I towed all day long yesterday moving (6) vehicles 40 miles round trip per vehicle with a tandem axle car hauler and came home with 36 miles left on the charge. Towing performance was also amazing. Just an FYI for anyone interested. I did put it on the charger when I came home for lunch for about an hour before setting back out.
It’s not that they can’t tow. It’s that they are not efficient when it comes to long distance towing at highway speeds.
Short distance towing (75 miles or less one way) and it’ll do fine, even at max capacity.
But say you need to move 6k lbs of whatever on a trailer 150 miles one way and you’ll have to stop charge before you get to your destination while an ICE will be able to go that road trip without needing to stop to refuel.
@Oli
Exactly. Anyone doing serious, frequent, long distance towing should probably not get an EV.
Pat said:
@Oli
Exactly. Anyone doing serious, frequent, long distance towing should probably not get an EV.
Frequent long distance towing is so inefficient and not fun (I used to tow a 33-foot travel trailer) I can’t believe anyone would do it regularly. I was so done with the hassle and stress of it (not doing it with an EV, was gas) I sold that trailer and never looked back.
Most people move boats and it’s usually not far (and a Lightning kicks ass at this). Otherwise, I don’t know why you wouldn’t just do a hotel or rent a trailer/boat/toys at your destination.
Cheaper, easier, faster.
@Zion
I grew up with a family that camped. We started with tents, then a pop-up, then a pull-behind, then a set of 5th wheels. Every “upgrade” in RV made the whole process so much more hassle. My parents just had it in their mind that they wanted to “camp” but they didn’t like sleeping on the ground. Then they didn’t want to use the outhouse. Then they wanted a bigger bed and more indoor floor space. Then they wanted to be able to watch movies and use a hairdryer in the middle of nowhere. Then they wanted AC for the hot days. We went from going camping every other weekend to maybe two weeklong trips in the summer. To one trip every summer, to one trip every couple of summers.
The lineups at the dump stations are long, the time to winterize/de-winterize the RV is annoying. The maintenance on the shit tires, jacks, awning, pullout mechanism etc became my dad’s main summertime project. All for 7-10 nights in the RV yearly.
He owns an F350 that sucks to drive around town to tow the RV once a year. The entire truck/trailer combo cost well over $300k plus the solar panels, generator, second set of bed linens, kitchen and dining shit, travel BBQ etc. The RV costs probably $500/year to maintain and it absolutely costs him nearly $500 in fuel to take it to the coast and back. It’s stressful driving it through the mountains, it’s stressful in strong cross winds. Filling with water is annoying. Campsites are a long way away from most things you actually want to do when travelling.
I can sit and roast hot dogs in my backyard whenever the fuck I want. I don’t need to drag an apartment hundreds of km then fill it with water and empty out my own shit when I’m done to do so. If I want to go “camping” I’ll just grab my tent and go camping and actually experience the outdoors.
My parents wonder why we don’t have an RV and have no interest in it even though we have two young kids. It isn’t because I don’t want to take them camping. It is because when we go camping I want it to be CAMPING. But I also want to take them to bike parks, boating, hiking etc. and that’s all easier from a hotel.
To this day my parents will drive their RV to the top of Silverstar mountain and park in a gravel lot to camp while we stay in a pet-friendly 1200 sq foot 3-bedroom condo with a fully stocked kitchen, underground parking, two bathrooms with full size showers/tubs, a hot tub, a balcony etc. for around $1500 for a full week. And we don’t have to clean it or winterize it when we leave.
Even if we bought a cheap $15,000 pop-up camper it would take a decade to even break even. Probably more since maintenance on the RV isn’t free.
@Kerr
I got a small hard-sided popup (trailmanor) for fairly cheap and I’ve loved towing it so far. While I have thought about getting something bigger when I retire or something, I dunno if I will. This is so easy to tow and deal with, I don’t know if I’ll need something bigger.
Thankfully it has a pretty decent community so I can find out how to fix most anything that goes wrong with it, but it’s in great shape for being like 15 years old, and for what I paid for it (under 7k).
@Kerr
I have a pop-up tent that I can put on the bed rails of my Lightning. Super comfortable and faster to set up and take down than a ground tent too.
Pat said:
@Oli
Exactly. Anyone doing serious, frequent, long distance towing should probably not get an EV.
Honestly, even infrequent long distance towing is a real pita.
Pat said:
@Oli
Exactly. Anyone doing serious, frequent, long distance towing should probably not get an EV.
Even frequent long distance driving sucks in an EV. We can’t drive these things with the flow of traffic and get anywhere near the advertised range. My Ioniq5 only gets about 100 miles of range at 50% battery usage on a single motor in eco mode and the charging network still sucks years later at least in Florida it does.
Pat said:
@Oli
Exactly. Anyone doing serious, frequent, long distance towing should probably not get an EV.
Even infrequent long distances won’t work. Hard to rent an ICE truck just to tow a couple times a year. I was looking to rent a truck to tow a boat purchased a few states over and it was hard.
@Wade
I pulled my boat (center console weighing about 8k lbs on the trailer) to the boat ramp and back just for giggles after I got the truck. About 80 miles round trip and averaged .8 mi/kWh running 55 mph in eastern NC with the temp around 70F. Got back home with 25% left. Pulled it 100 times better than my Ram 1500 but there’s a reason I kept the Ram also. I might be ok in the summer but no way I would attempt it in the winter due to lack of charging on the route.
@Wade
I towed a popup travel trailer from upstate New York to Maryland and I had to stop probably every hour to hour and a half to charge. It wasn’t great, but I was able to deal. Made sure to look up charging stations that were more trailer-friendly after the first charging stop though, that one was a nightmare.
@Wade
Enterprise truck rental (not the regular enterprise car rental). We have rented from them to tow sailboats to races a few states away.
This year, I’m planning to do a few trips ~300 miles with my Lightning. Hoping I only have to stop to charge once.
@Oli
This is the answer. It can do the job but it’s not the best tool for the job. I can pound a nail with a rock, but a hammer is a better and more efficient tool.
Vic said:
@Oli
This is the answer. It can do the job but it’s not the best tool for the job. I can pound a nail with a rock, but a hammer is a better and more efficient tool.
And if you’re pounding nails every day, get a hammer. If you’re pounding one nail once a year, use what’s at hand.
@Oli
It’s not the weight; it’s the aero. 6000lb boat? I can do it. 7000lb camper? Not even close. 6000lb tractor/trailer combined? Joke.
Poe said:
@Oli
It’s not the weight; it’s the aero. 6000lb boat? I can do it. 7000lb camper? Not even close. 6000lb tractor/trailer combined? Joke.
The boat depends on what kind of boat. Is it a John boat? Yes, it’s not going to affect your range much nor would it on an ICE.
Now get something bigger like a center console and you’re going to be hurting for range.
@Oli
Center console maybe, it’s a 26’ fast cuddy. Bimini/camper top removed, not just folded down… I did say 6000lb…
Never tried Bimini collapsed, or just wrapped up but still standing, because I noticed it with the old diesel, so I’d imagine it’d be a killer now.
On that note, many center consoles have an irremovable hardtop, and that would kill the aero.
Poe said:
@Oli
It’s not the weight; it’s the aero. 6000lb boat? I can do it. 7000lb camper? Not even close. 6000lb tractor/trailer combined? Joke.
Aero is airspeed squared.
Hoovie says it can’t tow, I guess I’ll go off that and make it my talking point anytime the Lightning is brought up.
Sincerely, the people with a coyote mall crawler that don’t even tow.