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It was the end of November when Steve Davis, president of Elon Musk\u2019s $5.6 billion tunneling startup Boring Company, got on X for a livestream discussion with a former news broadcaster to chat about the tunnel project Boring Company is trying to begin in Nashville.<\/p>\n
The 90-minute discussion that followed was extraordinary\u2014not for anything specific that Davis said, but simply for the fact that he was saying something<\/em>. The Boring Co., like Musk\u2019s other companies, prides itself on shunning the mainstream media. It ignores questions from journalists. It doesn\u2019t even have a public relations department. Davis, a close ally and longtime \u201cfixer\u201d for Musk, has a reputation for avoiding speaking engagements, and rarely surfaces in public.<\/p>\n And yet, here he was sitting down for a live conversation with an ex-TV reporter; Weeks later, Davis personally escorted a Las Vegas Review Journal<\/em> reporter on a rare tour of the tunnels Boring Co. is constructing under the city; he also rode in a Tesla with a YouTuber in January, enthusiastically pointing out items of interest as they travelled through the completed section of tunnel known as the Las Vegas Loop.\u00a0<\/p>\n Davis\u2019 sudden zeal for the publicity circuit, after a decade of silence, is as baffling as it is unexpected.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not transparent enough, so we\u2019re glad that you\u2019re here,\u201d Davis told the Las Vegas reporter on the tunnel tour this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n The timing may not be coincidental. As Fortune<\/em> first reported, the Boring Co. was recently fined for dumping wastewater into Las Vegas manholes, and an investigation into firefighters getting burned in its tunnels led a member of Congress to demand Nevada\u2019s Governor for more transparency. In Nashville, where Boring Company plans to start its next project, a Metro Council member has tried to introduce legislation opposing the Loop project that has received wide support from her peers, and a group calling themselves the \u201cBig Dumb Hole Coalition\u201d has surfaced to oppose the project.<\/p>\n But for close observers of the Elon-verse, the Boring Co. shift in tactics raises a bigger question about the mindset driving one of the world\u2019s most powerful, and disruptive, collections of companies: Is the media blitz a temporary concession in the interest of damage control, or a more fundamental recognition of the limits of Musk\u2019s \u201cgo direct\u201d strategy?<\/p>\n While no less ambitious than Musk\u2019s Neuralink brain chip startup or his SpaceX rocket company, the Boring Company\u2014which hopes to eventually build \u201chyperloop\u201d tunnels in which autonomous vehicles whip around at speeds of over 100 miles per hour\u2014has moved at a more incremental pace. Roughly a decade since its founding, Boring Co. has opened only a 4-mile stretch of tunnel in Las Vegas, with human drivers chauffeuring tourists between two resorts and the Convention Center at speeds of 35 miles per hour. Potential projects in California, Illinois, Texas, Florida, and Maryland have all fizzled out \u201cI think they\u2019ve realized based on failures on other projects that they need to be more proactive on messaging,\u201d says a former Boring Company employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. (The embrace of the media has its limits though\u2014Davis and The Boring Co did not respond to Fortune\u2019s interview requests for this story).<\/p>\n Ultimately, Boring Co. projects are public transportation projects, which are notoriously difficult as they necessitate buy-in from all kinds of stakeholders, ranging from land owners to elected politicians, to technical experts and emergency responders. Not to mention the people who will be utilizing the system: city residents. That requires outreach.<\/p>\n Boring Company launched a bimonthly blog in Nashville, where it wants to build a 25-mile network of tunnels. Company representative Tyler Fairbanks recently spoke at a Nevada State Board of Regents meeting to emphasize that safety was a priority for the company.<\/p>\n The main face of the media charm offensive, however, is Davis, the mid-40s Boring Co. president.<\/p>\n Davis may rarely emerge in public, but he is prolific within Musk\u2019s web of companies and passion projects. An early SpaceX engineer, Musk recruited Davis to help him cut costs at X shortly after he purchased it in 2022. And, last year, during Musk\u2019s stint in the White House, Musk roped in Davis to help run his Department of Government Efficiency.<\/p>\n Davis has said little publicly about any of it. He gave a rare interview on Fox News with several members of the DOGE team last year, though he wouldn\u2019t even confirm his role within the agency, saying only that he was \u201cpart of the DOGE team.\u201d More than a decade ago, he spoke with Ashlee Vance for his biography, Elon Musk<\/em>, and his work at SpaceX (and his frozen yogurt restaurant, Mr. Yogato) were featured in a 2-minute Voices of America video in 2012.\u00a0<\/p>\n His peers have described him as a hands-on manager\u2014looming in various text threads with Boring Company employees and personally making requests and speaking with regulators and government officials about permitting delays\u2014and have said he can be ruthless and occasionally insensitive, as Fortune<\/em> has previously reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n As he makes more public appearances, people are getting a better sense of his personality. While he is a somewhat awkward presenter, Davis was energetic, comfortable, and enthusiastic during the tour with the Tesla podcaster. He glowed up when discussing the \u201cHyperloop Plaza\u201d in Bastrop, Tex., the plaza for employees where Boring Company\u2019s R&D facility is, and where Davis says he has lunch every day when he\u2019s there.<\/p>\n But while Davis\u2019 efforts may make him and the company feel more approachable, the company will also need to deliver results for such public efforts to work, says Len Sherman, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. \u201cThey made claims, and now are continuing to make claims to be the new face of urban mobility,\u201d Sherman says. \u201cAnd there\u2019s absolutely positively nothing I\u2019ve seen that even comes close to delivering proof that\u2019s something that people should believe in.\u201d<\/p>\n Even so, Sherman said he was glad to see Boring Company starting to engage more with the public, and said he hopes Davis will agree to speak with people who will ask him difficult questions.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the long run, they can\u2019t hide forever,\u201d Sherman says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #decade #silence #Boring #president #Steve #Davis #hitting #media #circuit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was the end of November whe… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[4117,11196,10617,104,554,11195,11194,716,9024,1652,2860,4877,4024],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17364"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018Can\u2019t hide forever\u2019<\/h2>\n
. <\/s>\u2014whether because they lost political momentum, or didn\u2019t get through environmental assessments.<\/p>\n