A Tesla engineer is throwing cold water on Supercharger extension cords – an idea that is gaining traction to solve the charge port location issues as Tesla onboard other EVs on the Suercharger network.
The opening of the Supercharger network to non-Tesla electric vehicles has created a problem where some of those EVs don’t have their charge port at the same position as Tesla vehicles: back on the driver’s side.
It results in awkward parking positions.
Tesla’s new Supercharger V4 stalls solve that with longer charging cables, but most Superchargers are still V3s, which are problematic and can result in some EVs blocking another charging station.
The idea of using extension cords for Superchargers has been brought up as a temporary solution and Tesla even confirmed that it was working on it earlier this year.
But now Wes Morrill, Tesla’s lead Cybertruck engineer, has thrown some cold water on the idea. (via X):
I would recommend AGAINST using an extension cord on a supercharger (or any DC charging station with a liquid cooled cable). Have seen multiple instances of the cable overheated and shorting DC +/-.
To be fair, he is recommending against using existing extension cables for the Supercharger, which are made by third parties.
He added about the problem with extension cables:
There’s a temperature measurement in the handle and the supercharger derates based on that temperature. With the extension cable that safety goes away. On top of adding an additional junction which generates heat making matters worse.
Tesla could possibly fix those things with its own solution, especially by adding temperature measurements on the new handle on the extension cord.
Morrill said that he would discuss directly with a third-party Supercharger extension cable manufacturer to explain his concerns.
However, temperature management would remain an issue as it is hard to imagine how they could make the extension liquid-cooled like the regular cable.
Some did speculate that a Tesla extension cord would come with charge rate limitations to counter this issue. What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.