[ad_1]
\n<\/p>\n
Tesla car culture is full of hacks and shortcuts, some more effective than others. One, known as the \u201cwet towel\u201d trick, required the Tesla Charging department \u2014 or whatever remains of it<\/a> \u2014 to publicly tell customers to knock it off.<\/p>\n The \u201cwet towel\u201d trick involves wrapping a damp, cool cloth around a Supercharger cable handle as a way to presumably speed up the charging time. The Supercharger has temperature monitors that keep it from overheating as it charges Tesla vehicles. Some Tesla owners believe that cooling down the charging handle will trick the temperature monitor into topping off their vehicles faster.<\/p>\n Here’s the problem, at least in Tesla’s telling: If the sensor in the charging handle believes that the temperature is lower than it actually is while it\u2019s charging, the towel-wrapped charger can create a “risk of overheating or damage” according to the company.<\/p>\n This may sound like the biggest \u201cduh\u201d statement in tech news history but it\u2019s taken more than two months for Tesla to warn its customers not to do the \u201cwet towel\u201d trick on their cars, even after it became a well known \u201chack\u201d on other auto news websites<\/a> and Reddit forums<\/a>. The official Tesla Charging account on X posted a warning on Wednesday in response to an article from InsideEVs.com<\/em> explaining the dangerous car charging trick.<\/p>\n Placing a wet cloth on Supercharger cable handles does not increase charging rates and interferes with temperature monitors creating risk of overheating or damage. Please refrain from doing this so our systems can run correctly, and true charging issues can be detected by our\u2026<\/p>\n \u2014 Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) July 25, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n This kind of epic communication breakdown is what happens when a major automaker doesn\u2019t have a public relations department. Tesla dissolved its entire PR team<\/a> in 2020 and Elon Musk publicly refused to hire one<\/a> on his X account the following year saying he didn\u2019t want to \u201cspend money on advertising & manipulating public opinion,\u201d according to Electrek<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n