick, which is incredibly cheap. This is the version one brick. They made 500 of these bricks. Some of the dirt they
took out of that tunnel, they call it the muck. It's like this wet dirt that they get out from under the ground. They take that and they
kind of shape it in the form of a brick and they let
it sit out for a few days and they flip it back
and forth like a patty. - And then after that, they take it and put it in
this giant compressor machine and it compresses it and
it puts the logo on it. Well, when Elon saw this come out and he saw The Boring
Company and how on the edges, it's kind of like cut and ruined, he wasn't satisfied with that. He's like, I don't wanna sell a brick, even if he's selling it for 10 cents, that has this like messy edge. This is according to an employee
that told me about this. And so he took the first
500 bricks that they made and he just gave it to the employees that actually worked on the tunnel. I bought this for $200
and I bought two of them. So I spent $400 for two bricks that are going to cost
10 cents in the future. I'm very good at investing and things. Since the event that night, The Boring Company did pick
up one important customer, the Las Vegas Convention Center. And they're almost done
with their first project. So this is the Las Vegas Convention Center and you can see behind me, this is usually where all
the booths are during CES and the check-in. And it's just shut down
right now because of COVID. They actually have a testing center here at the convention
center, but Elon Musk and the boring tunnel is full
force building their tunnel, right there, and that is going to be one of the main stations. This is 24/7 building the tunnels. Now you can see some of the
drilling, boring machines, boring like they're boring
holes in the ground. We haven't heard anything
about them using the dirt from these tunnels in Las Vegas and
building bricks out of them. Maybe they're abandoning
that, I don't know, but it is cool to see the process. This is going to be the
world's first functioning, boring tunnel, Las Vegas, Nevada. In the future, they wanna
be able to like run it to all the different casinos and hotels. But for now they're
working 24/7 to try to get these tunnels built super
fast so that Elon can show the world, we can build tunnels,
we can build them faster than what most people build
them for and we can build them for a 10th of what most
people build them for. But I really wanted to
test this thing out. When Elon was talking about this, he said that it would be
cheaper than at Home Depot. - So we'll be selling
bricks at 10 cents a brick, which is less than at Home Depot, which I'm told is 25 cents a brick. - Well, I went to Lowe's
and I picked up some bricks. Look at all those bricks. (upbeat music) - These are the four most
common bricks that they had sold at Lowe's hardware store. This is a red clay brick,
and this is 53 cents. This is a red clay brick that is used. This one is 58 cents,
this costs 5 cents more than a brand new brick. So why would you buy, maybe
the used ones are harder because they've been out longer. I'm not quite sure a
brick expert can tell me. This cinder-block brick has metal in it. I'm not sure why it has metal in it, but there's metal in it
and this cost 71 cents. And this is just your regular
gray cinder block brick. And this one is 43 cents. So this one is the cheapest of
all of them at that 43 cents and the boring brick is
claimed to be 10 cents. The thing that I like about this brick versus these other ones is you can tell, it looks like a Lego, it
really does look like a Lego. Even on the back, Elon referenced this when he first talked about
it looking like a Lego. - Bricks that fit into each other and like giant sized Lego kits. - Even though it's only 10
cents and it's way cheaper than what these guys are, it's supposed to be way more durable. So drop tests off of the pool
slide with each one of these, let's start from a low height
and then start dropping it and just see what happens with it. I'm gonna make this test very scientific. Chest high. (upbeat music) - Okay, a little Hawthorne,
California dust on the side. Red brick coming down. (upbeat music) - Same thing, got a chip that
came out of the side of it, but nothing big. All right, used red brick, is it stronger? (upbeat music) - Oh, okay, used red brick that cost more, I wouldn't buy that one. Cinder block brick with metal inside. (upbeat music) - Did not break. Cinder block brick. (upbeat music) - Oh, cinder block, all right. Two of them did not pass the
test and now we go higher. Four stairs up, no, let's
go five, five stairs up I'm gonna try and drop in that same spot. (upbeat music) - Did not break in half. (upbeat music) - Did not break in half, but almost broke my Sony
camera that's really expensive. Oh, this one's hard to do. The one of 500 Tesla Boring Company brick. (upbeat music) - Did not break in half. (claps hands) - We're going up to the top. Metal brick. (upbeat music) - Did not breaking in half. (upbeat music) - Oh, boring brick. (upbeat music) - Oh, what am I doing with my life? We've got some damage on here,
side, it's a little beat up. We lost a little bit of it. This corner is broken off a little. (upbeat music) - Did not break. (upbeat music) - Oh! (claps hands) - That's, I mean a traditional brick, Hunter can you move that guy? Boring Company brick, this is sad. If it withstands the fall from
here, it is clearly stronger than the one that costs four
times more, five times more than it at the store. (upbeat music) - Is that not conclusive
proof that the Elon brick is stronger for 10 cents. If he can really sell it for
10 cents, that's pretty good. I think just for good measure
to show its durability, we go one more time and I'm going higher. Even higher Boring Company brick. (gentle music) - Kind of sad that I did the last one. Why did I have to do the last one? It was going so well and
it looks so much stronger. It's still beat the other one
and that was a lot higher. And I did a little
spinny spin on that one. (gentle music) - And this one is the most durable out of our super scientific tests. But the one thing I'm
incredibly happy about is, check out the logo, it's
still completely intact. So I can take this, set it into my studio and we've still got an
official Boring Company brick. All right, it's getting
super sweaty let's go inside. Bricks everywhere. All three of these bricks
that cost more broke before the Tesla, before the Tesla, before The Boring Company brick broke. So we know these are just as strong or stronger than your
bricks that cost way more. Good job, Elon Musk, a great idea for selling bricks for cheap. Is it just a pipe dream? Will Elon ever come out
with the boring brick? I don't know, there's a
lot of things that he says and then he says, there'll be out soon. And then it takes years
and they never come out. I mean, will we ever
have a Tesla Roadster? Like he announced three or
four years ago, I am not sure. Even though the employee
told me that it's just about the way that this logo is stamped. Maybe there's more to
the story about getting into the brick business that
Elon either doesn't wanna spend the time on, cause it's
going to take a lot of time and effort and maybe
not make as much money, or maybe it's not gonna be
10 cents like he claimed and it's gonna to cost a lot more. Elon Musk has been tweeting
a lot over the last couple of weeks about the Las
Vegas boring tunnel. I still don't understand the logistics of one car going through a tunnel one way and then having to go up an elevator. But I'm sure Elon will prove us wrong like he's proved many
people wrong over the years. And the brick cool idea. I'd say Elon, give to
people what they want. Give them some Boring Company bricks. I never broke this one. There we go. Bye brick. It's not that the company is
super boring and it's not fun. It's that these tools are
called the boring tools. They're like the boring machines. Boring, they bore holes in the ground. That's why it's called The Boring Company. - And layers, of course, I
forgot to mention layers. - I don't know the legalities
of being able to say that we're going to sell Lego kits, probably going to have
to change the name Elon, but maybe he'll call it not-a-Lego kit and then he'll sell it
that way, I don't know.
I'm guessing more brick.
Since when were bricks rated on their ability to survive being dropped? Seems more like you'd want to test compressive resistance than impact resistance. This video is not at all useful for actually determining which brick is better. :(
I guess on Mars those bricks will be quite in demand
Brick with metal. It is a dobie for supporting rebar to pour cement not really a building brick. I’d be keen to get some Boring pavers....
I would have liked to I've seen a bit of a dive into adobe bricks. Also, a compression test would have been much more informative than a "throw it off the pool slide" test. Still a fun watch!
Same stuff that’s on the outside, I’d assume.
Pulled from this article: https://interestingengineering.com/youtuber-puts-elon-musks-10-cent-boring-bricks-durability-to-test
“Clay + Subsidies”