What’s that you say? Unless you have awoken from a coma, or have missed today’s news, today Musk unveiled and demonstrated the efficiency of his latest venture: underground transportation technology. Back in 2016 Musk boasted that he planned to start digging tunnels to provide relief from LA’s fabled freeway congestion. Now, hearing of this, most native New Yorkers will scoff. After all, we have had tunnels under Manhattan and a subway system since the late 19th century. Back then, tunnelling was a relatively easy technology to implement as Gotham sits on bedrock. Most every other urban oases do not and, up to now, their citizens could only look eastward towards NYC with envy.

Musk’s Boring Co. is Anything But

In recent years international tragedies have provided an opportunity for Musk to offer aid. As previously mentioned, Elon Musk is the father of six boys. That may have been the reason for his generous offer via Twitter to provide assistance for the 12 boys and their leader trapped in a cave in Thailand this past summer. As numerous rescue attempts were made over a two week period, Musk directed Boring and SpaceX staffers at the site to fashion a kid-sized submarine from a liquid oxygen transfer tube. Later Musk joined his team, but even his presence was not enough to convince the Thai government to abandon standard rescue procedures. However, Musk was allowed to leave the capsule (which had been tested and proven successful) in Thailand for future rescue attempts.

Using Technology to Further Humanitarian Efforts

Also, when disaster struck Puerto Rico a second time, plunging the entire island into darkness, it was Musk who sent Tesla batteries to the battered tropical paradise where they will remain in use until power is fully restored. Granted this is grandstanding to a degree, but it also demonstrates a major humanitarian effort. At a time when little aid or even kind words were coming from the Oval office, the Governor of New York was sending aid,and utility repair crews into the region, and many grassroots and relief organizations were doing whatever they could. By sending needed battery power as part of the rescue and recovery effort a voice who could make a positive contribution to help people in the stricken area to recover was heard: Elon Musk’s.

So we’re established that Musk is both a humanitarian and a trailblazer (there’s enough ink about SpaceX’s mission to Mars so we will not detail that here. Google it.) What does building a tunnel under LA do for his street cred? Is he serious about building a tunnel under LA as a model for other cities across the U.S.? Apparently so. Musk’s 1.14-mile long prototype to relieve traffic congestion is considerably more than just a reinforced hole in the ground. Reporters who braved the inaugural tunnel ride (which did not include Mr. Musk as a passenger), reported a smooth ride not unlike that at an amusement park. Which is fitting because Musk himself refers to the project as “a weird little Disney ride in the middle of LA”. For this weird little ride, Boring company built specialized tunneling equipment but to date, has been prevented by citizen groups from building another tunnel in his “LA network” by a group of citizens who took Musk to court and won.
Washington to NYC in 29 Minutes?!

That’s okay, because what LA is skittish about, drew raves in Chicago and Baltimore (which is looking to implement another commuter route to Washington D.C.) As we go to print, Musk is said to be drafting proposals for those cities, even as he states that his urban tunnels are ‘in the prototype stage’. Nor has he given up on LA just because its well-heeled citizens cannot get behind him. Currently Boring Co. is planning another LA tunnel, this time to connect Los Feliz, East Hollywood and other lower socio-economic regions with Dodger Stadium.

Across the nation, bloggers to seasoned journalists are asking if Musk is serious. After all, he built a castle in LA at the tunnel exit. At the grand opening party, a full-time staffer was hired to be its ‘Watchtower Guard’ and to hurl epithets with a French accent (as in the Monty Python movies). Yet his engineers and technicians are first rate and his ingenious approach to conveying traffic through his tunnel evolved from placing vehicles on an electric skate as propulsion, to self-powered vehicle transit. For the Baltimore-Washington project Musk is currently proposing to whisk passengers between these cites, and even to New York in his Hyperloops, a high-speed capsule inside a vacuum tube. Sound familiar? It should. That was the technology that Musk sent to Thailand to rescue the trapped scouts.

By this time, the light should be beginning to dawn. Everything Musk conceives is meant to dovetail some project at varying stages of its development. And utilizing these inventions as globally and as creatively as possible Musk furthers his branding, and his personal and corporate credibility. With Musk, a man of apparently great heart, it also appears that he believes that one hand washes the other.

The post Elon Musk: Modern Day Buck Rogers or Charlatan? appeared first on Koshka.

It is not the first time a major corporation has been closely associated with one person. There have been many precedents. A decade ago, Howard Schultz returned to Starbucks (the company he had led to major achievement) when his successor took the multinational brand to the brink of extinction. Policies Schultz presumably cast in stone had been discarded as executives eager to create their legacy overextended the brand’s reach. Starbucks exponential growth spawned the observation/joke that there was a Starbucks on every corner. Despite a dismal ROI, Starbucks stores proliferated like bunnies until the economic downturn of 2008 all but shuttered the chain. On the brink of bankruptcy, Starbuck’s board returned to the past to find its future and reinstated Howard Schultz as CEO.

Schultz returned to perform necessary housekeeping. He closed thousands of stores, and reined in the product lines which now included a line of less than popular ice creams (but they were delicious). Schultz refocused the business away from self gain to selflessness. The customer and the grower/suppliers were to be treated like gold, because they were the heart and soul of the Starbucks enterprise. A less dilute product line starring, would you believe, coffee was instituted. In addition, Starbucks initiated the paradigm shift towards providing superior customer service. Slowly, then in legions, customers came back.

Reboot What Worked

Customers returned to environments that were spotless, and ideal for socializing. The stores were now gathering places where everyone would be welcomed and treated as individuals with each and every beverage hand crafted one at a time. And what beverages they were! Exotic coffees were sourced across the globe and their growers were paid fairly. The massive, espresso machines with their precise, chrome-plated gauges cost if not a king’s ransom, then more than anyone’s first car. Attention was paid to the last little detail, and every customer complaint was addressed immediately. Within a year Starbucks stock had recovered, realizing gains of 143% YoY in 2009.

Schultz stayed on through 2017, but shortly after he passed the baton yet again, a racial bias incident once more caused consumers to question the brand’s sincerity. Following the public’s outcry, it was Schultz, not CEO Kevin Johnson, who appeared at a press conference to both apologize and set out steps to remediate bias across the chain. Schultz mandated that all the stores be closed for a day and the staffers ‘retrained’ to become aware of and sensitive to ‘unconscious bias’. He may not punch a clock, but to many Starbucks loyalists, Howard Schultz is Starbucks.

Did you think we were straying off point? The point is that Elon Musk is Tesla, Tesla is Elon Musk. This past week Musk agreed to step down as Tesla’s Chairman, yet is allowed to remain as the Company’s CEO. For those readers who are unaware, Musk was fined $40 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a Tweet (yes, you heard right) that stated he was taking the company private and had the funding to buy out stockholders at $420 a share. When in fact, there were no plans in place, no investors, and no funding to buy out anybody. Both sides reached an agreement for Tesla/Musk to pay the fine but not admit wrong doing. This move ensured that Tesla stock, which dropped a significant 14% after the announcement, would eventually rally, and in effect, “the farm would be saved”.
Maybe Not Such a Bad Move…

As with Starbucks, Tesla Motors has had to step back from the way it performs daily operations, take a deep breath, and regroup- for now. Also as in the Starbucks scenario, Tesla had been teetering on the edge of the precipice for some time. The firm has not made a dime in 15 years, despite Musk’s repeated insistence that it is on the verge of doing so. This could actually be true in the near future. Across the globe there is keen interest in Musk’s Tesla Model 3 sedan, an electric car for the masses. Unlike Starbucks, however, where Schultz is the mastermind who guides and directs his former enterprise to greater success, Musk’s genius needs to be reined in at times. He is idea, not process-driven, and employs any means to achieve his intended end. Some of his upstart ideas, such as announcing what was essentially a hoax buyout, will not fly with the U.S. government not the SEC. And, for the public to buy the Model 3, first there must be a Model 3 in production. In short, the fines were seen as essentially a move to harness Elon Musk and to save him from himself. Don Quixote-like, the man does appear to tilt at windmills.

What happens next at Tesla Motors? Still in the picture at Tesla (he is the majority stockholder), but moved to the background, Musk is free to settle any stockholder lawsuits resulting from his Tweet. If this allows him any free time, he can continue to commandeer his vast technological empire, dividing his time between Tesla and SpaceX, his San Francisco Bay area enterprise which designs, produces, and launches rockets and spacecraft. Its goal? To enable people to ultimately reach and live on other planets. Clearly, Mr. Musk is not the entrepreneur next door. Back at Tesla, the goal for all concerned is for the Model 3s to roll off the assembly lines sometime in 2019. For a few years now,there have been charging stations at Interstate rest stops bearing the name ‘Tesla”. However this author has not yet observed a line of cars waiting for their turn to recharge.

Tesla always seems to be a company poised on the brink. From electric vehicles, and driverless cars, to SpaceX’s rockets to Mars, Elon Musk’s mind appears so diversified, that his two enterprises suffer. We propose that he continues as the resident genius at both or either, and allows new management to direct ONE project to completion. This way the enterprises associated with Elon Musk would leave the world of Buck Rogers and enter the stratosphere that the rest of us occupy daily: reality. If it takes a staggeringly high fine to mandate him to put on the brakes, then so be it. As for moi, I’m living for the day I can pull off I-95 and recharge my Model 3 -at a Tesla station of course!

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