Elon Musk's Boring Company Lays Off 5 Employees

Billionaire Elon Musk's infrastructure and tunnel construction firm Boring Company has laid off five employees, barely a month after it unveiled its first tunnel in the US.

According to the Recode, on Friday, the company terminated five employees, at least some of whom helped construct that first underground passageway.

The spokesman said that the employees were fired for performance reasons as part of regular performance reviews, the report added.

"The Boring Company is hiring for over a dozen roles, pursuing a number of projects across the country, and planning to grow significantly in 2019," he was quoted as saying in the report.

Musk had unveiled the prototype tunnel for his envisioned zero-emission, high-speed transit system - including a surface-to-tunnel car elevator and a Tesla modified - to run along the tunnel track, outside SpaceX's California headquarters in mid-December 2018, according to the Fast Company.

In Chicago, the company was reportedly slated to build a "Loop" which they described on their website as: "Loop is a high-speed underground public transportation system in which passengers are transported on autonomous electric skates travelling at 125-150 miles per hour." 

In order to implement this system, the company will have to dig the tunnels and deploy the infrastructure to move the "autonomous electric skates" inside the tunnels.

"Electric skates will carry between 8 and 16 passengers, or a single passenger vehicle," according to the Electrek.

Electric car making firm Tesla, also founded by Musk, announced last Friday it was laying off seven per cent of its full-time staffers in an attempt to reduce costs and increase profits.

All employees at the company were informed about the development in an email.

Musk-led private spaceflight company SpaceX also announced that it would lay off 10 per cent of its workforce to fund other projects. 

SpaceX, which has a contract with NASA to deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS), is now planning to start flying astronauts to the ISS for NASA later this year.