Elon Musk Blasts Texas Power Grid For Being ‘Unreliable’ Amid Winter Storm Outages
The newly-minted Texan tweeted that the state’s energy agency, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), “is not earning that R.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk ridiculed the Texas electrical grid operator for being unreliable after millions of Texans were left without power during a powerful winter storm that hit the Lone Star State with historic freezing temperatures.
The billionaire electric car mogul moved from California to Texas in December—following the lead of podcaster pal Joe Rogan—to build a new Tesla factory in Austin.
.@ERCOT_ISO is not earning that R
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2021
On Wednesday, Musk tweeted that the state’s energy agency, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), “is not earning that R.”
Meanwhile, the New York Post reports that Texans have been posting on social media about sleeping in their Tesla cars to keep warm during the cold nights—thanks to the “Camp Mode” feature that allows Tesla owners to use the car’s climate control for more than a day without draining the battery.
“We had the power go out for 6 hours last night. Our house does not have gas, and we ran out of firewood . . . what are we going to do,” wrote one Reddit user on the forum r/TeslaMotors.
“So my wife my dog and my newborn daughter slept in the garage in our Model3 all nice and cozy. If I didn’t have this car, it would have been a very rough night,” the user added.
One Twitter user wrote: ‘”I slept in the Tesla LOL. Pretty comfortable. More importantly, warm.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Tuesday he’s calling for an investigation into the “anything but reliable” state energy company after more than four million Texans had to brave freezing temperatures during the blackout.
In related news, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has barely edged out Musk’s wealth to reclaim his title of world’s richest man.
Hypebeast reports:
The change in positioning was caused by a slight decline in Tesla (NASDAQGS:TSLA +0.24%) ‘s stock price on Tuesday by 2.4 percent, closing at $796 USD per share that day.
The drop led to Musk’s net worth to even out at $190 billion USD, just shy of Bezos’ $191 billion.
Despite regaining his title, however, the Amazon founder has met slow growth in recent months, causing his net worth to be relatively stable, while Musk grew his by a whopping $20 billion USD in 2021 alone.
So don’t be surprised if Musk’s net worth rises again to recapture the world’s richest man title in the near future.
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