Elon Musk’s infatuation with tunnels has taken a turn, but where it leads is anyone’s guess.

The founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla electric cars has unleased his newest venture, The Boring Co., on an old parking lot outside the Hawthorne headquarters of SpaceX. There, a boring machine is completing the entrance to a tunnel he hopes will one day carry cars to LAX and beyond.

There’s just one big problem — the company hasn’t gotten permits to dig beyond the rocket company’s property, at the corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and 120th Street.

But, in typical Musk fashion, the project is moving full-speed ahead.

Musk is now seeking regulatory safety approvals to dig the first 2 miles of his futuristic subterranean vision, Hawthorne interim City Manager Arnie Shadbehr said Thursday.

“What they are doing now is only happening in their parking lot,” he said. “We have awhile to go.”

Boring entrance done

Meanwhile, the finishing touches are being put on the roughly 600-foot-long bore pit and tunnel entrance 20 feet beneath the ground-level lot.

On Wednesday afternoon, Musk tweeted that his tunnel-boring machine, named Godot, was making fast progress on his grand plan for underground freeways.

“No longer waiting for Godot,” Musk said. “It has begun boring and just completed the first segment of tunnel in LA.”

The celebrity-tech entrepreneur, whose wealth is estimated by Forbes to be about $16.7 billion, outlined his hopes for the project during an April TED Talk.

“Right now, I think one of the most soul-destroying things is traffic,” Musk said. “It takes away so much of your life. It’s horrible. It’s particularly horrible in L.A. We’re trying to dig a hole under L.A. This is to create the beginning of what will hopefully be a 3-D network of tunnels to alleviate congestion.”

He has met recently with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and other politicians around the country to promote his plans for advanced-transportation systems like the Hyperloop concept he introduced in 2013.

Hyperloop mass-transit systems would move passengers at hundreds of miles an hour through pressurized tubes on pods, using electric power. But Musk has said his tunnels would be made to move cars, pedestrians and bicycles.

Boring regulations

The state Division of Occupational Safety and Health, Los Angeles County Fire Department and other regulatory agencies are reviewing The Boring Co.’s plans to dig under Hawthorne now, Shadbehr said.

The first 2 miles of the traffic-transport tunnel would travel from the parking lot along Crenshaw Boulevard, and then east under 120th Street. It would stop just beyond Hawthorne Boulevard, where additional permits would be needed to continue.

While the tunnel starts at a depth of about 20 feet, it would gradually deepen to 43 feet below ground, according to Shadbehr.

“We’re currently getting comments from all the underground utilities and agencies who have live underground substructures” that could be impacted by the project, Shadbehr said. “Tunneling has to meet all the regulatory standards and requirements by the state before we even consider issuing permits. We’re not there yet.”

Driving under LA

The transport tunnel would have standard 12-foot-wide traffic lanes, and be deep enough to avoid conflicts with underground infrastructure, he said.

In a video rendering of Musk’s vision, electric cars are ferried into the tunnel system on underground elevators and moved around by an automated control system.

But success hinges on whether The Boring Co.’s engineers can tweak Godot, the boring machine, to make it faster and more efficient than any other tunnel-carving machine before it.

The goal, he said, is to make the device faster than SpaceX’s pet snail, Gary, which Musk said is much faster than existing tunnel-boring machines.

On Wednesday, Musk said that Godot hadn’t yet been made into a racing tunnel-borer.

“Gary (the snail) is a speed demon,” he wrote. “Long way to go before we beat him/her.”

Tunneling experts have called Musk’s plans to create a machine many times better than existing ones ridiculous.

“Just think about if someone said they’re going to design a new automobile and it’s going to be 1,000 percent more efficient,” said one expert, who asked not to be named. “Would you believe them?”

But Musk has proven detractors wrong before. He has used new technologies to make rockets and cars he was previously told were impossible.