I towed a brick (box trailer) in sub-freezing temperatures and the Lightning did great!

My normal trailer is an Airstream that we take camping in milder temps, so when I needed to tow this box trailer in cold weather to an area with little charging infrastructure, I paused to do some math. My Airstream gets about 1.2 m/kWh (averaged over about 700 miles of towing in 50-70 degree weather). I knew the box trailer would be less efficient, plus the temps were between 20-30 degrees. I figured on about 0.8 m/kWh and determined I could get the job done.

The first challenge was to pull the trailer out of its frozen parking location which was off road in a field. Thor (my Lightning’s name—go ahead and laugh, but my vehicles all get names) had no problem with this. The stock AS tires didn’t slip abut as the frozen ground was yanked loose when trailer was hitched up. The GOM told me I could tow this brick about 160 miles on my 90% SOC. Of course I knew that to be false as my own calculations were closer to 100 miles. As I have to climb a 3 mile 8% grade in the first 5 miles of the journey, I anticipated some shocking GOM changes. The numbers quickly went from the optimistic 160 miles of range to a more appropriate 125 or so. I didn’t panic at the 0.4 m/kWh reading either as I knew this would improve over the course of the trip. In the end I averaged 0.9m/kWh (slightly better than I expected).

Overall the truck tows great and if you do a little pre-mission planning, it can be quite enjoyable. I just wanted to let people know that this can be done with a little planning.

Joneii said:

I knew the box trailer would be less efficient

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Thanks for sharing!

I bet the box trailer is closer to the Airstream in efficiency than you think--it's probably lower and narrower than the travel trailer, outside of a Basecamp.

only 100 miles?!

Kev12345 said:

only 100 miles?!

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This should be a mandatory pic at the end of the 1st post of any towing thread

F150ROD said:

This should be a mandatory pic at the end of the 1st post of any towing thread

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Profile pic inbound haha

Thanks for sharing, I love hearing other towing reports!!!

I've got a small mission Friday morning with my 7x14' V-nose to move my buddies old Shovelhead across town and will be mild 50's when I do it, there's no question I can get the job done.

Any notable power loss on top of the drop in efficiency? Keep seeing cold weather take 10-20% of usable power away (will simply be greyed out on "power meter"). Would hate to be out on a lake or trailhead and return to a truck with diminished power for a prolonged amount of time. Few reports but generally not a lot of data on it.

boggle said:

Any notable power loss on top of the drop in efficiency? Keep seeing cold weather take 10-20% of usable power away (will simply be greyed out on "power meter"). Would hate to be out on a lake or trailhead and return to a truck with diminished power for a prolonged amount of time. Few reports but generally not a lot of data on it.

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I had 100% power because I preconditioned and it wasn’t hatefully cold that day. On previous trips in the 0-10 degree temps I did see a power reduction in the lower half of the battery SOC. Specifically, I had 92% power at around 35% SOC and it dropped to 85% when I got to 25% SOC. This wasn’t noticeable to me other than on the instrument cluster because 85% of 580 hp is still a whole lot of giddy up.

Thank you for this review. Oh, I think your trucks name is great. But I might be bias!! lol

I wonder if the battery stays warm(er) under load from towing and because of this doesn't get as much of a loss from normal cold weather conditions as the work-load is keeping it warm. Hmm.. those are good towing numbers regardless of winter conditions!

For comparison, today I towed the Airstream to a ski area about 140 miles from my home. I made one 20 minute charge stop and one 52 minute charge stop. I averaged 1.1 m/kWh with temps between 19 and 25 degrees for most of the trip. This cost about $37 (about half the cost my diesel would’ve been). At the ski area I can charge off 110v for free—super slow, but we’ll be camped here for over 24 hrs, so it helps. If you aren’t in a hurry and there is enough charging infrastructure where you are traveling, towing with this truck isn’t bad. When we made this same trip in the diesel we still stopped once for about 20 minutes, so the EV really only cost us 50 minutes extra time.

A quick correction. The Airstream averaged 0.9 m/kWh. I forgot to account for the fact that I left with 100% SOC but arrived with less. Still pretty good numbers considering the temps and 2000 feet over all elevation gain.