Man builds a complicated rig for harvesting Ethereum in the trunk of his Tesla to avoid electricity costs – but the plan might not be all that feasible, Vice reporters describe.
Everybody knows that cryptocurrencies are the next big thing, financially and technologically. One owner of a Tesla car is particularly aware of this, seeing how he has loaded a full rig for cryptocurrency mining in his trunk in order to farm currency, as shown by a picture from the EcoMotoring News event this week.
The photo depicts the man’s set-up – a staggering four motherboards, loaded with 16 graphics cards, online publication VICE reports.
These cards are employed for Ethereum mining and other such cryptocurrencies; the rather popular Bitcoin can only be mined using ASICS, special chips built for this very purpose, or integrated circuits built for this particular application.
Any right-minded person would ask themselves why anyone would set up a rig of this kind in the back of an electric car. Here’s the answer: When mining cryptocurrencies, one of the biggest costs individuals are faced with is electricity. If one were to get access to free power, one could significantly increase profits.
This is exactly what a Tesla owner could get from the car company’s Supercharger network – a series of public-access charging stations where electric car owners can refill their car batteries. Anyone who bought a Tesla before January of last year has unlimited access to these Superchargers, while everybody else gets a free 400 kW/hour on a yearly basis.
As ideal as this plan may seem, Vice is quick to identify its flaws. First off, building a mining operation in the Tesla’s trunk would generate a lot of waste heat, making the car unbearably hot over time. Daniel Oberhaus, Vice reporter, did all the math associated to the project and discovered that electric car owners not on the unlimited electricity program couldn’t feasibly run their mining operation for more than a week each year.
Financially, though, harvesting Ethereum through such an operation could in fact have its boons – owners of Tesla cars could get their money back for buying a Model S on a lease plan, but only if they were never to drive it.
