Electric Vehicles and towing

A forum for discussing issues relating to trailers and towing MacGregor sailboats.
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Highlander
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by Highlander »

I seen on the news the other day a guy deliberately ran a guy over on the cross walk , the driver was later charged with assault with a Battery :P

So if someone steals my Identity & I kill them am I committing suicide !

if an electrician can't solve ur issue do u ground them

other day in the mall I seen this guy wearing sweat pants with the word Idiot across the butt so I figured he was not a smart a$$
J 8)
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Jimmyt
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by Jimmyt »

:D :D :D
Jimmyt
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Piddle and Futz
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by Piddle and Futz »

I found this site helpful in researching electric vehicle towing capacities:

https://electrictowcars.com/electric-tow-cars/
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dlandersson
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by dlandersson »

Groan, :(
Highlander wrote: Tue Feb 28, 2023 1:11 pm I seen on the news the other day a guy deliberately ran a guy over on the cross walk , the driver was later charged with assault with a Battery :P

So if someone steals my Identity & I kill them am I committing suicide !

if an electrician can't solve ur issue do u ground them

other day in the mall I seen this guy wearing sweat pants with the word Idiot across the butt so I figured he was not a smart a$$
J 8)
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kmclemore
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by kmclemore »

dlandersson wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 6:23 am Groan, :(
Highlander wrote: Tue Feb 28, 2023 1:11 pm I seen on the news the other day a guy deliberately ran a guy over on the cross walk , the driver was later charged with assault with a Battery :P

So if someone steals my Identity & I kill them am I committing suicide !

if an electrician can't solve ur issue do u ground them

other day in the mall I seen this guy wearing sweat pants with the word Idiot across the butt so I figured he was not a smart a$$
J 8)
I dunno... I kinda got a charge out of that post. Clearly Highlander has the capacity for amped-up humor.
wyo george
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by wyo george »

You’re obviously a well grounded individual.

I’m currently chanting “ohm” as I think about watt joke is next.
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Starscream
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by Starscream »

Funny that the electrified trailer idea I was wondering about seems to be coming.

https://electrek.co/2023/03/08/lightshi ... ev-towing/
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dlandersson
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by dlandersson »

Another groan ... :P

kmclemore wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 10:46 am
I dunno... I kinda got a charge out of that post. Clearly Highlander has the capacity for amped-up humor.
C Buchs
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by C Buchs »

Starscream wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 12:42 pm Funny that the electrified trailer idea I was wondering about seems to be coming.

https://electrek.co/2023/03/08/lightshi ... ev-towing/
It's interesting that this has its own powertrain.

All the Airstream trailers have rock guards on the front. This thing has windows that are probably going to need some protection.

Jeff
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by Starscream »

I picked up the Lightning this weekend. I'm blown a way by this thing. It's so quiet. So powerful. So full of tech. I'm just amazed. It has 9.6kW of 240V output power and can power our house for a about a week in a blackout.

Drove to work today: 25.8 kms, with 4.8 kWhr used. At our electricity price of $0.11/kWhr, that trip cost me $0.53 CDN in energy. In a freakin' 3 ton F150. We had 8.5kW of solar panels installed on our roof to offset the operational cost, and that system produces more electricity than two Lightings would use in a year.

It accelerates like a rocket in complete silence. It drives itself hands-free on the highway. The frunk is huge, and has already been convenient. I know EV's have a lot of haters, but just try one!

It IS a bit bigger than I'm used to, but it fits in the garage. Makes our Mirage look like a toy.


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Russ
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by Russ »

Very Nice!!!

I drove my Brother In Law's Tesla. Yea, that quiet acceleration that puts your heart in your throat is just mind-boggling.

You will enjoy driving past gas stations and saving all that money that you can now spend on boating.

I find most anti-EV sentiment comes from ignorance. They are believing these vehicles are like their cordless drill from the 90s. The range is impressive. It's really really really hard to run out of charge. They run a long time with heat or A/C running. Talking with an EV owner dispels all the myths we've believed.
--Russ
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by wyo george »

Congrats on the new truck. EV’s are cool and I enjoy the tech, but they just don’t work for my lifestyle. I’d enjoy one for my normal commute, but it would never pay for itself so I’ll happily keep buying gas for my paid for IC vehicles. As to my truck, I often tow 10-14k pounds for 500+ miles a day so I’ll keep my diesel for a tow rig.

Still, I love the lightning and in a different lifestyle I’d own one in a heartbeat
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Starscream
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by Starscream »

Towing is really easy with this thing. 775 ft-lbs of torque at about 0 RPM will do that, I guess.

With a 2" drop on the tow-hitch, the trailer is sitting a bit nose high; at an angle of 3 degrees, to be exact. The boat is a bit far back on the trailer right now, and isn't loaded at all. Maybe a 3" or even a 4" drop may have been better. Trigonometry says I need a 1 ft drop, but that doesn't make sense ( 3 degree angle with 20' from the fulcrum to the ball). Not sure if I should do anything about the 3 degrees, or not.

In the photo, it looks like the nose-high angle is worse than it is: the boat sits a bit nose high anyway; the angle is better represented by the horizontal bar on the guide-posts.

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Starscream
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by Starscream »

6 month update on the Lightning...

There is a lot of hate out there for EV's in general, but I have to say this is is the best/funnest/most convenient vehicle I have ever owned or even driven. Despite Ford falling short on the software side of things, the truck is amazing, and fits our lifestyle/location/usage-case just perfectly.

Power is unbelievable...you can literally race normal cars while towing the Mac. The power is always immediately available, no downshifting or revving, just immediate. You can actually spin all four tires when you step on the "gas", so have to be a bit careful of that. After a few weeks I got that part out of my system, a good thing, because you can burn up a set of tires in very short order in a 6,000 lb vehicle that has 775 ft-lb of torque at 0 rpm. EVs are known to run through tires much faster than ICE vehicles, although you can control that to a great extent by just not driving agressively.

Range...yes, here's the problem. EV's are city vehicles; if you drive in the city and charge at home, then they're great. For long range driving, or worse, long range towing, they're just not ready. The public charging infrastructure isn't ready. Winter makes things 30% worse, or so, depending on how one manages the heating. However, I will say that towing the boat through the city, at city speeds and using regen to its best capacity, the range is still quite good, at about 70% of the advertised capacity. There is a lot of thought that has to go in to driving an EV to its max efficiency; stopping using max regen, careful acceleration, conservation of momentum. But I find that sort of thing to be quite fun.

Cost to charge...well, we have a grid-tied 8.5kW solar system that produces 11,000 kwhr per year that I installed for $18,000 CDN. That's about twice the energy required to drive the Lightning for 20,000 km, so the remainder goes into reducing my house energy bill. Combined with some free charging at work, our annualized electricity bill has decreased from $350 per month to $230 per month after we bought the Lightning and the solar system. Fast-charging on public DC stations is expensive, though, and frequent fast charging would negate a big chunk of the fuel cost savings. If we didn't have the solar, at our rate of $0.11/kwhr, it would cost us about $600 per year to drive 20,000km. My 6-month lifetime average energy use for the Lightning is 4.0 km/kwhr, which includes all driving I've done since new. I expect that will get worse as I go through the winter, and my guess based on the last few weeks of below-freezing temperatures is that I'll end up at 3.4 km/kwhr for the full year. I've seen as high as 8.5 km/hwhr on nice spring days, and as low as 3.1km/kwhr on cold day with cabin heat on high.

Ford has a hands-free driving system called Blue-Cruise, and it's absolutely amazing. There's a sensor that checks if your eyes are on the road, and if you're looking elsewhere for a certain time period it reminds you to look forward again. A quick glance at the road ahead and you can go back to enjoying the scenery. It's that good, and I hear Ford is about to release an update that includes auto lane-change and Semi-Truck detection/reaction/positioning. The Blue-Cruise system puts the Nissan ProPilot system on our Pathfinder to shame. On our trip through Quebec, I found myself to be much less tired at the end of a long drive, and that I really enjoyed being able to look at the scenery that we were driving through. We made it our "yes" tour, where we said "yes" to stop and turn around to visit any point of interest. Interesting architecture? Stop and turn around. Lookout? Stop and turn around. Blueberry bakery in the back of a residential house? Stop and turn around.

The Lightning also has a 7kW 240V output that can be used to power the house during a blackout. I've done that a couple of times, and it's great to be cooking with lights on without having to go start and maintain a gas generator. I calculated that a full charge on the vehicle would power our house (minus the electric heat) for a good week, possibly more.

Tailgating with the Lightning is awesome, too. We did that this year at my son's football games, and between the induction stove, coffee maker, and the powered piezoelectric cooler, we were keeping the whole team of kids and parents "charged".

We did a 2500 km trip through the center of Quebec this summer, doing a loop around Lac St. Jean, down to Tadoussac, through Quebec City, back up to Alma, and home to Montreal. We brought a bed tent, which has a ground-based extension for the kids, and enjoyed being able to stop wherever and still cook and run a heater and lights through the night. Even in August, temps were in the 40s at night, that far north. Keeping the vehicle charged throughout the journey required a bit more forethought than with a normal vehicle, but with the aid of an app called Plugshare, we never had to wait to charge, and were never at risk of running out of electrons. It takes a bit of getting used to, but after a few thousand km on the road we had zero range anxiety. I understand, of course, that the charging infrastructure in Quebec is actually quite good, with our province-owned power company doing a reasonably good job of making fast-chargers available.

From our trip, on the Saguenay Fjord:
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At a campsite in St. Felicien
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Russ
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Re: Electric Vehicles and towing

Post by Russ »

Thanks for the update. All great information from a real owner.

Yes there is a lot of hate for EVs. I don't understand why.

I recently had a loaner car from my dealer with the self driving stuffs. It is really weird to let go of the wheel and look around. It nagged me to touch the wheel every minute or so. Very cool tech.
--Russ
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