For nearly a decade, some Tesla house owners have been placing moist towels or different sorts of material on high of Supercharger cable handles to maintain them cool on scorching summer time days. That trick improved charging speeds, particularly at older V2 stalls, leading to shorter stops.
Whereas doubtlessly harmful as a result of it fed a false temperature studying again to the stall, Tesla by no means stated something about it, even after we printed our story two months in the past detailing how it began and what outcomes some house owners skilled.
Nonetheless, in a uncommon public response from the corporate’s charging division on its official X account to our Could article, Tesla put its foot within the door and stated that the so-called “moist towel trick” doesn’t really improve charging speeds and that folks ought to cease utilizing it. Right here’s what modified and what it is best to anticipate going ahead.
How the “Moist Towel Trick” labored
Tesla Superchargers have a number of sensors that monitor issues like temperature, present and voltage. On V2 stalls, the cable deal with that goes into the NACS connector on the automobile has a temperature sensor that may trigger the station to lower the charging velocity if it senses it is too scorching. This helps the deal with stay cool to the contact, however as some house owners discovered some eight years in the past, a moist towel can decrease the temperature of the deal with and improve the charging velocity.
“Putting a moist material on Supercharger cable handles doesn’t improve charging charges and interferes with temperature screens creating [a] threat of overheating or harm,” the automaker’s charging arm stated within the X reply embedded beneath. “Please chorus from doing this so our methods can run accurately, and true charging points may be detected by our methods.”
But it surely solely takes a number of scrolls to get to the feedback part and see the responses of a number of individuals who declare the opposite—that the trick does juice charging speeds. So what’s occurring? In brief, it used to work however doesn’t work anymore.
As avid EV and charging tester Kyle Conner from Out of Spec stated within the podcast embedded beneath, Tesla appears to have modified the best way Superchargers interpret the info from all of the sensors roughly eight weeks in the past, rendering the “moist towel trick” ineffective.
As a facet impact, the stalls would possibly lock themselves at a decrease charging velocity fairly early through the session and the one method to get round this limitation is to unplug the EV, drive to a different stall and plug in once more.
Now, many individuals within the feedback say Tesla ought to both construct canopies over its Supercharger places to stop the cable handles from getting too scorching within the first place, or that the handles themselves ought to be improved. It’s additionally price noting that V2 stalls don’t have actively cooled cables, whereas newer variations do, making the towel trick pointless from the get-go–until you’re attempting to recharge a Cybertruck—that wants the next amperage in comparison with the remainder of EVs in Tesla’s portfolio because of its 800-volt battery pack.
In any case, in case you had been pondering of carrying round a towel and a water bottle in your EV throughout scorching, sunny summer time days hoping you can slash a couple of minutes from the subsequent recharge, you’ll be able to in all probability overlook about it. It wasn’t really useful to start with and now it’s downright ineffective on Tesla’s Supercharger cable handles. The extra we all know, the higher.
