Electric Tow Vehicles - Getting close
Used to be a guy on the forum towing a tear drop with a tesla but really not suitable for the vast majority of RVers. We had a young family camp next to us this weekend and something didn't look rig...
Forum Discussion
Lightning is like a trim line. The Lightning might not be selling, but the F150 is still going strong.
Huh? The lightning is specific to the Ford F-150 EV. It's not a trim. It's their electric version of the F-150. Which by the way is selling abysmally and prices on used ones are dropping like a fat kid on a see-saw.
F-150 ICE's - all trim levels are selling just fine.
the ford lightning is also a performance truck which it is rumored another one is being released so it will be ford lightning (supercharged coyote ) and ford lightning ev, unless they take the name away from the original ford lightning and call it something else. to me that was a huge marketing mistake by ford calling the ev a lightning. so yes lightning is a trim line, its like calling the mustang ev, or the kona ev, it is a electric version of the f150, yes it is purpose designed but it is still a f150.
and the lightning(EV) is still selling well, people see a decline from the first few years and think its crashing but any EV now adays is going to sell fewer numbers than they would have over the last 4 or 5 because all the excited people who had to have a ev bought them and now its just the people wondering about it when they have to buy a new car.
Up thread it was briefly discussed that govt intervention is rarely a good thing. The f150 ev was brought out under heavy govt pressure and doesn't fit most users. Towing is impractical with around 100mile range with a full battery, so every 1.0-1.5 hr you need to stop and it needs to be a full charge. Even a 250 mile run is 3-5 hr charging.
Even non towing it's marginal when selling to the typical conservative truck base if you want to use it for road trips.
It's got the price but not the functionality. It's almost as if they wanted it to fail, so they could say we did what was mandated but it doesn't work.
and to me that doesn't make sense, I have three friends from work who own them (lots of people have been going ev from work as they have charging stations at work so your car can charge for free while you work. hence my almost foray into the ev world) but they love them, and you see the f150 lightning on the roads all the time up here, but if you are just buying it for driving around. the Lightning can tow up to 10000lbs in the right trim and package and all ev's when they are towing max capacity get about 1/4 of their empty millage, ev's are not practical for towing, yet. more energy dense battery would help but it isn't going to change the fact it need more energy to drive the motors for the extra weight.
what it is good for is contractors who want to be able to put stuff in the bed and power tools at the job site and that was its main intention, the other thing it is good for is what probably 80% of truck owners use their trucks for, driving around and getting things from Costco. believe it or not those of us that actually use our trucks for towing or hauling campers are not buying f150's, yes there is that exception here and there but like I said 80% of the people who have f150's are not towing travel trailers.
so now with the charging rate you said, if you are on a trip your not going to use a 120V charger your going to stop at the blue oval network which includes the tesla dc super chargers and a 200 mile jaunt will take you 41 minuets on a extended range f150 lightning to recharge. it does 15-80% in 41 min, which works out to 196 miles of range on that battery. now towing will take longer as your not getting the full range from the same amount so yes you are right but that will be for any EV, as they haven't brought out any faster charging. ford has a patent on a cable that will do the same charge in 5 min, they are just doing trials, but then is it going to be practical to upgrade charging stations to ones that will handle the extra amperage and how much of a difference will it make in other things with the ev's.
so In my opinion, contrary to the title EV's are not even remotely close in anyway for towing (anywhere over 30% of their towing capacity) they should be bought with the intention they are sold for. commuting to work, powering a job site, or throwing a tent into the back with your camping gear and heading out. the F150 ev can power a campsite for 3 weeks it said, that's a game changer for tent camping, or even those pop up tents you see on roof racks and such I have seen some nice ones that go above the box, so they turn the box into a canopy covered box and then they pop up from that when your camping. something like that would be very ev friendly.
but getting back to my friends they love them, they use them for commuting back and forth to work, picking up stuff at the garden center or home depot to build a shed, two use the built in inverter to power stuff when they are building things or at ball games, you know normal truck owner stuff. as for the price it is getting better with the 17K in discounts they were offering this spring, but they were also the only real option for a decent truck ev, now that chevy is finally here, to late in my opinion, we will see what the prices do
Now maybe when we get to using solid state batteries it might be different, the range might still suck, but with a almost instant top up of power it might not be a big deal
Unsurprisingly, the discussion has wandered off course. That's normal, so let's reset a bit.
For 16-25ft trailers, 1/2 ton trucks are the most common option. Almost no one is towing 10k lb trailers with 1/2 ton ICE because even though they have the tow rating, everything else is overloaded. So we set at the beginning of the thread a more realistic assumption.
Everything I've seen suggests 50-60% of the non-towing range. Drastically more than the 1/4 you suggest. This is consistent is also much more consistent with ICE MPG results.
The F150EV was not the one suggested as getting close, so to rule out EV trucks as viable is like saying you can't pull a 16k 5er with a diesel dually because it would overload a Chevy Colorado.
A large percentage of contractors use their trucks to tow on weekends. They are also the ones more likely to be buying new.
Not sure why you brought up tent camping. A 40yr old ICE truck can power a tent for weeks...they don't use electricity, so they can power them forever in principal.
With a 220-230 mile range and ability to pick up an extra 100-120miles with a 1/2hr charge pulling a 16-25ft trailer, that's a pretty large selection of RVers where it's technologically feasible if they could get the price down comparable to an ICE.
