Discussions of EVs get a lot of attention here, so I thought people might be interested in this recent test from The Fast Lane Truck:
To skip to the main result of these tests: the truck hauls the roughly 8,000 pound load (a pickup on a flat deck trailer) up the "Ike" grade easily, maintaining the desired 60 MPH. So the battery, electronics, and motors don't overheat and cut back on power enough to be a performance issue in this relatively extreme towing situation.
But the more interesting parts:
- The range estimate drops in half as soon as the trailer is hooked up.
- The actual range is even lower than the initial towing estimate.
- Descending the long and steep "Ike Gauntlet" grade adds only about 2% or 3 kWh (enough for less than 2 miles or 3 km of towing) by regenerative braking to maintain 60 MPH; climbing the same grade at the same speed took 16% of the battery capacity.
- The climb used about 2,700 Wh/mile (or 1,700 Wh/km), which is about ten times the consumption of a typical EV, not towing and on level ground; that's not surprising, given the energy requirement of climbing and the drag of the trailer. Overall on the highway consumption was very roughly half of that... still several times what a car without trailer would use. They were not rigourous enough in tracking to determine a consumption value (or corresponding range) for averaged uphill and downhill travel.
Regenerative braking is good, but it won't save a towing rig from high energy consumption, and regenerative braking on the descent won't even get close to making up for the extra consumption on the climb.
This test is not quite directly applicable to towing a travel trailer like an Escape. The load has a smaller frontal area, but a terrible shape for aerodynamics, so drag might be worse than even the largest Escape. The weight of their loaded trailer is substantially more than the heaviest Escape loaded to capacity. But it's in the ballpark, and anyone waiting for the Rivian R1T to be delivered shouldn't expect much better towing range than seen in this test.
They said they plan to do a highway energy consumption test, strangely with a smaller trailer, which might be more representative of a travel trailer like an Escape (but not a 5.0... they won't fifth-wheel tow with the Rivian).
They take a side trip to a charging station after reaching the test area, so they can run the rest of the test. The station has pull-in spots, which leave the trailer interfering with traffic in the aisle. In a move that says a lot about the attitude of some EV drivers and of many owners of expensive vehicles, they don't drop the trailer off out of the way and come back to charge - they just get in the way for the entire time it takes to charge. I wonder how many enemies of EVs or of trucks with trailers they made?
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