All New Electric Ford F150 Shown Towing

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Haha. I have done my research and came to my own conclusion. With the help of many scholarly articles, over 5 years ago. Must be different universities and of course not fox news. I believe different then you. And that is okay. Electric is the way of the future, in my opinion. Maybe not this year. Maybe next, maybe in 5.

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Your rather narrow minded aren't you. Not Fox news, San Mateo mercury. Just keep drinking the Kool aid. What I know for a fact, is my Tesla roadster takes a day and a half to go from Palo alto to Las Vegas with charging times and an indirect route to line up with charging stations. And thats in highway mode, not sport mode.

[tatetoter]

Your rather narrow minded aren't you. Not Fox news, San Mateo mercury. Just keep drinking the Kool aid. What I know for a fact, is my Tesla roadster takes a day and a half to go from Palo alto to Las Vegas with charging times and an indirect route to line up with charging stations. And thats in highway mode, not sport mode.

Yep. Very narrow minded. As in I decide what's best for me and what I believe. And allow you to do the same. Very very narrow. ;-)

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[Overtaxed]

The first official comment from any manufacturer on towing capacity was recently released by Rivian. During their Long-Hill Towing tests in the Arizona heat, their Engineers were quoted as saying that you loose about 50% of the range (the tests were done pulling 11,000 pounds up/down a very steep and long hill).

When you drive an EV on a long trip, you usually don't take the time to recharge to 100%, this has to do with how the batteries accept a charge. Usually, you would charge up to 80 - 85% which should be enough to get you to the next (or second) charging station. Lithium Ion batteries can accept a very high rate of charge up to the 80/85% level before they begin to taper off. With the Fast Charging Stations being capable of high currents (up to 350 kwh), your Electric Pickup should charge up in 30 to 40 minutes, just enough time to grab some lunch and for everybody to use the comfort station. At 300 - 350 kwh charge rate you are putting energy into your batteries at a rate of over 1,000 miles per hour.

Not 1000 towing miles in an hour at 350KW. It's 2KW/mile that they are looking at on the semi, I see little reason to think that we'd get a ton better towing a big 5er; we don't with diesel engines, I get about 8-9, a semi gets about 7-8. A little better, but not 100% better. I think 1.5KW/M is a reasonable benchmark for what it would take to tow a big 5er. So, at 300KW charger, you'll get about 200 miles of charge in 1 hr. On a 1000KW charger, now we're talking, you could get 700+ miles in an hour, still not as fast as a diesel fill up, but, not too bad.

Also they are "estimating" a 53 minute full charge at a mega charger and a 30 minute charge to 80% from empty on the semi

The megachargers are a reasonable solution to the problem. Thing is, am I going to be able to find one on the way from Jackson to Yellowstone? I'm gonna go with "not for a VERY long time". My RV use is almost all rural; yes, the highway driving down the truck routes, maybe I'll live long enough to see good megacharger availability up and down RT81. I'm pretty confident I will not live long enough to see good megachargers available between Jackson and Yellowstone. Both because it's rural, but also because "if semi's don't go that way often, we're not gonna put one there". So you basically lock yourself into semi routes, not an impossible limitation, but certainly something to think about.

What I know for a fact, is my Tesla roadster takes a day and a half to go from Palo alto to Las Vegas with charging times and an indirect route to line up with charging stations.

And what I'll add as my "fact" is that everyone I know who has a Tesla, when they want to do a long road trip 1-2X a year, they rent. It's just too much of a hassle to coordinate charging if you start to get "out there" in any meaningful way. Which is why I think that talking about 50A circuits at RV campgrounds has merit, there's 1000's of them available for every Tesla charging station and they could possibly "close the gap" for us RV'ers. And they can, if you can spend a LOT of time plugged in there pulling a charge.

[SolarPoweredRV]

Your rather narrow minded aren't you. Not Fox news, San Mateo mercury. Just keep drinking the Kool aid. What I know for a fact, is my Tesla roadster takes a day and a half to go from Palo alto to Las Vegas with charging times and an indirect route to line up with charging stations. And thats in highway mode, not sport mode.

WOW, congratulations on owning a soon-to-be Classic Sports car. You must really love it. Unfortunately, your Tesla is ten years old now and a lot of the technology has changed since your car was built. For example, if you owned one of the "Plaid" Model S Teslas that should be coming out at the end of next year, you could almost make that trip on a single charge (10 - 15 minutes) and in a single day. If you were to take that trip in a Model 3, you could probably make it with only one long stop to charge along the way (or better yet, two shorter charging stops).

The batteries and the charging infrastructure have changed a lot since your Tesla was built, and, Tesla's batteries are going to change a WHOLE LOT more over the next couple of years (referring to Tesla's Battery Day). Additionally, the Charging Stations are now offering charging rates of up to 350 Kwh.

Based on your description of the trip from Palo Alto to Vegas, a day and a half seems pretty long, however, I doubt that I would make a 550 mile trip without having an overnight stop. Realistically, I would much rather split the drive into a 7 hour chunk and a 4 hour chunk instead of trying to drive that far in a single day. I would want to be rested enough to enjoy my time in Vegas versus being tired from the drive and forcing my self to enjoy being in Vegas while I am Dog Tired from the drive. So, even if I had a Gas car that could make the trip in one shot, I wouldn't (when I was young and stupid, yes, but not now).

PS: at some point you really need to give your bladder a break and stop, that is usually a great time to charge up.

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Yep. Very narrow minded. As in I decide what's best for me and what I believe. And allow you to do the same. Very very narrow. ;-)

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Yes your narrow minded, not I. I did not assume you get your information from a specific source. Knock yourself out with whatever choice you want, again I did not assume anything about you. I just informed you of my personal experience, not opinion.

[tatetoter]

Yes your narrow minded, not I. I did not assume you get your information from a specific source. Knock yourself out with whatever choice you want, again I did not assume anything about you. I just informed you of my personal experience, not opinion.

Then we get each other just perfectly. Thanks for your comment.

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[tfgd21bhe]

Yeah, towing a utility trailer, most likely with nothing inside it. Anyone know how much that type trailer might weigh?

There is a video from Ford showing the electric 150 pulling 1 million pounds of railroad cars for what its worth.

[Overtaxed]

There is a video from Ford showing the electric 150 pulling 1 million pounds of railroad cars for what its worth.

What it's worth is about as much as the video of Robert Downey Jr wearing the Iron Man suit. It's make believe for the TV.

Electric motors are fantastic for pulling, there's no question about it. My "beef" isn't that, it's much more logistics of first having a big enough "tank" to be useful for towing (500KHW+) an RV and then second, the logistics of getting enough power to refill that tank once you get where you're going.

If Ford released a diesel-electric F450 tomorrow, I'd be at the dealership looking at it. Electric motors are great, smooth, quiet, tons of torque. There's a lot to like there for towing. But batteries with 100's of KWH's, even if they work perfectly and don't weigh that much, just have logistical challenges that I don't see being solved anytime soon for the use case that I have pulling an RV. If I didn't have the RV and just used my truck as I used to, pulling trailers around town to pick things up, yeah, the Cybertruck or something like it probably would work. But when you start to combine 15,000 lbs of pulling, 100's a miles a day, rural locations, that's where the discussion falls apart for me. My next trip, in a few weeks, day 1 is about a 450 mile pull up RT81 to a secluded mountain town near West Virginia. RT81 is a major trucking route on the east coast, so, if we start to get some serious adoption of the semi, I'm sure that route will get the very high speed chargers, but, what about when I get there? I'll be driving 100's of miles there to go hiking, sightseeing, etc and trying to "refuel" my battery at the park, though possible, will take a very, very long time. Also, it looks like really my only electric option even on the drawing board pull 16K lbs on a 5er with enough battery capacity to be reasonable is the Tesla semi. Well, I don't want a semi, if I did, I'd have one for towing already!

Well, someone will just put the semi battery into a pickup, that'll fix your problem! Yes, maybe, not without technological breakthroughs though. The 500KWH battery weighs 5 tons, the 1MWH battery weighs about 8 tons. Batteries are improving quite rapidly, but I think we probably need to get down to 2-3tons per MWH before you'll be able to stuff enough battery in something the size of a dually pickup truck to actually build what I (and I think a lot of other RV'ers) would be interested in buying.

Take a 200HP diesel engine, couple it to a 100KW generator and a 250WH battery pack.. Now you've got something interesting to me, the power of electric with the range of what I currently have. Probably much better efficiency too because diesel engines can be tuned to be very efficient at a set RPM range. Let that thing chug away at 1800 RPMs producing power to recharge the batteries, probably last my lifetime before it let's go.

[SolarPoweredRV]

For those who want a glimpse of the EV Future...

Watch Rivian's pre-production video showing the Rivian Pickup on the road (middle of video) in several environments.

Note: The Tank Turn is really special.

Note 2: the last quarter of the video shows the Rivian Pickup in some Very, Very remote places in South and Central America, Part of "The Long Way Up" video series available soon on Apple TV.

[Overtaxed]

For those who want a glimpse of the EV Future...

Watch Rivian's pre-production video showing the Rivian Pickup on the road (middle of video) in several environments.

Note: The Tank Turn is really special.

Note 2: the last quarter of the video shows the Rivian Pickup in some Very, Very remote places in South and Central America, Part of "The Long Way Up" video series available soon on Apple TV.

The tank turn idea is awesome! Kind of like a skid steer, really neat!

The Rivian tops out at 180KWH though, so, while perhaps interesting for short hops, you'd be lucky to get much over 100 miles between charges towing a 5er. When we start seeing 500-1000KWH pickup trucks, then, as I discussed above, we're talking about something that might broadly be interesting to RV'ers. Until then, these things are perhaps great around town, and if you only do a repeatable short tow with your rig, might work for you, but it's nowhere near where it needs to be for many of us. Again, this isn't me hating on EV's, in fact, I like them a lot and helped a friend build one years ago, it was a blast and acceleration was mind boggling! This is me injecting "math" into the discussion and relating it to what it takes, from an energy point of view, to pull a 15-20K box down the road. And, on that front, is where EV's have a big issue; we can either put in massive batteries (like the semi), we can stop every 100-200 miles for quite awhile to charge, or we can put a generator on board. But it is simple math, there are ~35KW/h in a gallon of diesel fuel, with engine efficiency figured in, you wind up around 12-15KW/h per gallon. So, to simulate the 40 gallon gas tank I have in my F450, you need around 600MWH of battery capacity. Which, of course, is why the Tesla semi has 500 and 1000 KWH options available. Math is fun.

So, even if a Rivian could haul the rig, with 180KWH battery, you've basically got, at best, the equivalent range of my truck with 1/2 a tank (20 gallons of diesel). 150 miles before the light comes on, 190 or so to bone dry.

Very short version: This is a battery capacity discussion. Until we get to 500-1000 KWHs on board, you're not going far between charges with an EV towing a RV. And once we do get to 1000 KWH's on board, then we have the logistics of pulling down the same amount of power a typical house uses in a month in <1hr. Sure, it's simple to charge 1 truck at 1,000KW/hr, not at all simple to charge 100's at that speed, you're talking "substation level" power at that point. Add in even more, you're talking "power plant" levels of consumption.

To try to get this in perspective, let's think of a busy truck stop with 30-40 lanes for refueling. Let's say those lanes can service a little over 2 trucks per hour (to make math easy) and therefore, can refuel 100 trucks in 1 hour. If those trucks were all electric tomorrow, AND every diesel truck stop also had MW level chargers, well, what's the math look like? Well, to refuel 100 trucks in 1 hour, you'll need 100MW of electric. How much electric is that? I think this is where people just can't fathom the scale required here, so, let's relate it to something more familiar. A nuclear reactor is typically between 500 and 1000MW. So, fun way to look at it, 500 Tesla semis pulling down 1MW of power over a 1 hour "fill up" basically take the entire capacity of a nuclear reactor. Or, put another way, instead of 10,000 gallon diesel tanks under the ground in the gas station, they need a build a nuclear reactor and share it across a few gas stations to deal with the pull of the semis.