Tesla spoke about the dangers of extension cords on electric vehicle chargers

Major automakers offering their electric vehicles in North America have relatively recently begun switching to the NACS charging port, originally promoted by Tesla. To improve the convenience of placing your car near a charging station, she cautions that charging cable extensions should not be used as they are dangerous.

Image Source: Tesla

The joy of many car owners who decided to use the network of Tesla branded charging stations was overshadowed by the need to adapt to a different placement of the charging port on the body of their existing electric vehicles. Branded Tesla Supercharger stations are optimized for connecting cars with a charging port located in the rear left fender area. The length of the charging cable at the charging station is calculated accordingly. If the owner of an electric car of another brand has to experiment with the position of the car at the Tesla charging station due to a different placement of the port on the vehicle, this creates certain inconveniences.

In such cases, car owners could be helped out by an extension cable, but Tesla specialists from the pages of the social network X issued a warning that extension cords offered by third-party manufacturers do not properly monitor the temperature in the area of ​​the electric vehicle’s power connector, and therefore are not able to reduce the current in a timely manner when the cable overheats . Tesla representatives are aware of cases where overheating of the cable and extension cord led to a short circuit. Similar recommendations are relevant for all charging stations using liquid-cooled cables. Providing it in an extension cord is problematic, and using an extension cord disrupts temperature control. In addition, the presence of an extra connection in the power circuit reduces the reliability of its operation.

Interestingly, Tesla previously reported attempts to develop a proprietary extension cord that would take into account such nuances, but for now the company’s specialists are ready to consult third-party manufacturers in order to eliminate problems when using the extension cord. To improve security, the charging speed may be limited, which will certainly not please some users.