Of all the Elon Musk mini-controversies we've been collectively sucked into over the past decade or so, the one we put to bed last week might have been the "Elon Musk-iest."
It had everything: Innovation, rumor, miscommunication, assumption, futurism, minimalism, financial mystique, oneupsmanship, forgotten Tweets, obfuscation, nuance, secrecy and – if we're being honest in the end, triviality.
Its conclusion (for now) probably came the only way it could have for this story: As a footnote to a footnote during a three-hour-long YouTube interview that Musk did with the guys behind Full Send.
Now that we can piece together the entire arc of the story, I think it's quite entertaining. And, it's time to tell it in all in one place.
November 2020
A startup that most people had never heard of at the time called Boxabl posted a video on YouTube: Boxabl Factory Update 2021 – Factory Mass Production.
In the video, co-founder Galiano Tiramani explained how his company had built and transported a modular tiny house for one of its first buyers: "A top-secret customer" located in Boca Chica, Texas.
I'm guessing you know this if you've read this far, but Boca Chica is the home of SpaceX's Starbase. And you certainly know that Musk is the founder and CEO of that company.
As Tiramani talks about his "top-secret customer" in the video, he sits next to a giant poster of a SpaceX rocket. So, this did not exactly require Sherlock Holmes levels of deductive reasoning – if anyone happened to see the video at the time.
June 2021
More than six months passed. But, in response to a Twitter user who had praised him for using "less resources than most multi-millionaires despite working way harder", Musk revealed:
"My primary home is literally a ~$50k house in Boca Chica / Starbase that I rent from SpaceX. It's kinda awesome though."
Wait, some people thought. There was that video about Boxabl ... and their retail price is apparently $50,000 ... you don't think ... ?
Over the next few weeks, a lot of people started to try to connect the dots. I was one of them.
July 2021
As I wrote then, Musk's decision to downsize was "life-changing". And, I continued:
"Musk is almost certainly living in a 380-square-foot, tiny, foldable house-in-a-box, which was manufactured by a company called Boxabl."
I emphasized the "almost" because while it looked likely, I hadn't confirmed it. (I believe in the old adage that you should check everything. If your own mother say she loves you, verify it.)
Before the month was out, I did a 45-minute video interview with the cofounder of Boxabl – Galiano Tiramani's father, Paolo Tiramani – and I kept after him, asking point-blank: Is Elon Musk living in this tiny Boxabl house?
Tiramani wouldn't answer, despite my putting the question to him many ways. We still had an interesting, enjoyable interview and I learned a lot about Boxabl. I walked away intrigued.
But it bugged me for whatever reason that we couldn't quite close the loop.
"Whether [Musk] turns out to be an investor, a customer or just a guy who tweets about the company," I wrote, adding: "it would be awfully interesting to know for sure."
November 2021
A few months later, sure enough, we found out. Musk stated straight up that while he does live in a small house that cost him less than $50,000, it's not a Boxabl.
"Cool product tho," he tweeted.
December 2021
The Wall Street Journal's Rob Copeland sunk his teeth into the story. The world wanted to know (maybe?): Where does Musk live?
He had two conclusions:
First, Musk was legally registered to vote "near Boca Chica beach, at a home built in 1971 ... owned by Space Exploration Technologies Corp."
Second, Copeland wrote, Musk "has also been living in a waterfront estate in Austin owned by a rich friend nicknamed 'Kenny' ... a home so extravagant that it was the most expensive listed in the Texas capital when it was sold just a few years ago."
But, both Musk and Kenny vehemently denied that part of the story.
"I don't live there and am not looking to buy a house anywhere," Musk said, also tweeting: "But what color are the pillow cases?? We must know these important details!! ... I should probably live somewhere though."
A few days ago
There it sat for more than six months. I wondered for a while if this would just turn into one of those stories that everyone cares about for a few minutes and then moves on without further comment.
(Kind of like: Who leaked the US Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson last spring before it was decided officially? I'm kind of dying to know that one.)
But then Musk, in a move that I find both improbable and inevitable at the same time, sat down for a three hour interview with the Nelk Boys, who are the guys behind the Full Send podcast.
Three hours! They talked about so many things: alcohol, aliens, Atari – and I'm just barely scratching the surface of the "As."
But, for our purposes the part that mattered most landed at 41:34, when Musk addressed the whole "tiny house" thing.
Short version: Yes, he has a Boxabl. No, he doesn't personally live in it.
A few more Musk quotes from the podcast:
"My main house – if I have a main house – is the one in South Texas, in Boca Chica Village, on Weems Street. I'm petitioning to change the street name to 'Memes'. If you get enough people on the street to say yes, you can change the street name."
"I don't actually stay in the Boxabl. The house that I bought actually cost less a Boxabl. It was like $45k or something. But, I've done a lot with the place. ... It's right next to the rocket factory. I can just literally walk to the rocket factory... Friends of mine can't believe I'm staying in this house."
"I use the Boxabl as my guest house."
Mystery solved(?)
So, there we have it. Mystery solved.
"It's great that Elon finally came out and confirmed the rumors," Galiano Tiramani told me in an email after the podcast. "We were in a difficult position before as we signed an NDA and wanted to respect Elon's privacy."
Still, I'm caught on a line from Copeland's story, in which said he'd been told that the most crucial concern to Musk during his supposed home search was "privacy".
What better way to keep your actual home private than to announce your putativehome address on a video podcast that's already been watched nearly 6 million times? (I'm not going to repeat the location, but it's in there.)
By the way, I can't recommend the Full Send interview enough; it's very long, but it flies by. As someone who has been doing interviews longer than these guys have been alive, I'm quite impressed.
(I've embedded a link to the whole thing at the end of this article.)
Anyway, a lot has happened with Musk in the 13 months or so since people started asking about this whole tiny house thing.
He made an offer to buy Twitter, for one, which is now tied up in court in Delaware. Tesla delivered 200,000 cars in a single quarter. SpaceX has raised $2 billion this year alone.
By no means at all is the question of where Musk lays his head at night, and whether it's actually in a prefab Boxabl, the most important thing to know about him. But it is entertaining.
Inc
