Elon Musk to Joe Rogan: Boring Company flamethrowers ‘dangerous’

A
composite image showing YouTuber iJustine with her flamethrower
and Elon Musk on the “Joe Rogan Experience”
podcast.
iJustine/YouTube/Joe Rogan
Experience

• Elon Musk’s The Boring Company sold out of 20,000
  limited-edition flamethrowers in just four days earlier this
  year.
• On the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast on Thursday, Musk said
  the product is “dangerous” and “wrong,” but that people didn’t
  care.
• “Don’t buy it, that’s what I said. But still, people
  bought it. There was nothing I could do to stop them,” Musk
  joked.

Elon Musk has said flamethrowers sold by his The Boring Company
were “a terrible idea,” and that he tried to tell people not to
buy them before selling 20,000 machines in just four days.

On the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast on Thursday, Musk was asked
by host Joe Rogan if he ever considered the idea that selling the
flamethrowers would be dangerous, or make the company liable for
any incidents.

Musk replied: “Yeah it’s a
terrible idea. You shouldn’t buy one. I said don’t buy this
flamethrower. Don’t buy it. Don’t buy it, that’s what I said. But
still people bought it. There was nothing I could do to stop
them, I could not stop them. I said don’t buy it, it’s a bad
idea.

“It’s dangerous, it’s wrong.
Don’t buy it. Still, people bought it. I just couldn’t stop
them.”

You can watch the interview below. Musk talks about the
flamethrowers at 1.22 in the clip:

Musk did tell people not to buy the devices
in January, but he also hosted a pick-up party for the first
1,000 customers when they went on sale in June 2018. At the time,
he tweeted enthusiastically about the machines, generating more
publicity for them.

The devices were sold by The
Boring Company, a tunnel construction company working
on high-speed transport systems.

The company is known for its
limited-edition merchandise, such as
the hats that it sold in 2017, and typically does not sell
more than one product at a time.

“We did 50,000 hats and that was
a million dollars. And we said OK, we’ll sell something for 10
million. And that was 20,000 flamethrowers at $500 dollars. They
went fast,” Musk told Rogan.

He said that he was inspired to
sell the flamethrowers after watching 1987 film
“Spaceballs.”

“I’m a big fan of ‘Spaceballs’
the movie, and in ‘Spaceballs,’ Yogurt goes through the
merchandising section. And they have a flamethrower in the
merchandising section of ‘Spaceballs.’ It was like we should do a
flamethrower.”

The
flamethrowers sold by The Boring Company.
The Boring Company

The machines are officially called Not-a-Flamethrower, owing to
shipping and customs regulations that restrict the transport of
anything termed a flamethrower.

“To be totally frank, it’s actually just a roofing torch with an
air rifle cover. It’s not a real flamethrower,” Musk told
Rogan.“We were very clear. This
is not actually a flamethrower.”

Despite this, Musk often refers
to the machines as flamethrowers himself, on Twitter and in
interviews.