Tesla owners have been officially warned off using the famed wet towel trick. It only took the automaker two months to make the announcement.
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The trick, in case you don’t know, involves dampening a towel and then wrapping it around a Tesla Supercharger handle. This cools down the handle on hot days and allegedly allows the car to charge faster since it doesn’t heat up as much as it would in open air. Per InsideEVs, this apparently only works on older V2 Supercharges, as the newer ones don’t seem to need the help to keep charge rates up. Two months after InsideEVs tweeted about the wet towel method, Tesla responded with a warning to consumers. “Placing a wet cloth on Supercharger cable handles does not increase charging rates and interferes with temperature monitors creating risk of overheating and damage,” Tesla said on X. “Please refrain from doing this so our systems can run correctly, and true charging issues can be detected by our systems.”In short, the wet towel may interfere with the charger’s ability to detect actual charging issues. This can result in all kinds of potential problems, up to and including setting the car on fire.
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The delayed response from Tesla may be linked to the firing of its entire Supercharger staff back in April. At the time, Tesla was in the process of expanding access to Superchargers for non-Tesla vehicles, which was viewed as a huge win for the EV maker. CEO Elon Musk rewarded the team by firing them. The move was part of a larger layoff of 14,000 Tesla employees.
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