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Tesla destination charging facility, also Pittsburgh EV landmark will be demolished
Vast construction projects at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University will soon engulf a site that became a landmark in the development of electric vehicles in western Pennsylvania. It was a pioneering facility and the largest charging site in the region for many years.
The Electric Garage’s chargers are being relocated immediately with demolition of the site to begin in July.
At its peak, the Electric Garage boasted eight J1772 Level 2 chargers offering 203V at 30 amps. In 2014, a Tesla HPWC with 40 amp charging was added. Charging and parking was free to the public for up to four hours a session– a welcome oasis in the otherwise congested and paid parking of Oakland. It was easily the largest charging site in western Pennsylvania for most of its life and was open 24 hours/7 days a week on a first-come, first-serve basis. Non-charging parking spots on the site were marked as permit only.
The original six Eaton chargers were installed in 2012, using funding provided from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Energy and Technology Deployment which had a special mandate from the Office of Acronym Abatement at the Bureau of Ridiculously Long and Expansive Government Agency Naming Commission Department.
Originally built as an Exxon gas station, the Electric Garage was the invention of CMU robotics professor Illah Nourbakhsh. The university bought the property in 2009 and Nourbakhsh transformed it soon after into the workshop for the ChargeCar program. ChargeCar worked to further and develop EV technology, converting several vehicles and working out designs for regenerative braking. The industry’s pace of development soon overran much of ChargeCar’s work as more manufacturers brought EVs into mass production.
Undaunted, ChargeCar hosted numerous community outreach events to showcase the everyday feasibility of EVs to the general public. The site then morphed into a charging station and ChargeCar moved from primarily making gas-electric conversions to educating local mechanics in how to repair EVs.
Notice of the Electric Garage’s potential demise first bubbled up in May 2014, just months after the Tesla HPWC was installed. For several years, Tesla would use the Electric Garage as their main charging facility for Pittsburgh Test Drive events. There was no official Tesla presence in the city and Superchargers were too far from downtown. The proximity of the Electric Garage to the test drive events’ hosting facilities and hotels (and its number of chargers) made it an ideal overnight parking area for a small fleet of Teslas, hungry after a day of being pummeled by curious Pittsburghers.
Taking the place of the Electric Garage will be CMU’s new Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Building. The 40,000 square foot structure is designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and will be built by Mascaro Construction. CMU described the new mixed-use building as “a new home for the university stores, a dining facility on the ground floor, and academic or administrative office and shelled space. The stand-alone structure will house state-of-the-art facilities, providing collaborative spaces for the CMU community.” CMU expects to spend $22.5 million on the project, which should break ground late this year.
Demolition of the Electric Garage will take place in July. The university has indicated that the chargers will be relocated to other places on campus, though EV drivers will likely have limited access the parking garages that will house some of them. It is also unlikely that all of those will remain available to the general public.
Current plans are as follows: 2 chargers move to the East Campus Garage, 2 chargers to the Dithridge Garage and the CIC Garage will have 5 stations.
If any are publicly available, it would most likely be the 5 chargers at the CIC garage. The notice from CMU Parking & Transportation Services indicates that these 5 chargers “will be located on the outside prior to entering the garage.” Given the awkward placement of the garage in relation to the campus and nearby train tracks, that could be interpreted a number of different ways. The approach roads to the garage are narrow, but there could be room for creative placement and there is a more hospitable lot close by. It also seems probable that the Tesla HPWC could be reappearing at this location. CMU has not yet responded to requests for clarification.
The passing of the Electric Garage “era” is lamentable, but CMU’s commitment to relocate the chargers is to be commended. Many businesses would have simply shoved them into a warehouse (or worse). It is an unfortunate development for EV drivers who have enjoyed both free parking and charging in Oakland, but with CMU’s inherent focus on technology there is hope for more charging stations in the future.
For local Tesla owners, the chargers were more about convenience than necessity. Long distance travelers are similarly unaffected by the change for the most part (ever since the Somerset and Cranberry Superchargers went online). With the opening of Ross Park Mall’s Tesla store this summer– complete with outdoor HPWCs– and the expected opening of a Pittsburgh Service Center later this year, there is also no longer a need for test drive fleets to recharge overnight in Oakland.
Elon Musk
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
Elon Musk says it would be an honor to hire Jensen Huang amid Nvidia turmoil.
Elon Musk says he would welcome Jensen Huang at one of his companies if Nvidia’s board decides to push out its longtime chief executive.
On Wednesday evening, the financial account ZeroHedge posted “Elon please hire Jensen” on X. Musk replied roughly two hours later: “That would be an honor.” Neither Huang nor Nvidia had responded publicly as of Wednesday night.
Musk’s reply came as Nvidia’s board met to decide Huang’s future. The Wall Street Journal reported that directors were preparing to oust him following reports of two extramarital relationships. One involves Alice Huang, a Singapore-based businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. The New York Times separately reported a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. Huang acknowledged being unfaithful in a memo to employees on Sunday but gave no details.
@zerohedge That would be an honor
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2026
Under Nvidia’s bylaws, a majority of its 11 directors can remove the CEO with or without cause. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm on possible replacements and may name an interim chief, with CFO Colette Kress seen as the likely pick. Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in extended trading, according to CNBC, and the company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on November 17.
Musk has more riding on Nvidia’s leadership than most tech executives. In August, he told investors on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company that it would build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware, calling Vera Rubin “the best architecture.” SpaceX is also working with Nvidia on the compute payload for Starmind, its planned orbital AI constellation. In October, SpaceX said it had a binding commitment for a roughly $40 billion lease of Vera Rubin GPUs and related equipment, with the leases expected to begin in the first half of 2027.
The scale of that dependence is already enormous. On its Q3 call, SpaceX said it was bringing roughly 200,000 to 220,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs online each month and expects 2.5 to 3 GW of nameplate compute by the end of the year. That buildout is now reaching new sites like the proposed $24 billion power plant and supercomputer campus at Starbase.
The relationship between the two executives also goes back nearly a decade. Huang has often told the story of personally delivering Nvidia’s first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to Musk in 2016, when no other customer wanted one. “Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon,” Huang said on the Joe Rogan Experience last December.
Musk did not say what role Huang might fill, and his reply stops short of a formal offer. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and still owns about 3.6 percent of its stock, so any move to a Musk company would depend on whether, and how, he leaves the chipmaker he has run for more than three decades.
SpaceX officially launched the Starlink Mini 2 on November 10, delivering the first portable Starlink terminal designed around independent power.
Invitation-only preorders for select U.S. customers are priced at $999 plus tax, a figure that includes a full year of Roam Unlimited service valued at roughly $2,100. A refundable $100 deposit reserves the kit, with the balance due at shipment, expected to begin in mid-December. Broader availability is listed as coming soon.
Starlink just unveiled Mini 2, its next-gen portable dish.
Quick-swap battery, up to 4.5 hrs per charge
USB-C power
Built-in Wi-Fi
Online in about 60 secondsPreorders are open now. https://t.co/QawqgbswrQ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 10, 2026
The headline feature is the quick-swap 71 Wh battery. Clipped to the rear of the dish without tools, it delivers up to 4.5 hours of connectivity on a single charge.
The 490-gram pack includes its own USB-C port and LED indicators, so users can charge a spare separately and swap it in seconds while staying online. Starlink notes that the terminal can continue operating while the battery charges or run directly from a 60 W USB-C source. The retail box includes one battery, a 60 W USB-C charger, and a 3-meter cable.
Beyond power, the Mini 2 is thinner at 23.1 mm (versus 38.5 mm on the original Mini) while measuring 263 × 314 mm. With the battery and kickstand attached it weighs 1.6 kg.
Built-in Wi-Fi 6 expands coverage to up to 1,800 square feet, an IP67 rating protects against dust and water, and a standard 1/4-20 tripod thread plus physical power button round out the design. Field of view remains 110 degrees, and the unit retains support for mobile use.
For travelers, campers, and remote workers, the swappable battery removes the longstanding requirement for an external power bank or vehicle outlet that defined the first Mini. Spare packs sold separately further extend runtime, turning the compact terminal into a more self-contained solution.
While the bundled $999 invitation price sits well above the original Mini’s current $149 starting point, the included year of service and genuine untethered operation mark a clear step forward in portable satellite internet.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s $24B Starbase supercomputer plan slipped past a key roadblock
SpaceX wants a Starbase tax break for a $24 billion gas plant and supercomputer campus.
SpaceX is asking its own company town for a tax break on a $24 billion natural gas power plant and supercomputing facility at Starbase, Texas, and the land it picked sits just outside the reach of a data center moratorium that took effect in neighboring Brownsville last week.
A City of Starbase public hearing notice says SpaceX “proposes to construct, own, and operate a gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility” on roughly 444 acres between Boca Chica Boulevard and the Port of Brownsville. The $24 billion figure covers only the initial phases, and the notice leaves room for future expansions. The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement and a related economic development agreement at a 7 p.m. hearing on December 9. The notice does not disclose the size or length of the abatement, or how much computing capacity the site would hold.
The location has a history. Over the summer, SpaceX asked Brownsville to remove the tract from its city limits and offered $220 million for water and wastewater projects in return. Brownsville approved the move in August, and Starbase later annexed the land. Brownsville’s own 90-day pause on data center applications took effect last week, and had the tract stayed inside the city, the project likely would have needed a different home.
The power side is already in front of state regulators. SpaceX has applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for air permits covering 35 mobile gas turbines producing roughly 750 megawatts, according to Politico, which also noted that two of the three Starbase commissioners voting on the incentives are SpaceX executives.
Building its own plant lets SpaceX skip the Texas grid. Gov. Greg Abbott paused new data center grid connections in August pending an audit, but a facility that generates its own electricity does not need one. The air permit still has to clear the TCEQ, where Abbott also ordered a halt on data center permits.
The bigger test arrives in January. Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who unseated Abbott last week, has said she will block data center approvals until the legislature passes new protections, and she has already asked state officials to hold off on any sale of Boca Chica State Park to SpaceX until she is sworn in. Tesla and SpaceX shares both fell the day after the election, and Musk’s first reaction on X was “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.”
That line points to Starmind, SpaceX’s orbital compute constellation. Musk has said terrestrial compute will be “peanuts compared to orbital compute” and expects monthly orbital deployments to pass ground deployments around the end of 2028, as Teslarati reported. Until then, SpaceX still needs gigawatts on the ground. It ended the third quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute, is targeting 2.5 to 3 GW by the end of this year and wants at least 10 GW more in 2027. Its existing Colossus sites around Memphis already run on gas turbines and face a lawsuit from residents over emissions.
Local reaction is split. The South Texas Environmental Justice Network has announced a protest, citing air quality, water use and energy bills, while some Brownsville residents told the Tribune they welcome the jobs. SpaceX did not respond to the Tribune’s questions about the project.
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
Starlink Mini 2 arrives with one feature for true off-grid connectivity
