Australian Model 3 Highland experiences, tips, tricks

[dronus]

That's a first-generation Tesla Roadster. The body is based on the Lotus Elise.

OMG can’t be too many of them around?

 

[dronus]

Are you sure that's not just a sensory memory triggered by lying in a garden bed?

Maaaayyybbbeeeeeee

 

[Vostok]

So I heard on another forum that you can improve dc charging speed by placing a wet towel around the cable. Anyone try this

Never heard that one. It sounds similar in scientific rigour to the stupid green highlighter pens that in the 90s people used to argue you could colour the edges of your CDs with and you’d get better quality sound on playback . It was rubbish science easily disproved.

If a charging cable got that hot (and you’d be worried if they did) then wrapping a wet towel around it would provide only minimal and temporary cooling, because if the cable is that hot, the wet towel would quickly heat up and its presence wrapped around the cable would make heat dissipation even worse. Do not try this.

 

[dronus]

Squeak is gone! Woohoo. Car is SILENT.

 

[richardnau]

Never heard that one. It sounds similar in scientific rigour to the stupid green highlighter pens that in the 90s people used to argue you could colour the edges of your CDs with and you’d get better quality sound on playback . It was rubbish science easily disproved.

If a charging cable got that hot (and you’d be worried if they did) then wrapping a wet towel around it would provide only minimal and temporary cooling, because if the cable is that hot, the wet towel would quickly heat up and its presence wrapped around the cable would make heat dissipation even worse. Do not try this.

Apparently there was some sort of heat sensor in the handle that provided feedback to the charging engine. If handle is overheating, slow down charge rate. The wet towel would cool the handle and 'defeat' the heat sensor. Seems like a pretty dumb thing to do.

Does, however, support the contention set out in the Guide:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you—daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost.” What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

 

[cafz]

The wet towel will actually cool it down, as well - it work because the water wicks onto the towel, giving it a large surface area in contact with the air, and as it evaporates at that water/air boundary the latent heat of evaporation cools the towel and handle down. It's the same principle as an evaporative air conditioner / swamp cooler, and just like those will work best when the air is dry.

 

[dronus]

In other news I noticed today while reversing down a hill I was regenerating power into my battery.

So if you drive to work forwards, then reverse home will you be net neutral?

 

[Vostok]

So if you drive to work forwards, then reverse home will you be net neutral?

No, but my one claim to fame in an ICE is that I once did a hill-start in reverse.