Tonneau cover reducing range?

[Dino]

I have a soft trifold tonneau cover, today I took it off to go pickup some furniture. On the interstate with tailgate up my kw usage was at 2.0 to 2.1 when it is usually at 1.5 to 1.6 at 75 mph. Has anybody else experienced basically a 25% improvement without their soft tonneau cover?

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[RickLightning]

No.

Lots of factors impact range. Unless the tonneau cover was buffeting like crazy, it has no real impact.

 

[Maquis]

No. Many tests have proven that covers have no discernible effect on efficiency.
There are too many variables to make a determination on a single trip.

 

[Dino]

No.

Lots of factors impact range. Unless the tonneau cover was buffeting like crazy, it has no real impact.

I have noticed mine buffeting, but the driving conditions were basically the same. A 25% improvement was surprising, hence the question. I have put the cover back on though.

 

[flyct]

I've never seen as high as 2.1 mi/kw at 75 mph, with or without a Tonneau cover.

I find that at 60-65 highway speeds, headwinds and tailwinds significantly change efficiency. I will see 2.2 mi/kw one way with tailwinds and 1.8 mi/kw with headwinds the other way on sea level travels.

 

[Henry Ford]

You almost certainly had a tailwind when you experienced the higher range on the highway.

 

[JRT]

Start watching wind clues like treetop direction, flags, grass fields. I'm a sailor so watching wind is a habit and I notice it with impacts to our truck range very easily.

https://www.weather.gov/mfl/beaufort#:~:text=The Beaufort scale is still used today to estimate wind strengths.

I had a racer instructor also tell me to note which direction cows face, his observation over the years was they will face into the wind most of the time lol.

 

[THX1138]

I've never seen as high as 2.1 mi/kw at 75 mph, with or without a Tonneau cover.

I find that at 60-65 highway speeds, headwinds and tailwinds significantly change efficiency. I will see 2.2 mi/kw one way with tailwinds and 1.8 mi/kw with headwinds the other way on sea level travels.

Down hill sloping road would improve the apparent range.

 

[richl025]

I have a soft trifold tonneau cover, today I took it off to go pickup some furniture. On the interstate with tailgate up my kw usage was at 2.0 to 2.1 when it is usually at 1.5 to 1.6 at 75 mph. Has anybody else experienced basically a 25% improvement without their soft tonneau cover?

I just recently out a soft tonneau cover on mine, a few weeks ago, and have not noticed any change in efficiency...

 

[invertedspear]

Since I added a Gator Evo about a month ago, I've noticed that my efficiency does seem to be down. Trip 2 is since purchase in November, Trip 1 was reset pretty much right after adding the cover, and temps have been very ideal for EVs in Phoenix during this time.

Interesting details, I took a trip to Flagstaff for Thanksgiving, so within the first month I took it out of the desert and to the cold.

Since I added the cover I took a trip to Tucson.

I think the ratio of In-town vs Freeway miles is roughly the same, but Trip2 has a lot of using the heater and trip 1 has almost none, but has some time using the AC. So I think this implies that the situation would be worse than just these numbers indicate.

This is just my personal experience and this is by no means a well controlled experiment, so we'll see how it continues to test out.

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