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).
Hidden inside the foundation of popular artificial intelligence image-generators are thousands of images of child sexual abuse, according to a new report that urges companies to take action to address a harmful flaw in the technology they built.
Rite Aid has been banned from using facial recognition technology for five years over allegations that a surveillance system it used incorrectly identified potential shoplifters, especially Black, Latino, Asian or female shoppers.
Tesla drivers in the U.S. were in more accidents than drivers of any other car brand this year, according to a study.
Hackers accessed Xfinity customers’ personal information by exploiting a vulnerability in software used by the company, the Comcast-owned telecommunications business announced this week.
The White House is lending its support to an auto industry effort to standardize Tesla’s electric vehicle charging plugs for all EVs in the United States.
A group representing several big tech companies is suing Utah over state laws about children's social media use.
A new study published in the journal Behavior and Information Technology reveals less time on social media makes people happier and more efficient at work.
Google has agreed to pay $700 million to settle an anti-trust settlement.
Apple announced that starting this week, it will stop selling some versions of the Apple watch in the U.S.
The European Union is investigating Elon Musk's X over alleged illicit content and disinformation on its platform. Cheddar News breaks it all down and discusses what it could mean for users.
