For nearly a decade, some Tesla homeowners have been placing moist towels or different varieties of fabric on high of Supercharger cable handles to maintain them cool on scorching summer season days. That trick improved charging speeds, particularly at older V2 stalls, leading to shorter stops.
Whereas probably harmful as a result of it fed a false temperature studying again to the stall, Tesla by no means mentioned something about it, even after we printed our story two months in the past detailing how it began and what outcomes some homeowners skilled.
Nevertheless, in a uncommon public response from the corporate’s charging division on its official X account to our Might article, Tesla put its foot within the door and mentioned that the so-called “moist towel trick” doesn’t truly enhance charging speeds and that folks ought to cease utilizing it. Right here’s what modified and what you must 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 automotive 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 homeowners discovered some eight years in the past, a moist towel can decrease the temperature of the deal with and enhance the charging velocity.
“Inserting a moist fabric on Supercharger cable handles doesn’t enhance charging charges and interferes with temperature screens creating [a] danger of overheating or injury,” the automaker’s charging arm mentioned within the X reply embedded beneath. “Please chorus from doing this so our techniques can run accurately, and true charging points will be detected by our techniques.”
Nevertheless it 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 taking place? In brief, it used to work however doesn’t work anymore.
As avid EV and charging tester Kyle Conner from Out of Spec mentioned within the podcast embedded beneath, Tesla appears to have modified the way in which Superchargers interpret the information from all of the sensors roughly eight weeks in the past, rendering the “moist towel trick” ineffective.
As a aspect impact, the stalls may lock themselves at a decrease charging velocity fairly early through the session and the one strategy 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 needs to be improved. It’s additionally value 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 making an attempt to recharge a Cybertruck—that wants the next amperage in comparison with the remainder of EVs in Tesla’s portfolio resulting from its 800-volt battery pack.
In any case, in case you have been considering of carrying round a towel and a water bottle in your EV throughout scorching, sunny summer season days hoping you would slash a couple of minutes from the subsequent recharge, you possibly can most likely neglect about it. It wasn’t beneficial to start with and now it’s downright ineffective on Tesla’s Supercharger cable handles. The extra we all know, the higher.
