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5klbs towing cap with gas range extender?
- Thread starter mattrawls93
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EV towing is amazing, with range being the obvious exception. In my area, pull-thru chargers are few and far between so the Harvester option is a major selling factor for me. Hopeful that Scout can offer a tow package option with heavier rear springs or airbags to overcome the tongue weight impact of the rear engine/fuel tank. Even mid-size trucks are coming with 7500lb tow ratings these days, so 5k as speculated is going to be a deal-breaker.
Welcome to the big show and thanks for posting. Glad to have you participating in the forum! Happy Friday!
What range are you rated and what range do you see when towing that lovely boat? One of the things that kept me from taking the plunge on a Lightning was the video from TFL where it only went about 90 miles on a full charge.
With this one I get about 110 mi (weighs ~6k with a full tank and all the gear inside), 98kW battery in the Lightning. Thankfully my local lake is 5 mi away and the river launch we like to go to is 35 mi out. I towed a SeaDoo pontoon last summer which was much lighter, but the square shape was like having a parachute and dropped me to about 80 mi at highway speeds. Aero make a big difference and this is all on generally flat lands.
Taking her up to Tahoe this summer which will be a 6500' climb, expecting to stop and charge once, maybe twice but the second location doesn't have a pull-thru. Curious to see how much regen I get on the drive back.
Note for those who aren’t familiar with the Lightning. The 98 kWh battery is the Standard Range battery, which gets approximately 240 miles EPA. The Extended Range battery (131 kWh) gets about 320 miles EPA.
At the time when the Lightning was really being reviewed I was working a job where I was towing my 16’ utility trailer nearly every day back and forth about 120 miles round trip, not counting small runoffs for materials/dump/etc. Knowing that I’d only be able to trickle on a 110v I just could not convince myself that the smaller pack would work for me, but wasn’t really convinced the bigger pack would work either.
Your comment about the aerodynamics of the trailer making a big difference reminds me of a video on YouTube I came across a while back where the guy did repeated runs in the Silverado EV and varied the trailer’s weight as well as aerodynamics and he found the aerodynamics played a significantly larger role in the efficiency than the weight. So much so, that the unladen with terrible aerodynamics was worse than the fully weighted trailer.
Yes, definitely.
Aerodynamics are the most important consideration for efficiency while towing at any speed above about 30-35 mph. With trailer axle and tire rolling resistance the second consideration. Then you start to get to the less important things like weight.
Just think about it this way: A 10 pound, fully-deployed parachute that can stop a 150 mph stock car would be a lot more difficult to tow than a 5,000 pound trailer full of bricks.
Aerodynamics is one reason all manufacturers include a limit on the trailer's maximum forward-facing surface area in their towing guides. Most people don’t bother to read the stickers on their door jamb, much less the guides…
The reasons weight matters are: 1) thermal considerations; 2) starting and stopping; and 3) it’s an easy thing to talk about and to flex about. But apparently it’s much more difficult to say, “don’t tow a trailer with more than 60 square feet front surface area.”