Tesla is suing a company that makes charging connectors similar to MagSafe, which are designed to allow electric car owners to quickly escape from the charging station if they feel their safety is threatened. According to the lawsuit filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the automaker claims that the Escape Connector manufactured by EVject is "extremely unsafe and has a high likelihood of causing personal and/or property injury."
Tesla asked the court to stop EVject from calling the product a safe product, ban the import of the adapter in the United States, and require the company to pay no less than $75,000 in damages.
Tesla said in its filing that it has conducted high-current simulation testing of the North American Charging Standard (NACS) version of its EVject accessories with the company's Supercharger cables and vehicle EV ports. Tesla found that the EVject product reached temperatures of up to 100 degrees Celsius (the boiling point of water) when charging at 420 amps for DC fast charging.
Tesla also noted that the company has acknowledged that the adapter may heat up when charging the Cybertruck. EVject's website sells its product by depicting a horrific scenario: EV owners are attacked while charging and cannot get away safely without getting out of the car and unplugging.
EVject advertises the adapter as "fully compatible" with NACS vehicles and lists the names of many Tesla models. Tesla, which operates the world's largest electric vehicle charging network, believes the Escape Connector could also put its charging cables at risk of damage. EVject claims that the outer part of the disconnect adapter protects the charging station plug when disconnected.