alt Hacker News > Towing with an EV is terrible.
What is your opinion on the upcoming Tesla Semi? I expect that it will be successful, useful, and efficient.
Replies
It is reductive to say it is terrible. The issue is that the current range we are putting in trucks, adjusted for the range loss from towing a large trailer, is insufficient.
The Tesla Semi proves that this is the issue: with an extremely large battery and high-speed charging, the Semi solves these problems.
A regular truck that can TOW 300 miles would certainly not be "terrible for towing."
They provided a concrete example: Trying to charge when a trailer is attached.
> As I understand, electric motors deliver instant maximum torque. Isn't that advantageous for towing?
Your understanding is not wrong, but quantity of torque is a minor piece of what matters, so that doesn't move the needle.
Towing lowers the range of an EV by so much that it becomes nearly useless. This is much more important with an EV than an ICE, because EV charging is less available and takes much longer.
It's understandable that you might not fully understand the magnitude of the pros and cons from your LLM prompt, those sorts of responses usually assume certain levels of experience and familiarity with the topic. It'll make more sense when you get older!
The downside of electric motors for towing is that they require electricity.
And towing requires a lot of electricity. How do you bring enough electrons?
Nobody expects an impressive 1/4 mile time from a vehicle towing a trailer. That's not what makes EVs bad at towing.
My towing-capable gas vehicle sees at worst a 30% decrease in range from towing my camping trailer, and my towing-capable diesel vehicle sees closer to a 10% decrease in range.
A while back, I read a comment on here from someone who lived in a trailer full-time as a digital nomad. They were also dedicated to driving an EV. They towed their small trailer with their Model Y. I grant you, the Model Y is not optimized for towing the way that the Cybertruck (ostensibly) is, but they described the process of travelling between Grand Junction, Colorado, and Moab, Utah, a distance just over 110 miles. With the trailer, they had to drive to Cisco, about halfway in between, drop the trailer, drive back to Grand Junction, recharge fully, drive back again, pick up the trailer, and drive the remaining 60 or so miles to Moab, where they could recharge again. Because without the trailer, they could drive the entire 1-way distance 3 times over without recharging. With the trailer, they could not make the whole trip once.