this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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It's a truck that's meant to tow and haul loads. Using it for that purpose is a much larger drain on the battery than aggressive driving, and significantly reduces its useful range. If it's getting these numbers just being driven, you can expect a sub-100 mile range per charge when towing. Imagine having to stop to recharge for 30+ minutes for every hour and half of towing you do. Woof.
A pickup truck towing and hauling loads? What a bizarre idea. I'm pretty sure it's only meant to go to the office, and maybe to the maul on weekends, once in a while.
If they marketed it as such, but they heavily marketed it as capable as, if not better, at doing truck things than other trucks. And to be fair, most of us knew it was bullshit, but it's impressive how absolutely wrong they were. I mean, Elon said it'd tow a Porsche 911 faster in the quarter than the 911 could run the 1/4 mile itself, and they released a video to prove it...except keen eyed folks quickly noticed that the "finish line" they show is actually the 1/8th mile marker on that drag strip, and the 911 is clearly about to pass the CT at that point. Engineering Explained on YT made a great video detailing how it couldn't beat even the slowest modern 911.
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Now that is a good point. It's been repeatedly shown how towing drains EV batteries. Then again I'm not sure most buyers of EV trucks plan actually use it as a useful truck... Another reason why I don't like this whole segment.
I use my F-150 fairly often to haul and tow. If I didn't need to tow ~5000lbs I'd have just kept my old 97 Tacoma. I was all in on getting a Lightning a few months ago, especially with $15,000 in rebates and tax credits. Then I did the math and realized going from my brother's shop to my place while towing 5000lbs means I'd have to stop and charge for 30 minutes SIX times on that trip. And sadly, it seems that's as good as it gets for EV trucks right now. I'm 100% onboard with an EV truck, especially a Lightning with the ability to use it as a generator for your home in an outage, but towing/hauling range has to improve astronomically before they're practical.
I feel like the towing issues won’t be easily resolved without aerodynamic towing covers. That’s really what’s hurting the range when towing in an EV. Small differences in efficiency make a much bigger impact with EVs. Like let’s say an EV needs 100 watts to maintain speed. Adding 100 watts of aerodynamic drag doubles the energy drain. But since ICEs are less efficient overall, they would say require 500 watts to maintain speed. The extra 100 watts from towing makes less of a difference.
I predict there will be aerodynamic fairings for towing in the future as more EVs hit the road.
Supposedly the Silverado EV does have astronomically better towing range, but GM seems to be slow-rolling that one.
The great news is we have Zac (JerryRigEverything) to test exactly that:
https://youtu.be/yk_u9fbkoKM
Towing at around its maximum rating in the cold, the range was indeed below 100 miles.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/yk_u9fbkoKM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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