Musk, who also owns a tunnelling firm called The Boring Company, created the competition to find faster and cheaper ways to bore tunnels.
Currently, tunnelling systems are 14 times slower than a snail and cost from $100m-$1bn (£73m-£730m).
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The group of 30 students, known as the Warwick Boring team, reached the shortlist of 12 teams, out of nearly 400 applicants.
The competition, which takes place in Los Angeles this summer, focuses on how quickly competitors’ machines can bore tunnels. All teams will build their own prototype and demonstrate its operation to build 30m long and 500m wide tunnels. Other finalists include university teams from MIT, ETH Zurich in Switzerland, TUM university in Munich in Germany, as well as industry tunnelling professionals.
Team members are STEM students, from various fields including mechanical, electrical, system engineering, physics and mathematics.
Sanzhar Taizhan, founder and co-project lead at Warwick Boring, said: “The project is like a roller-coaster with ups and downs. We have spent hundreds of hours designing and engineering the product. However, there is no time to rest, and we need to keep working hard on building the first prototype and do well in the summer. Our team is very talented and the University of Warwick is strongly helping us to achieve our goals.”
Dr Alan Bloodworth, a lecturer in civil engineering and one of the academic advisors to the team, said: “This is indeed a fantastic achievement by the team. They have shown great confidence, self-belief and a ‘can do’ attitude, as well as careful attention to high quality engineering and technical solutions. It is a diverse team that has come together with a shared objective to design and build better for a sustainable future that is a great showcase of what young engineers are capable of. We look forward with great anticipation to the final.”
The Warwick Boring team has launched a crowdfunding campaign on its website to fund its entry.
