4 ms·

> "tow your expensive toy somewhere which ev's suck at currently" Do EVs suck at towing because of battery life? I thought electric engines were often superior

by hirvi74 11mo ago

> "tow your expensive toy somewhere which ev's suck at currently" Do EVs suck at towing because of battery life? I thought electric engines were often superior to comparable internal combustion engines regarding torque.

wpm 11mo ago
Aging Wheels did some tests on YouTube and it’s heavily affected by aerodynamics.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
lemming 11mo ago
The instantaneous torque definitely helps, and EVs are often heavier which helps with stability. But if you're towing anything with significant air resistance (e.g. a boat, a caravan, a big trailer) it kills your range. The general rule of thumb is that it will cut your range in half, which depending on your original max range is ok for some use cases, but unacceptable for others.
- bluGill 11mo ago
  My f350 has 600 miles of range empty so it can go 300 towing.
  - vel0city 11mo ago
    This is exactly the situation. ICE also has a massive range hit as well, it's just easy to put a massive fuel tank in to get a stupid amount of range not towing compared to a battery electric that struggles to get a similar range. When you start with almost 600mi losing half isn't too bad, when it's maybe 300mi on a good day and you cut it in half is just not as usable for that usage. That said, if it's not the towing but the bed you need, the range but isn't nearly so bad.
    - qball 11mo ago
      Additionally, all ICE cars can charge from 0-100% in under 5 minutes. Even if their towing range was somehow less than an EV, it would matter less because you don't have to spend an hour at a charging station.
      - vel0city 11mo ago
        > spend an hour at a charging station This is exaggeration. A half hour for a well-loaded truck, sure, but an hour is generally exaggeration. And as for five minutes for a fill up, it's usually more than five for a regular fill-up on a regular passenger car for me compared to just continuing on.
        kakacik 11mo ago
        Yeah 5 mins is not true, its 1 minute actual 'charging' as in refill from empty to full. I don't know what your family does on the gas station, but my wife and 2 small kids can cover toilet visit (as long as there was no accident) for all 3 combined under 5 mins. So can I with paying, so at the end its 5 mins stop total all counted in. Eating as in lunch is once a day, and when we travel we certainly don't need restaurant experience of sitting around, quick sandwich is more than enough, driving on full stomach sucks anyway. Never understood people loitering around gas stations for long time, but then again when we travel its often 500km or more, the typical trip cca 2x a year back home is 1500km. EVs are not for us for quite some time, US EVs seemingly never.
        vel0city 11mo ago
        I've timed a number of the pumps around my home filling ~20gal. None of them have come close to filling in a minute. They're often 3-4 minutes of pumping, after spending a few minutes negotiating payment. I don't think I've ever spent less than 8 minutes between pulling off the road, pulling up to the pump, getting out of my car, negotiating payment, pumping, finishing up, getting in my car, and returning to the road. It takes a few minutes just getting the kids in and out of their car seats. No way everyone is getting out of the car, through the bathroom, and then back in the car ready to go in 5 minutes. Seriously, time yourself sometime. You're way underestimating the actual time you spend at a stop.
  - ProAm 11mo ago
    At what MPG?
    - bluGill 11mo ago
      18 unloaded - diesel.
      - ProAm 11mo ago
        That's pretty good!
eucyclos 11mo ago
I can't think what the issue would be aside from range. One thing that stood out to me about the cybertruck is that they made huge tradeoffs to make it more aerodynamic. The only reason to do that is to increase maximum driving distance. Put a big blocky trailer behind it and suddenly the battery's maximum distance is competing with a gas tank on a much more even playing field. Regenerative braking would make up for some of that in very hilly terrain, but on level ground it just can't get out to as many of the remote areas people take their trucks to. I really think the first obvious use case (aside from bugout vehicles) would be something like the early road rangers - driving all over a farm and bringing back crates of produce from muddy fields without getting stuck or needing a lot of maintenance.
- bluGill 11mo ago
  Charge time matters. I can fill a gas tank in the time my partner uses the bathroom. Evs need a lot longer.
  - fisherjeff 11mo ago
    Lack of pull-through charging stations is a very big hurdle too.
  - dboreham 11mo ago
    Present day EVs don't take that long to charge (basically the time to go to the bathroom and check email), but they don't have enough parallelism so at a busy location you can end up waiting for an open charger. There are orders of magnitude more gas pumps than public chargers.
    - NetMageSCW 11mo ago
      That’s an unfair comparison because you can’t count gas pumps used to charge in your locality - those are replaced by charging at bome.
      - bluGill 11mo ago
pertymcpert 11mo ago
The reason that towing affects EVs disproportionately more than ICE vehicles is because of the efficiency of EVs. It’s unintuitive but consider that with an ICE car, you have say 30% of the chemical energy of the fuel being converted to useful power. That means that per liter of gasoline burned driving, 700ml is effectively lost to waste heat. A large amount of that energy loss is a fixed cost, that is it doesn’t scale linearly with the power demand from the car. EVs are 90% efficient at converting their chemical energy to useful work. This is a good thing in general, but it also means that drag and extra losses hurt its range much more. If 90% of the energy goes into useful power, than anything that requires 50% more power is going to almost halve the range. Whereas with an ICE engine, the high fixed losses mean that demanding 50% more power doesn’t increase fuel consumption by 50%. Pair that with the higher energy density of gasoline and you’ve got a bad comparison for EVs.
dzhiurgis 11mo ago
Charging infrastructure is what sucks. Yes range goes half, but that isn't much of a problem if you tow once a month and there's tons of stations around. If not, ur screwed. Charging infrastructure was always the key for EVs and it's still relatively behind.

by hirvi74 11mo ago

wpm 11mo ago

Aging Wheels did some tests on YouTube and it’s heavily affected by aerodynamics.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

lemming 11mo ago

The instantaneous torque definitely helps, and EVs are often heavier which helps with stability. But if you're towing anything with significant air resistance (e.g. a boat, a caravan, a big trailer) it kills your range. The general rule of thumb is that it will cut your range in half, which depending on your original max range is ok for some use cases, but unacceptable for others.

bluGill 11mo ago
My f350 has 600 miles of range empty so it can go 300 towing.
- vel0city 11mo ago
  This is exactly the situation. ICE also has a massive range hit as well, it's just easy to put a massive fuel tank in to get a stupid amount of range not towing compared to a battery electric that struggles to get a similar range. When you start with almost 600mi losing half isn't too bad, when it's maybe 300mi on a good day and you cut it in half is just not as usable for that usage. That said, if it's not the towing but the bed you need, the range but isn't nearly so bad.
  - qball 11mo ago
    Additionally, all ICE cars can charge from 0-100% in under 5 minutes. Even if their towing range was somehow less than an EV, it would matter less because you don't have to spend an hour at a charging station.
    - vel0city 11mo ago
      > spend an hour at a charging station This is exaggeration. A half hour for a well-loaded truck, sure, but an hour is generally exaggeration. And as for five minutes for a fill up, it's usually more than five for a regular fill-up on a regular passenger car for me compared to just continuing on.
      - kakacik 11mo ago
        Yeah 5 mins is not true, its 1 minute actual 'charging' as in refill from empty to full. I don't know what your family does on the gas station, but my wife and 2 small kids can cover toilet visit (as long as there was no accident) for all 3 combined under 5 mins. So can I with paying, so at the end its 5 mins stop total all counted in. Eating as in lunch is once a day, and when we travel we certainly don't need restaurant experience of sitting around, quick sandwich is more than enough, driving on full stomach sucks anyway. Never understood people loitering around gas stations for long time, but then again when we travel its often 500km or more, the typical trip cca 2x a year back home is 1500km. EVs are not for us for quite some time, US EVs seemingly never.
        vel0city 11mo ago
        I've timed a number of the pumps around my home filling ~20gal. None of them have come close to filling in a minute. They're often 3-4 minutes of pumping, after spending a few minutes negotiating payment. I don't think I've ever spent less than 8 minutes between pulling off the road, pulling up to the pump, getting out of my car, negotiating payment, pumping, finishing up, getting in my car, and returning to the road. It takes a few minutes just getting the kids in and out of their car seats. No way everyone is getting out of the car, through the bathroom, and then back in the car ready to go in 5 minutes. Seriously, time yourself sometime. You're way underestimating the actual time you spend at a stop.
- ProAm 11mo ago
  At what MPG?
  - bluGill 11mo ago
    18 unloaded - diesel.
    - ProAm 11mo ago
      That's pretty good!

eucyclos 11mo ago

I can't think what the issue would be aside from range. One thing that stood out to me about the cybertruck is that they made huge tradeoffs to make it more aerodynamic. The only reason to do that is to increase maximum driving distance. Put a big blocky trailer behind it and suddenly the battery's maximum distance is competing with a gas tank on a much more even playing field. Regenerative braking would make up for some of that in very hilly terrain, but on level ground it just can't get out to as many of the remote areas people take their trucks to. I really think the first obvious use case (aside from bugout vehicles) would be something like the early road rangers - driving all over a farm and bringing back crates of produce from muddy fields without getting stuck or needing a lot of maintenance.

bluGill 11mo ago
Charge time matters. I can fill a gas tank in the time my partner uses the bathroom. Evs need a lot longer.
- fisherjeff 11mo ago
  Lack of pull-through charging stations is a very big hurdle too.
- dboreham 11mo ago
  Present day EVs don't take that long to charge (basically the time to go to the bathroom and check email), but they don't have enough parallelism so at a busy location you can end up waiting for an open charger. There are orders of magnitude more gas pumps than public chargers.
  - NetMageSCW 11mo ago
    That’s an unfair comparison because you can’t count gas pumps used to charge in your locality - those are replaced by charging at bome.
    - bluGill 11mo ago

pertymcpert 11mo ago

The reason that towing affects EVs disproportionately more than ICE vehicles is because of the efficiency of EVs. It’s unintuitive but consider that with an ICE car, you have say 30% of the chemical energy of the fuel being converted to useful power. That means that per liter of gasoline burned driving, 700ml is effectively lost to waste heat. A large amount of that energy loss is a fixed cost, that is it doesn’t scale linearly with the power demand from the car. EVs are 90% efficient at converting their chemical energy to useful work. This is a good thing in general, but it also means that drag and extra losses hurt its range much more. If 90% of the energy goes into useful power, than anything that requires 50% more power is going to almost halve the range. Whereas with an ICE engine, the high fixed losses mean that demanding 50% more power doesn’t increase fuel consumption by 50%. Pair that with the higher energy density of gasoline and you’ve got a bad comparison for EVs.

dzhiurgis 11mo ago

Charging infrastructure is what sucks. Yes range goes half, but that isn't much of a problem if you tow once a month and there's tons of stations around. If not, ur screwed. Charging infrastructure was always the key for EVs and it's still relatively behind.