dtmackey wrote:The Ford Lightning is a nice truck when used for commuting in an area with chargers. Hook it to a load and range drops to around 100 miles...
There is nothing unique or different about the change in range of an electric vehicle when towing a heavy load than the same situation with an internal combustion vehicle when it tows a heavy load. Both the electric vehicle and the internal combustion vehicle have to produce more energy to tow a heavy load than they needed to produce when NOT towing a heavy load. There should be NO SURPRISE that this occurs IN BOTH SITUATIONS.
For example, my 1995 GMC Suburban with 5.7-liter V8 engine can get about 18-MPG when running by itself. but when towing my boat, its fuel economy drops to about 10-MPH. This is a decrease of the fuel economy by a factor of 0.55 or stated in percent, a decrease of 55-percent. To convert into range, we have to include the fuel tank capacity, which in the case of my truck is 44-gallons. Let's call the useful capacity 40-gallons, and now we compute the range for not-towing and towing:
Conventional Internal Combustion Tow Vehicle; 1995 GMC Suburban
NOT TOWING
40-gallons x 18-MPG = 720-mile range
TOWING
40-gallons x 10-MPH = 400-mile range
A 400-mile range when towing is only 0.55 or 55-percent of the range when NOT towing.
With electric vehicles, the effect of the heavier load on the range of the is about the same, that is, the range when towing is about 55-percent of the range when not towing, and perhaps as low as 50-percent.
In the case of a FORD F-150 LIGHTNING, the typical range figure for not towing is about 350-miles, and the range when towing will then be about 175-miles if we use a figure of a 50-percent drop.
Generally when I am towing a heavy trailer, I am driving about 60-MPH maximum, so my average speed is going to be about 50-MPH. Now we can compute the available driving time before needing to re-fuel.
For the GMC Suburban, 400-miles at 50-MPH is 8-hours.
For the F-150 LIGHTNING< 192-miles at 50-MPH is 3.84-hours.
Now before you say, "Hey you can drive twice as far in the old GMC than with the new F-150 LIGHTNING", I have to point out that I cannot drive more than about three hours towing a trailer before I need to take break. I am going to need to stop, get out of the vehicle, use a rest area bathroom, and take a short walk to refresh myself.
Also, when I am towing a heavy load with the old GMC, I NEVER fill the fuel tank to full. The weight of 40-gallons of gasoline (at 6.25-lbs per gallon) is 250-lbs, and all of that added weight is going onto the rear axle. With the boat trailer hitched up, a full vehicle fuel tank pushes the rear axle weight load close to the maximum allowed. For that reason, I prefer to not tow with a full tank, and this reduces my effective range accordingly.
If using an electric tow vehiclle, and if there were a suitable charging facility available, I would just pull into one of those facilities with the electric vehicle, plug in for charging, and then take my bathroom break, take a walk, and maybe add a 15-minutes to the stop to let the charger add more energy to the battery. buy a coffee, maybe a snack. and take a break.
I have pulled my boat trailer on some long trips. The longest one was a four-day 2,400-mile drive from Detroit to Washington State (and repeated on the way back home). As you can see, to do this in four-days means driving 600-miles each day, and at an average of 50-MPH that means 12-hours of driving. That was the absolute limit for endurance, using two drivers. And there were many stops for bathrooms, food, and fuel. And I was a lot younger when I did that than I am now.
At 10-MPG the 4,800-mile trip consumed 480-gallons of gasoline. But at the time of that trip (2003), highway gasoline was available at $2-per-gallon. I see the cost of gasoline on the west coast is much higher now, maybe $6-per-gallon, and approaching $4-per-gallon in the Midwest. Let us use $5-per-gallon average cost for gasoline today. To make that trip today would mean about $2,400 in gasoline. Ouch.
The argument that the range of an electric vehicle drops when towing a heavy trailer is not a convincing argument, because the same thing happens with an internal combustion engine. The only real difference is that you can pump gasoline into the fuel tank faster than you can push electrical energy into a vehicle storage battery. But that is today's technology. I expect that advances in electric vehicle batteries, advances in charging technology, and expansion of publicly available recharging station will all tend to reduce the amount of time required for electric vehicles to dwell at a charging station to get a significant boost in their stored electrical energy. Can you do all that today in every state on every road, of course not. But do not think the infrastructure for electric vehicle charging is going to remain as it is in 2023 forever.
There will be one very significant difference with recharging with an electric tow vehicle compared to an internal combustion tow vehicle: the ability to re-fuel while maintaining the connection to the trailer. At a typical gasoline station, it will generally be possible to approach the fuel pump with the trailer still attached to the towing vehicle. In some cases, there may be a delay due to waiting for both pumps at a fueling lane to be available, but the wait time typically should not be excessive.
In the case of electric vehicle recharging stations, their current design seems to require that the electic vehicle back into the charging space, and this, of course, would mean the trailer would have to be unhitched. That would be a significant inconvenience when towing a large boat trailer. Exactly where you could easily disconnect from the trailer and park it unattended would have to be a consideration in the design of the charging facility. I have not read any informed discussions of this problem in the electric vehicle community.
At the moment, the use of an electric vehicle to tow a boat seems to imply making a trip end-to-end, without any recharging along the way, unless you are willing to unhitch the trailer, park the trailer somewhere else, and use the charging stations as designed for one slot in a row charging stations.
I anticipate that with an increase of large electric trucks on the highways, there will be charging stations created that permit recharging large trucks while their trailers are still attached.