A sustainable future will require a change in how we take long-distance trips, but Musk has scuttled attempts to build high-speed rail to keep us in cars. Ashlee Vance has shown how the main ambition of Musk’s Hyperloop proposal, an unproven form of transportation using vacuum tubes to go long distances at high speeds, was to get California’s proposed high-speed rail system canceled:

"Musk had dished out the Hyperloop proposal just to make the public and legislators rethink the high-speed train. He didn’t actually intend to build the thing. With any luck, the high-speed rail would be canceled. Musk said as much to me during a series of e-mails and phone calls leading up to the announcement."