A man found himself in a predicament when his Tesla’s battery nearly depleted, forcing him to get creative to see if he could charge the vehicle while on the move.
Tesla advises owners to plug their cars into home chargers each night to maintain battery levels.
But what if you forget to do so? Or what if during an extended road trip, you find yourself without enough power to reach your destination?
No one wants to be stuck at a Tesla Supercharger station for hours. Thankfully, a car enthusiast on YouTube has explored a unique solution to this charging dilemma.
“The unthinkable happened. My Tesla ran out of battery when I was far away from home,” stated popular YouTuber, Warped.
“I went to a public charger and realised I had to wait three hours to get enough charge to get back home.”
Not wanting to be delayed for long, he started thinking of alternative ways to speed up the charging process.
His theory was that by driving his car at 70mph and then releasing the accelerator while being towed, the regenerative braking would generate approximately 65,000 watts of charge.
“That’s almost as much as a Tesla Supercharger,” he explained in a 2021 video titled ‘Tow Charging Tesla at 70MPH for 25 miles’.
After calculations, he concluded that he needed someone to tow his Tesla for 15 minutes at 70mph to achieve similar results to a Supercharger.
He asserted it ‘would be the same’ as plugging into a nearby Supercharger.
“I’ve seen one other person do something similar on YouTube,” he admitted. “But it was weak. They towed the car around a track at 18mph. There’s people that run faster than that.”
To save both time and money, Warped decided to test his theory in the ‘name of science’.
Instead of hiring a tow truck, a Mercedes-Benz E Class E55 was used for the task.
“I’m a little bit worried about the transmission overheating because 65,000 watts of horsepower is going to be the amount of braking force that the E55 has to overcome,” he confessed.
Despite his concerns, he connected the two vehicles and headed for the freeway with his collaborator, aiming to maintain a speed of 70mph for a sustained period.
“Hey it’s looking good, the battery is going up really fast,” the driver commented. “That’s crazy.”
Ultimately, the YouTuber revealed that his experiment was successful, with the Tesla’s battery increasing from 14 percent to 55 after 25 miles.
Although initially skeptical about the effectiveness of the towing method, Warped concluded the test was ‘awesome’ and that the charging ‘never let up’ during the regenerative process.
“It was charging at 65,000 watts the entire time,” he proudly stated. “If you’re stranded somewhere and you have absolutely no choice…now you know you might not actually be stranded after all.”