Tesla X Towing Videos

Reisender wrote:

wanderingaimlessly wrote:
For the electrical engineers that really want to get into the weeds on this, real question for you.
IF you had a Tesla truck and TT and ran out of power in the desert southwest. And you had a trailer with 400 watts of solar, and a 430 Amp/hr battery pack. Along with a 1500 watt inverter.
How long would it take to generate enough power to get the truck, without the trailer, 20 miles, to a real power source for recharging if you dont run anything else in the trailer?
It may be a lot better than I am guessing, but I really do wonder if there is an optimistic answer.
That there is a self sufficient method is a positive, just curious if the method would be real world useful.

Well, a kw will take you about 6.7 km in our cars. So 30 km is around 20 miles. So let’s say you need 5kw total. I’ll leave it to someone else from there.

I'm going to guess it takes from than 1 kwh to drive 6.7 km when TOWING.

Let's say you tow at a very conservative 90 km/h, or 56 mph. It takes 0.0744 hrs to drive that distance. Your average power output would be 1kwh/0.0744hr = 13.42 kw, or 18.01 hp.

There're very few trailers you can tow with an average of 18 hp.

Drag = Cd*A*rho*V^2/2

Assuming a small 7' wide 8' tall trailer, your frontal area is 5.17 m^2. The combined Cd of a truck and trailer would be lucky to hit 1. Rho of air is roughly 1.2. Plugging in the numbers, drag at 56 mph is:

Drag = 1973N

Power = F*V = 1973N x 25m/s = 49.33 kw, or 66hp

In conclusion, the required power is far greater than the 18hp assumed. Re-calculating with 66hp, it takes 49.33 kwh to drive 56 miles, or 1.13 kwh per mile. A 1.5kw generator + 0.4 kw solar makes 19 kwh in 10 hours, assuming PERFECT charging.

You can tow 21.47 miles after 10 hours of generator + solar. In real life, with charging inefficiency and less than 10 hrs of perfect sun, you'd be lucky to get 15 miles.