Rep. Thomas Massie drove 450 miles to pick up a Tesla car battery...and is now using it to power his entire home!
The Republican Congressman from Kentucky told Cheddar about his trek to find the battery.
“First I started looking for a wrecked Tesla,” he said, “and I ended up in this seedy underworld of totaled cars and auction houses. I even bid on a wrecked Tesla, but I got outbid by somebody from the Ukraine.”
Massie, who’s lived off the power grid for years, said he’s been “dreaming” about running his house with a Tesla car battery. He ultimately found a man in Georgia willing to sell him one for $15,000 and picked it up on New Year’s Day. He said he didn’t even know the seller’s last name until he wired him the money.
The 47-year-old lawmaker’s interest in technology is nothing new. He graduated from MIT where he studied robotics, and he has patents for virtual reality and other tools.
Politically, Massie describes himself as a “trans-partisan”, saying, “Some days it’s hard to identify with any of the parties.” But in the negotiations for the Tesla battery, he kept his congressional affiliation under wraps as long as he could.
“Usually the price goes up on everything if you [tell],” he said. “But eventually they find out, and I think they’re a little more dubious that the whole thing’s going to work. Because how many things do we get to work in Congress?”
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/rep-thomas-massie-r-ky-powers-his-home-with-a-tesla-car-battery).
The Trump administration has issued its first warnings to online services that offer unofficial versions of popular drugs like the blockbuster obesity treatment Wegovy.
Parents of teenagers who died by suicide after interacting with AI chatbots are set to testify before Congress.
Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama says his new Cabinet will include an artificial intelligence “minister” in charge of fighting corruption. The AI, named Diella, will oversee public funding projects and combat corruption in public tenders. Diella was launched earlier this year as a virtual assistant on the government's public service platform. Corruption has been a persistent issue in Albania since 1990. Rama's Socialist Party won a fourth consecutive term in May. It aims to deliver EU membership for Albania in five years, but the opposition Democratic Party remains skeptical.
The Federal Trade Commission has launched an inquiry into several social media and artificial intelligence companies about the potential harms to children and teenagers who use their AI chatbots as companions.
Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion. The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin..
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
