I know nothing about towing but so many people on here do and they are very generous with their time and answer lots of questions. So don’t hesitate to ask.
And we wives can get upset sometimes.
5klbs towing cap with gas range extender?
- Thread starter mattrawls93
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And we wives can get upset sometimes.
For me in your scenario, it would depend on how often you do this, if it's once or twice a year vs every few weeks and how far away you are towing. Also, since there is time before orders are locked in I would see if any new charging infrastructure is opened up on your typical route. It will also depend if you mind stopping to charge. If it's under a 300 mile round trip (and assuming you would have home charging to be at 100% when leaving) then you would likely only have to do one charging stop to get back home while towing. If it's longer then you may have to decide if a couple of charging stops are worth it compared to just stopping for gas if needed. For me, if it was a few times a year and under 300 miles I would go BEV. If it was a 500 mile round trip towing and you were doing it every few weeks, then I would probably lean more towards the EREV (assuming the final tow ratings are acceptable for that).
Here’s a map of DCFC chargers with a location within Missouri (pins) and a 100 km (62 mile) driving distance heat map to those chargers. In other words, for each charger, I plotted a 100 km driving distance from that charger. This is not straight-line distance, this is along a road distance.
Almost all of Missouri is covered by the DCFCs at a distance of 100 km (62 miles) or less. There are some “challenging” places near the Peck Ranch Conservation area down in southern MO, if you can only go 62*2=124 miles, but otherwise, I think Missouri is covered.
This map assumes each DCFC listed in the national database is operational, of course. But there’s enough coverage that even if one is down or there’s a line, you likely have access to another within a reasonable distance.
I wouldn’t hesitate to tow anything (of safe weight) from any point in Missouri to any other point in Missouri with a capable EV.
@SpaceEVDriver question about the chargers in that map..
Are these just all DCFCs in general, or are they chargers that are known to be accessible with a trailer? For example, there's an Electrify America charging station on my way from Columbus to Sandusky. Ignoring the fact that 4 of the 8 chargers were broken and 2 were derated last time I was there, the chargers were positioned in such a way that you could not pull up to them with a trialer still hitched up (if other cars were parked nearby). Would of course be possible to unhitch and charge, but I'm curious if there's any way to see what routes contain "convenient" chargers vs "hassle" chargers.
ie, Tesla Supercharger lot with 50 chargers where you can just pull up alongside a bunch and not feel terrible for blocking a couple would be considered "convenient"
Are these just all DCFCs in general, or are they chargers that are known to be accessible with a trailer? For example, there's an Electrify America charging station on my way from Columbus to Sandusky. Ignoring the fact that 4 of the 8 chargers were broken and 2 were derated last time I was there, the chargers were positioned in such a way that you could not pull up to them with a trialer still hitched up (if other cars were parked nearby). Would of course be possible to unhitch and charge, but I'm curious if there's any way to see what routes contain "convenient" chargers vs "hassle" chargers.
ie, Tesla Supercharger lot with 50 chargers where you can just pull up alongside a bunch and not feel terrible for blocking a couple would be considered "convenient"
Ha! And you don’t have to check his work!He might be faster than asking Chat GPT.
These are DCFC chargers listed in the national database, irrespective of their accessibility.
The best way to do a more specific filter is to use A Better Route Planner or PlugShare. Those apps allow you to filter on things such as “trailer friendly.” You can plan your potential routes using the Lightning ER as your example vehicle.
BUT those data are crowdsourced, so they’re only as good as the inputs they receive from the people who use them.
Most chargers in the US are not trailer friendly. They are slightly more friendly to tow vehicles that can pull in face-forward.
This is one of the reasons I hope Scout moves their charge port from the rear to the front passenger side: to make the vehicle more friendly to charging while towing. It’s not perfect (still lots of potential to block traffic), but if they don’t do that, our access to charging while towing will drop to nearly 0%. We’ll have to drop the trailer in nearly every instance unless there’s a place to pull alongside the charger. That’s a very small number of chargers.
Oh, I wouldn’t say that.
But have you ever noticed that the LLM ais know everything about everything except the thing you’re an expert in? Then they seem to be weirdly wrong about nearly everything in that topic… Makes you go, “hmmm.”
++ for charging from the front, I really hope that ends up being the case! (Though I hope they still keep outlets near the bed of the truck as those are currently integrated in the same component as the charge port as far as I can see).
Getting from point A to point B without unhitching is a major factor pulling me towards EREV.
I’ve lost track of where I said it. I rarely do 500+ mile trailering road trips, so for the few times that I do, it’s worth the extra stop or two and slight extra inconvenience to have the Lightning. I’ve never dropped my trailer on any trailering trip, including the 500+ mile ones. There is almost always a way to sneak the truck into a spot to charge, even if I wouldn’t classify the location as “trailer friendly." That said, I’m only towing 15-20 foot trailers, not 30-foot trailers. And if the Lightning didn’t have the charge port in the front, I would have had to drop the trailer a few times.
Another good reason to swap the charge port location with the harvester gas cap location.