Electric trucks + towing

[MadTrotter]

In that situation, you will use hardly any charge It will sip the battery. When you’re hardly moving, the truck is hardly working. Slow urban driving is one of the best use case for EVs in general because they are not fully powering on the engine when they are idle.

The truck’s computer is constantly learning, you can program in your trailer and how much you’re hauling and it will adjust your range. And the it will re-adjust when you’re at highway speeds.

I totally get why it’s nerve wracking but I will say Ford is putting a lot of resources into cracking this.

Once solid state batteries are a go, they will be lighter and have greater range. Once they get much lighter you will be able to stop and swap a battery pack instead of plugging in.

I hope big venues take some of that federal Inflation Reduction Act money and install some chargers in areas where rigs can go and plug during the event.

[Alterwho]

@MadTrotter

In that situation, you will use hardly any charge It will sip the battery. When you’re hardly moving, the truck is hardly working. Slow urban driving is one of the best use case for EVs in general because they are not fully powering on the engine when they are idle.

How much does running the heater or AC while idling in traffic affect the battery?

[MadTrotter]

It depends on so much. For science-y reasons I don’t understand, the AC is much more efficient than the heat. In dead cold winter I’d say maybe a 10% reduction in range with full heat running.

It’s recommended you start it up and defrost and get it toasty while it’s still plugged in, much like with a regular engine. So that helps. My truck has heated seats and steering wheel so if I’m trying to save charge I use those.

[Demerara_Stables]

Echoing what @MadTrotter says, your biggest issue is wind resistance. I was driving home one night (sans trailer) on a low battery and almost doubled my range by reducing speed from 80mph to 60. When you’re barely moving, you’re barely using battery.

[clanter]

@ThreeWishes

before I’ll trust an EV to tow.

There just too many videos on the internet of EV cars/trucks/buses burning into a pile of junk for me to even consider one

Even considering that it would be insured there most likely would be a gap in the coverage that is greater than pocket change

then there would be deal of evacuating the horses from the trailer

[FitToBeTied]

Towing is the real issue because it cuts the range down so much. I find that the gas mileage on my F250 drops about 30% when I am pulling the horse trailer. It’s just a bumper pull, so some factor for the weight, but most of that is wind resistance. If you have to do hills and mountains you lose even more.

[MadTrotter]

@clanter

There just too many videos on the internet of EV cars/trucks/buses burning into a pile of junk for me to even consider one

Well, EV fires make for sexy news but IC cars catch fire at higher rates. There is also new guidance for EMS to put out battery fires. https://www.popsci.com/technology/electric-vehicle-fire-rates-study/?amp

[SeeSpotEvent]

I have seen someone towing a 2H BP locally with a Rivian truck. We live in an area with a lot of shows/clinics/lessons easily within the range attainable in this thread. My husband and I are always hoping we will be able to chat with them about their experience with it but have never been at our rigs at the same time when parked at a show. My trailers are pretty big, so we’ll need our 3500 for awhile but are super interested in getting an EV, so the Rivian and Lightning have been the ones we have been watching.

[LazyA1]

Agree! All of my towing these days is within 20 miles or so. To local shows and the vet. For longer trips, that usually means going thru the city (Austin), which now is too scary with horses. So I hire a local horse transport. She’s excellent. Sort of an Uber for horses. I think that’s actually a great business model. I can buy a 1/2 ton and a simple bumper pull, and not need a 3/4 ton and gooseneck.

The two hesitations I have are 1) my horses and I love the gooseneck rig, and 2) what about that emergency trip to a vet (2 - 3 hour trip) if neither my local vet or the transport service is available.

[Baybear]

Thanks for the great discussion.

[M_al]

@SusanO

The other issue towing a trailer is getting caught in a large traffic jam where you are creeping along for several hours.

As a daily electric commuter, this is among the best case scenarios. I can pull up my mileage HUGELY by creeping forward and slowing again - remember, every time you slow it adds to the battery and to your range. Sitting still is literally just sitting there with negligible battery drain.

It was 28 degrees F on my way in today and I was running feet and face heat at 74 degrees and fan level 1. Battery cost was 0.74 KW.

In my Ionic5, creeping regen usually adds around 10.0 KW. Hard-braking regen (think flying down an off ramp) regens about 115 KW. AC takes less juice in this car than heat. So, by creeping, I can seriously drive forever.

Driving 80 mph (ahem, also a large part of my commute) burns range way faster because there is just no regen available. As others have said, slowing a little bit saves a lot in these cars. You can totally tell how far I need to go by my driving behavior … not a huge trip, I am really zooming! If I’m heading across the state, I’m in the right lane puttering along with the small engines, grannies and trailers.

[joliemom_again]

Well, not that I planned to buy Tesla’s cybertruck, but 4 out of 5 physicists agree it’s a “guideless missle.” Oh, and I made up that part about the physicists. Anyway, an interesting read…

Safety experts compare the Cybertruck to a ‘guideless missile’ due to its weight, speed, and Autopilot features

[paw]

Oh, FFS. It’s a truck. Trucks can be deadly if you get run over or into a collision with one. There is no data on Cybertruck performance in the general public yet. The jury is still out.

Haters gonna hate.

[joliemom_again]

Oh, FFS. It’s a truck. Trucks can be deadly if you get run over or into a collision with one. There is no data on Cybertruck performance in the general public yet. The jury is still out.

Hold on there, Hondo! I can’t wait to buy an electric truck once it can easily tow a 3 horse slant up to Grayson Highlands, VA, I’m just having a laugh at Elon Musk’s expense.

[George_T_Mule]

Hi All
I haven’t read all of the posts, so pardon it if this is reiteration.
Towing a loaded horse trailer is a mission-critical occupation for a truck. A break-down in most any other situation is easily resolved by a phone call, but transporting precious (mine are, anyway) live cargo adds a large degree of commitment as far as getting said cargo home safely.
Personally, I’d hold off on using an e-truck for transporting horses until newer battery tech is available (soon now by all indications). Or at least limit it to short hauls to local riding areas.

[ThreeFigs]

Il recently heard a story from a local Porsche salesman. He’s a savvy car guy and researches ALL makes, models, prices and performances.

He knew a fellow who bought one of the F-150 EV’s. Charged it up, hooked up his trailer, and took off. 40 miles down the road, he ran out of power.

Next day, he took the EV truck back to the dealer and got a gas-powered one.

'Nuff said for me. The only EV I’ll ever own is a golf cart.

[Baybear]

I work in a hospital one of our staff who also does EMT said our county fire Marshall got an EV headed to the eastern shore/beach and ran out of juice on the Chesapeake bay bridge - anyone whose familiar with that bridge - a horrible horrible place to have car issues

[FitToBeTied]

I just travelled from my home in VA to Aiken. Two horse trailer with one horse on and miscellaneous other cargo. Total weight was about 6000 lbs. I made it in 8 hours. In a F150 Lightning with an extended range battery, it would have taken 2+ days.

When an EV truck can be driven all day without a recharge pulling a horse trailer, I would do it. Also when driving down, every gas station I pulled into (Sheetz, Circle K) none had charging stations. So getting to a charging station needs to be as easy as getting to a gas pump.

[quietann]

The charging station issue is real. There are a fair number of slow (J1772) chargers in Massachusetts, but unless you have time to park overnight, they’re really only good for topping off. Fast charging infrastructure is slowly spreading but often in really stupid ways, like installing one charger at each rest stop.

And there are jerks who park their gigantic gas or diesel trucks in front of chargers just for funsies, usually of a certain political persuasion based on the bumper stickers, gigantic American flags etc. And other jerks who vandalize chargers just for funsies.

[ThreeFigs]

The problem with EVs and their charging stations is, if everyone had an EV, the infrastructure can’t support all that electrical use. We just don’t. If everyone in Chicago was charging up their EVs overnight, they’d have a blackout. Electricity is still mainly generated by coal, natural gas or nuclear power plants. Wind and solar counts for a mere fraction of the need. I hate wind generators because they kill birds and bats by the thousands and solar isn’t much better. Ask the whales how they feel about the wind farms in the ocean. Evidently it’s killing them, too.

Gas and diesel fueled vehicles are still the best, most reliable modes of transportation, delivery of goods and production. I hate to think what farming would be like when/if farmers are forced to use EV tractors to produce food for us all.

How about EV airplanes, too? Bad idea? Yeah, I think so.

Maybe some time in the future, we’ll have what we need to replace fossil fuels, but this isn’t it. As fossil fuels are still our best energy bargain, no matter what the stupid politicians say, I say we stay with it until we all have nuclear cars.