Rodrigo Molina

SCIENCE

MAN SAYS EXPERIENCE WITH

ELON MUSK'S BORING
COMPANY CHANGED HIS LIFE
Rodrigo Molina says it began with a $20 hat
purchase .

BY MIKE BROWN SEP. 22, 2018

R
odrigo Molina is a 25-year-old
from Murcia, in south east Spain.
He studies management and
marketing at the nearby Universidad
Católica de Murcia, and he’s also already
something of an entrepreneur, having
launched a company called Cannelle that
uses essential oils to stop cinnamon sticks
from breaking.

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He is also among Spain’s most ardent

followers of Elon Musk.

Musk does not command the same levels

of name recognition in Spain as he does in
the United States, though. His friends and
girlfriend, he says, never understood what
all the hype was about. Molina’s excitable
Reddit post in January is a testament to
his fandom — the announcement sees him
claim to be one of 10 people who had won
a visit to The Boring Company’s first test
tunnel in Hawthorne, California.

The email, typos and all, didn't seem real at first. But it
was. 

“I feel like we are in Charlie and the

Chocolate Factory,” Molina told Inverse
months prior to the trip.

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It’s an apt comparison, for some. Musk has

taken the role of company leader in a Willy
Wonka-esque direction. Musk is known for
approving new features on Twitter:

Tesla Model 3 Fan · Jul 9, 2018

@teslamodel3fan · Follow
.@elonmusk @tesla excellent
idea/feature request for remote
AC/overheat protection - point vents
to the (hot) seats to cool them down
#Model3

reddit.com
r/teslamotors on Reddit: Feature
Request: Aim AC vents down …
toward hot seat bottoms during
Elon Musk
@elonmusk · Follow

Ok
8:48 AM · Jul 10, 2018

3.3K Reply Share

Read 59 replies

His companies and the machinery that

brings these ideas to life seem to fade into
the background of his public persona,
giving the impression of a master inventor.
For all the grousing over how he interacts
with 22 million Twitter followers, nearly two
million of them have subscribed in the past
six months alone.

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Elon Musk's Twitter page. TWITTER

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“If Musk is Willy Wonka, this was the

equivalent of a Golden Ticket.”

The Boring Company is a typical example

of Musk’s atypical approach to starting
businesses. The digging venture was
announced in December 2016 through a
series Twitter posts lamenting the state of
Los Angeles traffic. Declaring that “traffic
is driving me nuts,” Musk said he was
“going to build a tunnel boring machine
and just start digging.” About an hour later,
a follow-up tweet christened the firm. Two
months later, a beaming Musk was on the
front cover of Bloomberg Businessweek
for his work on The Boring Company.

But there’s more than big promises driving

the entrepreneur’s cult of fans. Musk
notably weaves gratuitous pop culture
references into his online persona, making
references to cult sci-fi hits like Rick and
Morty and Hitchhikers’ Guide that seem
perfect for appealing to nerds. In October
2017, Musk announced the sale of $20
caps emblazoned with its logo as a
Spaceballs-themed method of raising
capital. He declared two months later that
the company would randomly choose a list
of 10 of the 50,000 people who purchased
limited edition caps to tour the site and
drive the company’s digging machine for
themselves. If Musk is Willy Wonka, this
was the equivalent of a Golden Ticket.

A Boring Company hat.

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“I almost deleted the email,” Molina says.

Sitting with his friends in the library, it
dawned on him that the cap he was
wearing had just scored him a tour of
Musk’s new venture. “I started to freak out!
It was quite difficult to stay quiet at the
library.”

Rodrigo in the library. RODRIGO MOLINA

As his friends greeted him with blank

stares, Molina was ecstatic. Having started
a company himself two years prior, Molina
venerated Musk, and his story was quickly
soon picked up by the Spanish press.

“It was quite funny, because they were kind

of making fun that some guy from Spain is
going to California to drive the boring
machine,” Molina says.

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Undaunted by his quizzical countrymen,

Molina didn’t simply book the next trip to
California, opting instead for a Musk-
inspired, cross-country itinerary so he
could also visit some of Tesla and
SpaceX’s key sites before attending the
July 22 hyperloop pod competition and
Boring Company tour. Here’s what he did.

GETTING FROM
SPAIN TO
CALIFORNIA

First stop: Miami, where the pair met up

with Molina’s brother and took a Tesla
Model S P100D for a test drive. The
Ludicrous Mode, another Spaceballs
reference, thrust the car into instant power
mode while the semi-autonomous
Autopilot mode took over for the duller
highway driving moments. Even his
girlfriend, not a Musk enthusiast, was left
impressed.

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Tesla’s Fremont, California factory was a

stop on July 16, with a tour organized by
Boring Company employees. The premises
is amidst an aggressive expansion plan, to
produce more than 5,000 Model 3
vehicles per week. The offices and
meeting rooms were named after
scientists like Einstein, and Molina
described the “big-ass factory,” a 10,000-
strong workplace that’s been operating for
just eight years, as “insane.”

“They were talking a lot of stories about the

machinery they have there,” he says,
referring to the high levels of automation
and robots. “I mean, it’s insane. How do
you manage everything at the same
moment? It’s like a symphony, you know?”

Tesla cars lined up outside the factory. RODRIGO MOLINA

The winners gathered in Hawthorne on

July 22 for the grand prize, on the same
day that SpaceX hosted its third
hyperloop competition just around the
corner.

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Despite his particularly hectic schedule,

Musk did, in fact, make a surprise
appearance during the event,
accompanied by his five children and then-
girlfriend, the musician Grimes. The
podium was built out of bricks fashioned
from dug-out dirt from the Boring
Company tunnel, a new business aimed at
cutting back on concrete production,
which alone accounts for 4.5 percent of
greenhouse gas emissions. The bricks are
set to go on sale around November for 10
cents per unit, free for affordable housing
projects.

“There are so many things in the world that

cause people to be depressed about the
future, or pessimistic,” Musk told the
teams in comments reported by The
Verge. “I think one of the things that you’re
doing is making people excited about the
future. Those things are rare. It actually
energizes me about the future.”

A PEEK AT THE
TUNNEL

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The hyperloop competition saw Musk in

his element: engaging directly with other
engineers who shared his excitement
about the future. While other CEOs have
tried to tap into the Steve Jobs-like ability
to be a businessman with actual fans, none
have been nearly so successful. People
wear his merch, depict him in fan art and
leap to his defense. In terms of social
media fandom, he’s in a league of his own
— with about 10 times the Twitter following
of the three major U.S. automakers
combined.

That was the Musk who greeted those hat-

buying fans, not the boss Musk of the late-
night emails, but the Musk that Robert
Downey Jr. sought out when seeking
advice for playing Tony Stark in Iron Man.

Elon Musk at the podium. RODRIGO MOLINA

The hyperloop grounds where Molina and

the other winners gathered was the
definition of carnival like: There was live
music, unlimited free ice cream, and a
Nintendo Wii-style 3D game where players
have to fly an image of themselves through
space.

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After the hyperloop competition, the

winners assembled for the grand prize:
Their descent into the tunnel. Molina
claims that only six of the 10 winners
actually showed up, a group that included
Electrek editor Fred Lambert from Quebec,
Canada (who bought five hats to boost his
chances of winning), plus winners from
Texas, Florida, New Jersey and Australia.
Some plus-ones bringing the total group to
11.

HELD TO STRICT
SECRECY

Molina and his fellow winners were held to

strict secrecy, but Molina did share some
details about the now functioning elevator
that will move cars and passengers
between the tunnel and the above-ground.

Loading video

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The system uses a Tesla-built skate that

can transport up to 16 passengers or one
car at speeds of up to 150 mph through a
“loop” configuration, or 700 mph through a
hyperloop. The Hawthorne City Council
recently gave the thumbs-up to extend
the test tunnel to a residential property, so
the firm can build a proof-of-concept
garage that lowers cars straight into the
ground.

“They used it to bring us our new hats, so it

was functional and looked the same as you
may have seen in some videos online,” he
says. “I think it is a good first version. I
hope we can see the final version soon on
the streets.”

The group topped their adventure off by

feasting on some Boring Company
marshmallows, toasted by the company’s
flamethrowers. The $500 devices went on
sale at the start of this year, with a 14-
ounce propane tank fueling a flame that
skirts under the 10-foot legal limit. The
devices, another Spaceballs reference,
were limited to a one-off run of 20,000,
with Musk delivering the first 1,000 in
June.

Tesla cars lined up outside the

factory.RODRIGO MOLINA