Elon Musk's Chicago Loop May Be Ambitious to a Fault
*By Britt Terrell*
Elon Musk is a man with ideas...a lot of them.
But Vanity Fair's Maya Kosoff wonders if his latest project may be more than he can handle.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO won his bid to build a tunnel from downtown Chicago to O'Hare International Airport, partnering with Mayor Rahm Emanuel to modernize the city's struggling transportation system.
The task, though, may be particularly tricky.
"With public infrastructure, you have contracts with the government, and digging a tunnel underneath the city literally disrupts people's lives. I think it's more impactful so therefore it's kind of the most difficult (problem) to solve," Kosoff said.
The issues are only exacerbated by the fact that the airport link is far from Musk's only project. His SpaceX still aims to send humans to Mars by 2014, and Tesla is developing new cars and trucks, even as it continues to struggle with meeting production targets and burns through cash.
And in her article, ["Is Elon Musk Scamming Chicago?"](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/is-elon-musk-scamming-chicago), Kosoff points out that the cost and the time it will take to construct the Chicago Express Loop may also be far higher than anticipated.
"It's supposed to cost a billion dollars," Kosoff said. "But look at the cost of other public infrastructure projects in the country. It cost a billion dollars to build less than a mile of the expanded Q train on \[New York City's\] Upper East Side."
Musk estimates the 18-mile track will take three years to complete and says his Boring Company - not taxpayers - will foot the bill.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/elon-musks-next-big-endeavor).
In January alone, the gaming sector has seen three major acquisitions. Yesterday, Sony added to the flurry of M&A activity in the gaming space, snatching up game developer 'Bungie' for $3.6 billion dollars. Renee Gittins, executive director at the International Gaming Developers Association, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
General Motors reported its Q4 earnings Tuesday. While chip shortages impacted sales and revenue last quarter, Paul Jacobson, GM Chief Financial Officer, told Cheddar chip availability has gotten better since Q3. This is crucial as GM has pivoted its focus toward electric vehicles. It recently announced it will be building a new battery plant in Michigan, making $35 billion in EV investments, and producing a million electric vehicles by 2025.
Google’s philanthropy arm, Google.org, recently announced a $10 million grant for the AARP Foundation to aid in teaching digital skills to low income older workers. As the implementation of hybrid work expands, a greater emphasis is being placed on helping workers 50 years old and up — especially among women and people of color — to be digitally literate in order to keep the workplace generationally diverse. Lisa Marsh Ryerson, president of the AARP Foundation, joined Cheddar News to talk about the curriculum of the partnership. "Those of us who are 50 and older are not digital natives, so we do have a learning curve that we have to address," she noted.
AT&T announced earlier today it is spinning off its media properties in WarnerMedia in a merger with Discovery in a $43 billion deal.Scott Rostan, founder and CEO at Training The Street, joined Cheddar to talk about what the unwinding of the telecom giant's Time Warner media properties means for investors. "I think the investor sentiment is they're digesting the new information, and they're looking into the dividend, especially the reduction of the dividend," said Rostan, noting the transaction allows AT&T to focus on its core telecommunications business.
