Tesla warns against wet towel charging trick two months too late

Tesla car culture is full of tricks and shortcuts, some more effective than others. One, known as the “wet towel” trick, claimed the Tesla Charging department – or whatever is left of it — explicitly telling customers to turn it off.

The “wet towel” trick involves wrapping a cool, damp cloth around the Supercharger cable handle, presumably to speed up charging time. The Supercharger has temperature monitors that prevent it from overheating while charging Tesla vehicles. Some Tesla owners believe that cooling the charging handle will trick the temperature monitor into charging their cars faster.

Here’s the problem, at least according to Tesla: If a sensor in the charging handle believes the temperature is lower than it actually is while charging, the towel-wrapped charger could pose a “risk of overheating or damage,” according to the company. .

This might sound like the biggest “duh” statement in the history of tech news, but it took more than two months for Tesla to warn its customers not to do the “wet towel” trick on their cars, even after it became a popular “hack.” in the other auto news sites and Reddit forums. The official Tesla Charging account on X posted a warning on Wednesday in response to an article InsideEVs.com explains a dangerous car charging trick.

This is the kind of epic miscommunication that happens when a major automaker doesn’t have a public relations department. Tesla broke down his entire PR team In 2020 and Elon Musk has publicly refused to hire one next year, X said in an account that he “doesn’t want to spend money on advertising and manipulating public opinion.” Electrek.