Originally published at: Towing long distances with a Rivian still seems less than ideal | Boing Boing
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Driving to London on an Oral-B toothbrush still seems less than ideal too.
Seems kind of weird to grumble about a perfectly good technology because it doesn’t do something it wasn’t designed to do.
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Trucks are the most popular vehicle in the US and one of the top, non-commercial, uses is towing. A truck that can not tow narrows its market considerably.
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I really wish that the new Ford Maverick came in a plug-in version. The hybrid version they just released is part of the way, but I really want a small battery-electric truck.
All-electric Ford Ranger with a crew cab would be pretty good, too. Come on, 2022, don’t disappoint me…
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Seems kind of weird to grumble about a perfectly good technology because it doesn’t do something it wasn’t designed to do.
A vehicle that is not designed to tow being marketed as a “truck” is egregious false advertising.
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But it can tow, and rather well. It has trouble with the much less frequent task of towing a large object across the country.
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Towing is going to be a problem for most electric vehicles. Batteries today just aren’t that energy dense. It’s just that electric motors are really efficient that they are able to get away with the range that they do have. But add work needing to be done to large mass against gravity and you start maxing out the energy capacity the batteries do have really fast.
If you are into math I’d recommend this video:
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80-100miles between charges towing a trailer or boat won’t do. Also, the infrastructure needs to be adapted to allow EVs with a trailer to charge. This is what makes the hybrids look good to me – the Ford Maverick has been impressive.
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75% of trucks owners use their trucks for towing one time a year or less. Trucks are mostly used for single person transportation in this country.
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From the size and frequency of giant heavy-duty trucks in my large urban area, I believe the vast majority of purchasers take that one towing trip per year very seriously in their decision-making.
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The answer is to add an extra battery in the trailer.
Or just use a different vehicle for the rare times that you tow more than 100 miles. Honestly, they should have just sent their car with a commercial shipper.
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It really will for most people. 100 miles would take someone from my house to the far end of the nearest national park or to almost every major beach in the state. It is a very small portion of even the truck driving population that regularly travels over 100 miles towing anything. Even if meant a rental for a few trips per year, most people would come out ahead.
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Check out “The Long Way Up” on appletv+. They took two electric motorcycles up South America, and most of the drama is around range anxiety. Despite having a flotilla of support vehicles including prototype Rivians and a huge diesel generator on a trailer. I can’t remember whether the Rivian towed the generator but that would be the way to get some range.
This seems to be both very true and pretty silly. (Just had this as a Thanksgiving conversation.) It’s really a lot to put on a once-a-year trip.
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Then again insinuating this vehicle is “not designed to tow” is egregious misrepresentation.
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I saw it too, IIRC, they were able to charge by towing the vehicles. Perhaps a grappling hook + semi-trailer = good to go. /s
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Will people please stop hammering EVs because “OMG in this extreme edge case it is less convenient than a gas-powered car” please? I thought boing-boing was a site run by people that care about the environment, but clearly not. Instead, they post clickbait about how an electric truck might be slightly inconvenient on a 2700 mile towing trip. As if that happens every day, or ever…
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For some, I suppose.
Counterpoint: from my house in Austin, the nearest beach is roughly 150 miles away (as the crow flies), and 258 miles to Port A, which is the beach that I’d to go to anyway. It’s 489 miles to the far end of the nearest national park, Hot Springs NP (beating out the far end of Big Bend NP by 13 miles, according to Google Maps).
But I don’t go to those places much these days. I’m in the middle of a years-long project rehabilitating land that I own out in the Hill Country, and building a house on it. It’s about 160 miles of away from Austin by way of some long, lonely roads. I haul truckloads and/or trailerloads of crap back and forth twice a month or so. Definitely not the target use case for EV “trucks.”
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There’s always Hippie Hollow…
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I’d definitely support turning Hippie Hollow in to a national park…
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