Elon Musk's Boring Company granted permission to construct tunnels in California

Elon Musk's rather aptly named Boring Company has secured permission from the Californian City Council in Hawthorne - where Musk's company is based - to begin construction of a two-mile long test tunnel under public roads and utilities.

Currently, Musk has only been able to construct tunnels on property surrounding the SpaceX headquarters, which is where the Boring Company is based.

The 44-feet test track's main aim will simply be to ensure that all the basic components of the plans actually work - afterwards, the council can request that it be filled with concrete slurry or soil.

As to whether citizens will feel any disturbances cause by the drilling directly underneath their feet, senior director for construction for SpaceX Brett Horton said: "They won't even know we're there."

"Everything that we’re doing is underground - there will be no construction crews, trucks or excavators seen at street level."

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Musk's idea to build a network of tunnels first appeared on his Twitter account in December 2016 as a way to get around the problem of traffic build-up. 

"Traffic is driving me nuts," he tweeted. "Am just going to build a tunnel boring machine and start digging..."

One month later, Boring Company was officially launched and since then, Musk has been on a high-speed mission to make his dream become a reality - and he's made some astonishing progress.

In July, Musk announced that they had completed their first tunnel, running from the SpaceX headquarters to the car park across the street.

Later that same month, the Tesla founder tweeted that he had secured "verbal approval" from the US government to build its first long-distance tunnel running from New York to Washington, DC.

His announcement, however, may have been premature as local government officials declared that they were unaware of any plans and had had no contact with Musk or anyone from SpaceX or the Boring Company.

Whilst the White House's Office of American Innovation did comment that they had held "promising conversations" with Musk, it denied that it had granted approval for the project.