Tesla warns against wet towel charging trick two months too late

Tesla automobile tradition is filled with hacks and shortcuts, some simpler than others. One, referred to as the “moist towel” trick, required the Tesla Charging division — or no matter stays of it — to publicly inform clients to knock it off.

The “moist towel” trick entails wrapping a humid, cool fabric round a Supercharger cable deal with as a approach to presumably pace up the charging time. The Supercharger has temperature displays that hold it from overheating because it prices Tesla autos. Some Tesla homeowners consider that cooling down the charging deal with will trick the temperature monitor into topping off their autos quicker.

Here is the issue, at the very least in Tesla’s telling: If the sensor within the charging deal with believes that the temperature is decrease than it really is whereas it’s charging, the towel-wrapped charger can create a “threat of overheating or injury” in line with the corporate.

This will likely sound like the largest “duh” assertion in tech information historical past however it’s taken greater than two months for Tesla to warn its clients to not do the “moist towel” trick on their vehicles, even after it turned a well-known “hack” on different auto information web sites and Reddit boards. The official Tesla Charging account on X posted a warning on Wednesday in response to an article from InsideEVs.com explaining the damaging automobile charging trick.

This type of epic communication breakdown is what occurs when a significant automaker doesn’t have a public relations division. Tesla dissolved its complete PR staff in 2020 and Elon Musk publicly refused to rent one on his X account the next yr saying he didn’t need to “spend cash on promoting & manipulating public opinion,” in line with Electrek.