All autos incur a noticeable effectivity drop when towing a trailer, however whereas ICE autos can get a full tank in minutes, whereas an electrical automobile will take longer to cost and its reliance on public chargers that will or might not work additional dents its attraction. This appears to be the conclusion drawn from this group towing take a look at carried out by Edmunds, which pitted ICE and hybrid vans in opposition to the Ford F-150 Lightning.
The duty was to tug a trailer carrying a Tesla Mannequin 3 over a set distance, then measure the autos’ effectivity on the finish. As anticipated, the very best on gasoline was the diesel-burning Ram 1500, adopted by the Ford F-150 Hybrid and the Chevrolet Silverado with a V8 underneath the hood.
The Lightning was surprisingly good too, based on Edmunds, offering an correct vary prediction with the trailer hooked up, which it then really would have exceeded by some 20 miles. Others who’ve executed towing assessments within the F-150 Lightning earlier than have even reported that greater than half of the vary disappeared when the load was factored in, though they have been pulling much less aerodynamic trailers generally.
On this take a look at, although, at first the automobile, which is provided with the long-range battery pack, predicts that it may go for 160 miles, however after the journey begins, it shortly drops to underneath 140 miles. They calculated that the truck used 64.6 kWh/100 miles, which is fairly good on condition that Ford says it ought to do 51 kWh/100 miles unladen.
When the time got here to cost the electrical truck, although, issues didn’t go so easily.
Trying to find a identified Electrify America charging station with 350 kW stalls close by within the F-150’s navigation yielded no outcomes. Within the space, it was solely exhibiting some slower 50 kW chargers. The take a look at driver needed to manually set the navigation to the situation of the Electrify America location, which was arrange in a means that required the trailer to be unhitched earlier than charging.
After unhitching the trailer and hooking the Lightning as much as one of many 350 kW chargers, it stored giving an error message that prevented charging. They needed to transfer the truck to a unique stall the place they’d beforehand seen one other EV charging for it to lastly begin placing juice again into its battery.
