Tesla warns against wet towel EV charging trick

Tesla car owners are famous for being a part of some of the biggest hacks and shortcuts, and one of the latest appeared on Tesla’s radar. Tesla has publicly warned people against using one of the most popular charging myths that has been going around, where they wrap a wet towel around the handle of a Supercharger cable to supposedly charge faster.

The hack involves wrapping the Supercharger handle with a cold damp towel, to manipulate the temperature sensors and induce faster charging. Currently, Tesla uses the Superchargers that incorporate a heater check feature to avoid excessive heat. Some of the Tesla owners think that this is possible because cooling the charging handle may mislead the sensors into allowing quicker charging.

But Tesla has said that this method is not safe and comes with certain risks. This comes as a result of the temperature sensor failing to take the right temperature reading that is needed to regulate the rates of charging, thereby resulting in over heating or charging equipment damage.

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It may sound a trivial problem pertaining to car safety but for Tesla, it remains a relatively recent problem where the company took more than two months to address, after the trick ‘wet towel’ that went viral among auto news websites and internet forums such as Reddit. Tesla Charging, its official warning was released on Wednesday through the account ‘X,’ citing an article from InsideEVs.

This delay in communication underscores a broader issue: One could argue that the absence of a conventional public relations department in Tesla. The PR team was let go in 2020 and later Elon Musk via X voiced his dislike for advertising or PR by stating Disagree with spending money on that as cited from Electrek.