Hello, I am about to buy n EV as soon as I can for a truck to haul with. I wonder if anybody has any experience with Rivian now that they are out. The newest posts I can find are from over a year ago and so wonder if we have any updates.
from what I have seen great power but the range plummets while trailering. The Fast Lane Truck youtube channel did a real world trailering and mileage video not too long ago I believe.
No advice but I’m interested too. I’m sitting on about 70k right now I desperately want to go to a new electric truck (and hoping my current truck can hold out til one comes out.) The trick to finding one will absolutely be the battery power, the range declines sharply when towing.
As I sit here in our EV at a charging station, again, because we decided it would be an interesting experiment to take it on a road trip, I can tell you that speed of charging is as important as range, unless you are only ever going to trips out and back from your home.
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If you plan to pull a trailer, you need to do what I’m doing - buy the maxpack Rivian with over 400+ miles per charge. This truck has a really good Level 3 (fast) charging rate (above 200kW). Both make range anxiety a non issue.
You also need to remember that, besides towing, mph speed and extreme cold both are range killers. They are range killers for ICE (internal combusion engines) as well, but a declining gas gauge doesn’t feel as “in your face” as watching a battery gauge (percentage) drop.
The Rivian is going to be an incredible truck well worth the investment. But absolutely go for the maxpack battery.
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as long as you can find level 3 chargers available where you need them. Most of the common chargers are 6.5kW. There’s only 2 level 3 chargers within 40 miles of my location. There’s only one or two within several hundred miles all the way down 95 (I looked into this going back and forth to FL)
Easy enough to go on Plugshare and put in your most likely routes to see where the level 3 chargers are. There’s a big push in many areas to increase the availability of fast charging. Ontario is installing quite a few of them along the main highways this year.
might want to see how much nickel is used to make its batteries as the price of nickel nearly tripled in the last few weeks, current over $43,000 per ton
Two of the most commonly-used types of batteries, Nickel Cobalt Aluminium (NCA) and Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) use 80% and 33% nickel respectively; newer formulations of NMC are also approaching 80% nickel.
I’ve been pondering the practicalities of towing with an electric truck for the past few days on our road trip, as I’ve spent an inordinate amount of my vacation time sitting in Walmart parking lots…
Whilst in most decent sized towns, fast chargers are available, (though a surprising number of them don’t work,) they are still honestly few and far between out there on the highway, and they are just not set up for trucks and trailers. You’d end up having to unhitch to get into a charging spot, every 180 miles (with luck, an enormous battery, and good weather.)
Eventually this will change, I guess, but at the moment, its a giant PITA.
Don’t get me wrong, I love our EV for home-based life, but for long distances and trailering, not there yet by a long chalk.
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I did not get a Tesla because I’m a snob. I got it because of the range (500km) and charge rate of the superchargers (back on the road in 20-50 min depending on how much charge needed). At the time I bought it nothing else was practical. How long is it taking you to charge on this trip?
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We’re waiting a Cybertruck or comparable range in another manufacturer to pull my husband’s work trailer. Do you recall how much range it lost while towing? We figure if the Cubertruck loses half of the range it is meant to have it will still suit us.
We’ve been Tesla owners since the first Roadster, but I didn’t order an electric truck this time around for two reasons:
- Range is cut in half when towing, which leaves me unable to get to the main vet hospital and back without recharging.
- Of the many, many charging and supercharger stations in SoCal, none are set up to be used with a trailer attached.
I hope that in 4-5 years, these problems will be solved and I can trade in the last gas-engined vehicle in our household.
What plugshare doesn’t tell you is which public chargers aren’t operational or require a special app/account to use. They don’t operate like gas pumps. I have a plug in hybrid and occasionally will check chargers when I’m out and about - probably over 50% of the time one or more of the chargers aren’t operational.
The one time I tried to use a universal charger it wouldn’t work.
If they would put a charge port in the front of the truck it would help… still potentially blocking things with the trailer then though.
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That’s odd. I just checked all of the chargers with about 100 miles of me and they all tell you if you need an app to pay, phone numbers if there’s a problem, pictures, etc. Most of them had “check ins” from people on a regular basis letting other users know if they were working or not, the speed they were actually getting from the charger, etc.
I’ve only had to fast charge a couple times, never had an issue.
Saying that, I wouldn’t want to have to visit most of those chargers with a trailer.
I think this really depends on the density of electric cars near you. There might be 1-2 check ins per month on the local chargers here.
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We have a Jaguar I Pace, its coming up to 3 years old, so may not have the latest technology. A full charge takes about an hour. Charges at 95kwh, I believe, off the top of my head. It supposedly has a 240 mile range, but I think the best we have done on this trip is about 180, because we’ve had either the heat or the ac running, weve been going 75mph, etc. We had a miserable stretch of about 100 miles where we hit a very cold snowstorm going uphill that took us down to about 120, which was a bit of a nailbiter, as we had about 6 miles left as we pulled into the charger…
Life’s an adventure!
anxiety disorder in the making, but a panic attack will not cause a heart attack, stress and anxiety might play a role in the development of coronary artery disease.
I don’t know about yours, I found out the nailbiting way that mine had a bit more power below zero. I missed the exit to the charger on a road trip, then missed the NEXT exit, and had to drive all the way back. We made it, but I wouldn’t recommend trying it!
