I reckon this flamethrower does two things. The snapshot suggests spontaneity the reality was that Trudeau carefully planned and rehearsed his move. The thing about Musk’s whimsical tweets is that they work like that photograph of Pierre Trudeau pirouetting behind Queen Elizabeth. It strengthens the community around Musk by offering his fans a way to interact with him and own a piece of his infrastructure company. It suggests that Musk can turn his fanciful ideas into reality. I suspect the whimsy has a purpose: it makes The Boring Company seem fun, and it’s likely to generate goodwill, in addition to revenue. As for the flamethrowers, the inspiration appears to be a Beyoncé concert. There are the “Lego-like” construction kits Musk has promised, made from the sludge excavated from the tunnels. (Fortunately for IRL Gary, the pineapple isn’t under the sea.) Gary is how Musk explains how slowly most conventional borers go: the snail is 14 times faster than a conventional tunnel boring machine. The company has a mascot, a snail named Gary - a real-life version of Spongebob Squarepants’ pet - that lives in a pineapple habitat. But The Boring Company also seems to be a place where Musk is letting his whimsy run wild. What does all this have to do with flamethrowers? It’s possible the hat and flamethrower sales are a way to raise more money for Musk’s newest startup without taking on debt or diluting ownership. The project will require other permits, but the LA has indicated it’s willing to fast-track the test tunnel. The Boring Company is also seeking approval from the city of Los Angeles to build a test tunnel, and so far, a haul route for 80,000 cubic yards of dirt has been approved.
(The test site didn’t require city permitting.) The test tunnel, which extended for 160 feet, was enough to convince the city of Hawthorne to allow The Boring Company to extend it for another two miles. In January 2017, The Boring Company began digging a massive hole in SpaceX’s parking lot - or perhaps, more correctly, 16 feet below the parking lot. And two hours after that: “I am actually going to do this.” Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging…” About an hour later, he named his venture. That’s also the genesis of The Boring Company itself: on December 17th, 2016, Musk tweeted, “Traffic is driving me nuts. It’s appropriate that the not-joke flamethrower tweet was how Musk announced the sale.
In April, the company raised $112.5 million in equity, 90 percent from Musk and the rest from 31 others. Twenty thousand flamethrowers at $500 a pop meant about $10 million in revenue in about 100 hours. By February 1st, the flamethrowers were sold out. The flamethrower went up for sale on January 27th (though some alert Redditors found the order page earlier), and I immediately bought it. On Christmas Eve, he’d evidently sold enough $20 hats, bringing in about $1 million for the company. Last December, Elon Musk tweeted: “After 50k hats, we’ll start selling The Boring Company Flamethrower.” Musk often says things that sound like jokes but are not - especially on Twitter.