Tesla Guys Are Selling Silicone Caliper Covers That Can Cook Your Brakes

Nobody can rehash existing ideas and pretend they’re new quite like Silicon Valley can. Tesla is the automotive outlet of that hubris, with fans that’ll gobble up features as basic as tire pressure monitoring like it’s the new iPhone. Well, Tesla guys have now reinvented being a boy racer, because someone’s decided they want silicone oven mitts on their brake calipers. Why? Because it’s “Performance Appearance Technology.” I’m going to steal your lunch money.

This “innovation” (that’s a quote, not just sarcasm) comes from Caliper Skins, which has invented phone covers for brakes—their words, not mine. Painting brake calipers is hard, according to the iPad Kids of the car world. I’ll save you a visit to their website to pick out one particularly painful passage:

“Don’t waste your time and money having your calipers painted,” reads a blurb on the company’s website. “That’s a permanent modification you might regret. Think about it. Wouldn’t is be nice [sic] to be able to easily revert back to stock caliper condition? For vehicle resale? For lease termination? Well, then Caliper Skins is your best and only option.”

Waste of money, you say? When you’ve already bought (or leased) a Tesla? Buddy, your caliper condoms retail for $180 and only fit the Model 3 and Y. I could get $20 worth of spray paint and sandpaper and do a better job in any color I want. Turning a couple of 17-millimeter bolts and clamping a brake line is not hard, even for my executively dysfunctional ass. I’m so tilted that I’m half-tempted to paint my brake calipers out of spite for this “Performance Appearance Technology.”

It’s not even just a matter of aesthetics, either. There’s a major functional disadvantage to these silicone covers: cooling. Painted brake calipers have only a thin layer of paint between them and airflow to keep them cool during high-intensity driving situations. Silicone, however, is not very conductive, meaning you’re effectively insulating your brakes.

Perhaps to assuage these fears, Caliper Skins touts on its Amazon listing that the company’s “patented caliper-specific vented design ensures heat -dissipation [sic] rates on par with the control sample.” But it’s hard not to see how placing a barrier of silicone over your vehicle’s calipers wouldn’t simply increase the risk of brake problems in a wide range of driving conditions. It’s almost like spray-painting your rotors: goofy-looking, if not outright dangerous.

I’d feel less embarrassed making reproduction splitter guards for Dodges than I would repping a set of caliper covers. Actually, scratch that—Dodge splitter guard guys don’t deserve to be lumped in with the crowd that would entertain these. At least they don’t think their cars drive themselves.

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