Tesla has released a new navigation feature to make it easier for people towing trailers to find charging stations that can accommodate them.
Towing trailers with electric vehicles is not yet super popular, but it is rapidly gaining in popularity, with more electric SUVs and pickup trucks having increasingly impressive towing capacity.
Tesla has had the Model Y and Model X with a limited but still useful towing capacity for a few years, but with now the Cybertruck and the opening of its Supercharger network to other EVs, including many pickup trucks, the automaker is starting to see more people arriving at its popular charging stations with trailers.
This can be problematic as if you don’t want to block several chargers, you are going to have to unhook your trailer to go charge your vehicle. That’s less than ideal and something gas-powered vehicles rarely have to do at gas stations.
Tesla’s solution has been to build a few “pull in” charging spots at some Supercharger stations that enable you to park with your trailer while charging (via Tesla Motors club):
Tesla is currently building more of these stations, but they are still far and few in between and hard to find.
The automaker is now making it easier to find with a new software update. Now, you can click on a Supercharger station, and it will tell you if it has trailer stalls.
Furthermore, if you are driving on “trailer mode” and searching for charging stations, those with “trailer friendly” stalls will appear at the top:
However, as usual, when traveling long distances in an electric vehicle, you are better off just doing a bit of planning about where to charge ahead of time, especially if you are going to be towing over long distances.
Now that Tesla can distinguish between trailer-friendly and non-trailer-friendly stations, the automaker can hopefully include it in its API for other automakers to integrate into their own navigation systems as many of them can start using the Supercharger network.
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