You Can Charge A Tesla By Towing It, But You Probably Shouldn't

A Model X owner in Norway towed a Model S and recorded the whole thing, with the latter car shown to be charging via the re-generation effect in the process

Matt Robinson

15 Nov 2016

The official line from Tesla is that you should never tow one of its cars with wheels on the ground as “damage caused by transporting is not covered by the warranty,” but if you do, you get a little extra charge in your battery.

Leave the powertrain on (again, something you’re not supposed to do when being recovered), and the regeneration effect of the motors tops up the cells.

In this interesting experiment which involved a Model X towing a single motor 85 Model S in Norway, the latter car gained 7.2kWh over 6.6 miles. It might have been a little more had the car been a dual motor Model S, or if the Model X was able to drive faster - as only a short rope was used, the owner wasn’t able to travel fast enough to get the maximum 60kW regeneration.

Source: Electrek