Tesla owner mines hundreds of US dollars a month in cryptocurrencies with his Model 3

Mining cryptocurrencies with your own Tesla – is that possible? Some inventors have already tried it out and achieved success. However, whether the effort for such a concept is actually worth it is controversial.

• Tesla owner uses his vehicle to mine cryptocurrencies
• According to his own information, this brings him up to 800 US dollars a month
• Experts doubt the profitability of the concept

Crypto mining with Tesla as energy source

A car has long ceased to be a mere means of transportation: modern vehicles are equipped with so much advanced technology that they are often referred to as “computers on four wheels.” And now you can even earn money with your car – simply by putting it in the garage. At least that’s what San Francisco native Siraj Raval claimed to CNBC, who says he converted his Tesla into a crypto-mining machine.

Last year, the price of bitcoin had skyrocketed following Elon Musk’s announcement that Tesla would henceforth accept the immensely popular cryptocurrency as a form of payment. However, according to Siraj Raval, the connection between the automaker and the world of cryprocurrencies goes much deeper. According to CNBC, the inventor has left virtually no avenue unexplored for mining cryptocurrencies with his Tesla Model 3: He ran free bitcoin mining software on his Apple Mac mini M1 and powered his computer through a port in the middle of his vehicle’s console. He also connected several GPUs (graphics processors) to his Tesla. The car’s internal battery served as the power source. According to Raval, he was able to generate up to $800 a month this way during the 2021 cryptocurrency boom.

According to CNBC, Raval isn’t the only one who has tried his hand at turning his Tesla into a station for crypto mining. Chris Allessi, Wisconsin’s first electric vehicle dealer according to his statements to CNBC, also put some tinkering into his Tesla car. By connecting a so-called Bitmain Antminer S9 – a device designed specifically for mining Bitcoin – directly to the car’s battery with the help of an inverter, he was able to mine the currency because the inverter adjusts the battery’s voltage to a level compatible with the Ant Miner. In addition, Allessi was able to successfully use Tesla’s internal firmware to mine altcoins. According to him, he managed to do this without much difficulty, simply using the built-in on-board computer and its monitor to access a website he set up specifically designed to mine the Monero currency.

According to Raval, the most profitable method he tried was a combination of hacking the vehicle’s internal computer and plugging GPUs directly into the electric motor. However, hacker and crypto miner Thomas Sohmers expressed strong doubts about this to CNBC: according to him, this constellation does not make sense from a technical point of view, as the vehicle is already built to deliver over 100 kilowatts. Everything else that would be connected to it would only be a fraction of that.

Is the concept worth it?

Whether mining cryptocurrencies with the help of a Tesla vehicle is actually worthwhile is disputed among inventors. According to CNBC, profitability depends heavily on when the owner purchased his vehicle. Chris Allessi, for example, benefits from unlimited, free Supercharging for the life of his vehicle because he bought his Tesla before January 2017. By his own estimation, 60 hours in 2018 were worth $10 worth of Bitcoin mining due to the free power, which was profitable but hardly worth the effort, according to Allessi. He doesn’t think it makes sense to put the hardware needed for crypto-mining on a vehicle that costs between $40,000 and $100,000, especially now that the massively increased difficulty level of mining means you’d get just one to two U.S. dollars in the same amount of time despite the increased price. Allessi would even consider it more useful to be an employee of a company, hiding a mining device somewhere in the ceiling and tapping into the electricity, rather than using a car to do crypto mining.

Unlike Allessi, Siraj Raval is convinced of the profitability of his concept: each charge costs him between $10 and $15 and delivers a range of 320 miles. With a few hours of driving daily, the car needs to be recharged once in about a week and a half, bringing his monthly bill to between $30 and $60. By Raval’s estimation, he does about 20 hours of crypto-mining each day using his Tesla battery. According to him, he has taken extra precautions to hedge against the volatility of cryptocurrencies like Ethereum to ensure the profitability of his concept. For him, mining for cryptocurrencies with his Tesla is not merely a technical gimmick. For him, the concept is part of his plan to turn his car into a fully autonomous robo-taxi that does crypto mining whenever it’s at a standstill.