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).
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