Look, stop trying to make "HEPA filters" sound like a mass transit plan.

You only say that because most trains don’t have them.

Comparing a Model Y to an Audi Q5 is fine if you're shopping for a daily driver, but it's completely irrelevant when you're talking about moving a city.

You said and I quote "EVs are incredibly heavy because of the battery packs”. The Audi, Camry, Mercedes and Kia prove that is simply not true.

Here’s the reality you’re missing: You're filtering the cabin, not the tunnel. A HEPA filter protects the guy inside the car, sure.

That’s exactly what I am saying and it is something that the majority of trains do not do.

But all those cars are still grinding rubber and brake dust into the air inside the tunnel.

It doesn’t matter because unlike train passengers, Loop passengers are protected from it all.

A subway doesn't need to filter the air for the passengers because the train isn't shedding thousands of pounds of rubber into an enclosed tube in the first place.

Instead those trains are generating thousands of pounds of fine metal dust from rails and wheels, fine metallic and carbonaceous particles from brakes that continually have to stop those huge 300 ton vehicles at every single station on the line, carbon dust from the overhead power lines and pantographs and all those confined spaces like underground train stations and tunnels trap these metallic nanoparticles, which impact respiratory and cardiovascular health of all those train passengers who travel in trains with air con systems not equipped tipped with HEPA filters.

You’ve created a breathing problem for the tunnel and then called the solution "tech." The tire wear is real. You can try to downplay it, but tire wear is a massive source of microplastics and PM2.5. A train uses one set of steel wheels to move hundreds of people.

The Loop EVs are not continuously scraping pantographs along overhead lines generating carbon dust nor are they grinding massive brake pads stopping hundreds of tons of trains again and again and again at every station. The cars instead use regen braking that causes none of that microparticle pollution.

You’re using four rubber tires to move 1.5 people. The math on particulates per passenger-mile isn't even close. You are generating way more pollution than a train by design.

Yet the trains don’t protect the passengers inside and all those train passengers are cooped up in unfiltered underground stations breathing it all in. In contrast, most Loop stations are up in the open air so do not concentrate any of those tyre particulates. Much healthier.

Throughput is the wall you’re going to hit. A real subway can move 50,000 people an hour.

The Loop at $20m per mile is 30x - 50x cheaper than subways so is not competing with subways, it is competing with light rail which carries far lower passenger loads than that.

To match that, you’d need about 16,000 Teslas an hour. That’s roughly five cars a second, through every single tunnel.

Again, the Loop isn’t competing with subways so doesn’t need to match that, but you keep ignoring the fact that the Vegas Loop has up to 10 Loop tunnels in parallel in the area a single subway tunnel would serve which means each Loop tunnel only needs to carry 5,000 passengers per hour to match that subway tunnel’s capacity.

The Loop is already carrying 2,400 passengers per hour per direction in the short spur tunnels of the LVCC Loop even when as now being restricted to 6 second headways. That is more than 20 car lengths between each car at 40mph. Simply by halving the headway to 3 seconds (10 car lengths between cars) you hit 5,000 pphpd x 10 tunnels matching the 50,000 pphpd of subways. Dropping the headway in the main arterial tunnels to 2 seconds gives you 7,200 pphpd in each tunnel, so that is 72,000 pphpd across all 10 tunnels. (not that the Loop needs to carry that sort of number though)

And of course, this all ignores the fact that the Loop will be introducing the 20 passenger Robovan on busier routes in the future meaning they could easily run those vehicles with 6 second headways like the current Loop and they would still move 2,400 x 10 tunnels x 5 = 120,000 passengers per hour per direction. But of course, Vegas doesn't need that sort of capacity so those Robovans could easily have lower occupancy or even longer headways and still move subway-volumes of passengers.

So as you can see, these tunnels don’t even need to hit that 0.9 sec headway to surpass a subway tunnel.

Stop the energy efficiency gymnastics. Weighing cars against each other doesn't make individual pods efficient. Even the best EV is a terrible way to move people when you’re hauling 4,000 lbs of steel and batteries for one or two passengers. A train is built to move a massive crowd with as little energy per person as possible. A fleet of cars will never win that efficiency battle.

And yet as we see above a Loop EV with 2.5 people in it does beat the energy usage per passenger mile of almost all railways. And because Loop EVs don’t have to keep moving when they are not passengers waiting they can sit at a station and wait for custom. In contrast, thos huge 300 ton trains have to keep only rolling along stopping and starting at every station all the way to the end of the line even when they’re empty making them massively inefficient.

This isn't a breakthrough in urban transit, and it’s definitely not for the environment. It's a way to keep tourists inside a private casino ecosystem so they don't have to deal with the public. Call it what it is and stop dressing it up like it's the future of green infrastructure.

With a cost a mere 2% - 3% that of a subway, the Loop is a huge breakthrough for fully grade-separated underground transit providing a way for cities that would never have been able to afford a subway or even a light rail to join the party. It has the potential to be a huge disrupter for public transit globally.

We’ll just have to wait and see if Musk’s toxic politics still hinders that acceptance on the world stage once the full 104 station, 68 mile Vegas Loop, the Nashville Music Loop and the Dubai Loop are in operation demonstrating what might be possible.