Ronnie Mola
Appearances
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
So Elon Musk, you know, leader of like six businesses, has been steadily moving those businesses to Texas over the past few years.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
It turns out that he wasn't really moving it to Austin, Texas. He was moving it to the county of Bastrop, this rural area in central Texas. It's about 45 minutes outside Austin, give or take on the traffic. And now he's been building this company town next to SpaceX and next to Boring Company and next to X. It's called Snail Brook, kind of in the middle of nowhere.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
It's got like a center of commerce and, you know, different businesses and things like that, different attractions for the workers. So I decided to go down there and check it out.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
Absolutely not. I mean, it's got a long way to go. When you get to Snailbrook, when you drive either from Austin or from Bastrop Town, all of a sudden you start seeing these giant buildings. And these are factories for Elon Musk's companies. There's the SpaceX Starlink facility, which is going to be over a million square feet. There's these metal buildings for the Boring Company.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
And then behind the boring company, behind this chain link fence that's obscured by these green slats, that's where the entire residence of the town is so far. There you'll find, you know, 15 or so gray and tan trailers, a little... pool, a gym, and it's mostly empty most of the time. Then there's the center of commerce. It's called Hyperloop Plaza.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
That's got two different giant metal buildings, kind of like you'd house livestock in. One of them is where the stores are. That's where the boring bodega is. I described it as sort of a tiny Whole Foods. You could get drinks with adaptogens or the olive oil that everyone uses on Instagram. The squeeze bottle ones? The squeeze bottle ones. So there's also a pickleball court and a playground.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
He has plans for it to be, quote, utopian, which... I mean, it's got a long way to go. It's got a lot of rough edges and it's definitely nothing that you would call like a utopia. So far, it's just 15 trailers.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
It also appears to be residential grade playground stuff, so something you'd buy at Walmart or Target. It's always broken, the locals were telling me. When I was there, a ladder going up one of the structures had been broken, and they put a two-by-four on it to kind of keep it together. There was a bolt coming out of another one, so it was really shaky.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
You could shake the whole thing, and you'd get sunburned because there's no sunshade. There's a candy shop for some reason in addition to the bodega. as if you needed more snacks, his and hers barbershop. But I tried to get my hair cut, but it wasn't open any of the times I was there. And I tried to make an appointment online, and it said there were none available.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
They're also building a pottery studio. This is an approximation of what I guess he thinks a town is like. There's going to be a doctor's office there, entertainment area, which is really just a couple of TVs and some Nintendo Wii's. And, you know, I just went and hung out in there. Are there people there? So not many, especially in the morning. Not many people.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
It gets a little bit like slightly more trafficked around lunch and after work. As far as, you know, signs of life, not too many, at least not yet.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
I mean, it's always hard to tell. Elon Musk and his companies would not talk to me. SpaceX declined to comment, and then Boring Company and X didn't respond to comments. Presumably, they are going to eventually build those 110 single-family homes that are not trailers.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
But in the meantime, I've found other plans that show they're going to build another 20 homes, but those look like they're going to be trailers as well. You know, something you could throw up very quickly that isn't very permanent, that's cheap and easy. He's also building a school there. There's a Montessori school that they finally got permits to open at long last.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
And originally they said they were going to accept 50 students. They're only accepting 16. So this is supposed to eventually be a place where the people who work at his companies can also live and go out with their kids and send their kids to school and go get a beer afterwards or go to the food truck or go to maybe a restaurant or get primary care. But It's very much a work in progress.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
And these things sort of take time. But Elon Musk has more money than God. And, you know, he started this back in around 2021. You know, if he wanted to, he could put up some houses. You know, what was so interesting to me is I'm looking across from this broken playground, you know, with the two by four sistered against the ladder to keep it, you know, to keep your kids from falling through.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
And across the way, you see the Starlink facility where they're manufacturing satellites that go into outer space and that allow people around the world to get, you know, high-speed internet access.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
And to the other side of the playground is The Boring Company, which is supposed to, like, you know, it's a tunneling company that hopes to do nothing less than, quote, solve traffic and transform cities. So you've got these really, like, big ideas, big things happening, and, you know, and then just, like, a really rink-a-dink underbaked town. Yeah.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
I don't see the draw personally to wanting to go out in the middle of nowhere and then live in a tiny trailer.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
So we don't know yet. He hasn't built them. He hasn't said. We know that the trailers rent for about $800 a month, which is less than the median rent. rent in the area, but it's also a lot less than you would get if you were paying the median rent in the area. If you paid the median rent, you would get a nice house and not just, you know, a two bedroom trailer with not much else. So we don't know.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
I also visited some other company towns, including Endicott, New York, which was founded in the early 1900s for a shoe factory. And there they built these like really nice, big,
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
uh houses for the workers there and the workers could buy those houses at cost and you know they made thousands of these and it was really like a pretty successful company town and partly i think that's because the workers were able to have and keep housing you know regardless of whether they worked at the shoe company and a lot of those houses are still up to this day and i think you know have just like stayed in families for generations and have really been important
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
for the ongoing success of that town. So we don't know what Elon Musk would do with these 110 homes, whether he would sell them, what price they would be, but as it stands, you could pay a little bit less for the trailers, but you're also getting a lot less than you would in the rest of the area.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
No. So one of the reasons why he's building this town, I believe, is because he wants to be able to attract and retain good workers, right? You can't uproot your whole family and have them move across the country from California for nothing. It's one thing if you're saying you're going to Austin, which has a lot of cultural cachet and, you know, it's a known entity.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
It's another thing entirely if you're saying, let's go to this farmland in the middle of nowhere. So he's... wanting to have draws. Okay, we have inexpensive housing, or we have this great Montessori school, or X, Y, and Z. So I think part of that is to get people to work at his companies. Part of it might be just burnishing his own ego. Having your own town is a pretty big deal.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
Presumably, someday, if this town does develop more, he could incorporate it, and then the laws would be more on their side. But as it is, I mean, the regulation, everyone told me that the regulations in Bastrop County are pretty lax. So, you know, he moved there because the regulations were less tough and stringent than they were in California.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
But even though they're lax in Bastrop County, he's still run up against them. Like he's always fighting with the county because they're not like doing things in the correct order or not getting the correct permits, that sort of thing. Or, you know, or dumping storm wastewater in the wrong place, that sort of thing. So even in this lenient environment, they've run up against the regulation.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
As it stands, I wouldn't move to Snailbrook. Bastrop, the town, is lovely. It's got all of this sort of like Old West charm. It's a small town outside of Austin that's lively and fun. So Bastrop town, I would consider moving to. I don't see the draw personally to wanting to go out in the middle of nowhere and then live in a tiny trailer. I actually talked to... one of Elon Musk's neighbors.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
It's this man who moved there about 10 years ago and he has got a nice house on 10 acres. And since then, Elon Musk has moved in and bought property basically on three sides of him. And, and, you know, he had this like, it's up on a hill. It's, He's got this great view, but where he used to look at cows, he's now looking at SpaceX's Starlink facility, this big white monolith of a building.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
And, you know, where you used to hear birds, you just hear constant beeping. I was interviewing him on the patio outside of his house, and it was just incessant beep, beep, beep. So in a way, it's like the worst of all worlds. It's like it's rural, but without the rural beauty if you're living in Snailbrook.
Today, Explained
Elon's company town
And then it's absolutely not Austin, Texas, and it's not a quaint, charming downtown like Bastrop Town is.