4 ms·
It will be interesting to see what the real-world experience is like, but I don't expect any good news. People towing tiny travel trailers behind Model X's get
by rootusrootus 5y ago
It will be interesting to see what the real-world experience is like, but I don't expect any good news. People towing tiny travel trailers behind Model X's get brutal reductions in range.
The problem is that an EV is so inherently efficient to begin with that towing a big hollow brick behind you makes a tremendous difference in how much fuel it takes to pull it. Contrast that with a pickup that is already getting mid-teens fuel economy, the change in efficiency is much less pronounced. And with the easy filling ability of the ICE pickup, it's going to be the go-to choice for a number of years until batteries get significantly more capacity, denser, and cheaper.
A very typical pickup/travel trailer combo will get 10mpg. Maybe a couple more for a diesel. You can find outliers, but I've been towing RVs for a while and the topic comes up for discussion periodically, 10mpg is by far the most common experience. Trying to cram enough capacity into a battery for this kind of terrible efficiency is going to be tough for a while.