Tesla is suing a company that makes a MagSafe-style connector designed to allow electric car owners to quickly escape from a charging station if they feel their safety is threatened.
The automaker claims EVject’s escape connectors are “highly unsafe and present a high risk of injury to persons and/or property,” according to a lawsuit filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Tesla is calling on the court to block EVject’s claims that the product is safe, 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 the filing that it has tested a North American Charging Standard (NACS) version of the EVject accessory in a high-current simulation using the company’s Supercharger cable and vehicle EV port. Tesla found that EVject products can reach temperatures as high as 100 degrees Celsius (the boiling point of water) when charging at 420 amps DC fast.
Tesla also noted that the company acknowledged that the adapter may get hot when charging the Cybertruck. EVject’s website promotes the product by painting a horrific scenario: EV owners are attacked while charging and cannot drive 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 breakaway adapter will protect the charging station plug when disconnected.
