3,400 miles towing a camping trailer w/ Cybertruck -- 19' Airstream (~4,500 lbs) to see solar eclipse

[Woodrick]

The issue for me is the time charging adds so much more time to the trip.

15 minutes every 2.5 hours is too much?

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[PointHope]

Towing long distance? But that’s un-possible!

Ya just need to un-hitch from the unreal and cry "Uncle".
Works every time.

 

[bwhntr78]

15 minutes every 2.5 hours is too much?

This entire thread is about towing. There is zero chance you are adding enough charge in 15 minutes to drive another 2.5 hours while towing at anything remotely close to highway speed. Please stop trying to compare road tripping a model 3 or y with towing a decent sized trailer with a CT.

 

[CyberTruckeeTheOne]

Did you took note of energy usage on uphill climb, grade and temperature along Colorado mountains?

Appreciate if you can post it as a subset of your trip.

Nice write up.

 

[Woodrick]

This entire thread is about towing. There is zero chance you are adding enough charge in 15 minutes to drive another 2.5 hours while towing at anything remotely close to highway speed. Please stop trying to compare road tripping a model 3 or y with towing a decent sized trailer with a CT.

Fine, do it your way.

 

[Crissa]

15 minutes every 2.5 hours is too much?

Well, that's not quite right for the current Cybertruck.

But basically. I guess these people don't pee or eat over the day while driving.

-Crissa

 

[Woodrick]

Well, that's not quite right for the current Cybertruck.

But basically. I guess these people don't pee or eat over the day while driving.

-Crissa

Yea, I know, I missed which thread I was in.

But many people just don't understand that charging only 15 minutes and stopping more often is better than charging 45 minutes and stopping less often.

The whole concept is charging on the right side of the battery and that' less than 50%.

 

[bwhntr78]

But many people just don't understand that charging only 15 minutes and stopping more often is better than charging 45 minutes and stopping less often.

The whole concept is charging on the right side of the battery and that' less than 50%.

And that is exactly why the relatively small pack size in the current CT makes it a not-so-great choice for towing. If you try to keep the stops short by only charging to ~50%, that gets you 150-ish of rated range. Cut that in half pulling a trailer, and now you're at 75. Stopping every hour to charge for 15-20 minutes is already not ideal, and now add the fact that there are very few pull-through stalls available, and you are adding another 5-10 minutes at each stop to drop and re-hook the trailer. If you get lucky and arrive at a normal charger and it is empty enough to pull in without unhooking, leaving the truck and trailer blocking stalls while you go eat lunch is poor etiquette and honestly not much better than someone ICEing a supercharger.

I very much appreciate the OPs data and honesty that the CT is not a better tow vehicle than other trucks. For those that tow, you just have to decide where that tipping point is for the added inconvenience when towing vs the benefit of the EV when not. For me, I'd rather have my 2 model Ys to cover daily driving for both me and my wife, plus my old tundra to handle towing and other "truck" duties for about the same overall cost of one CT that would be more of a compromise in both scenarios.

The CT is an amazing vehicle for a lot of people, and I still hope to own one someday. But that day won't come until they offer a larger pack for my towing needs.

 

[HardyBro2]

I took my Cybertruck towing 19' Airstream (~4,500 lbs) to see the eclipse. Total towing miles was 3,400 (out of the 5,400 total miles on the truck). Started in Salt Lake City, Utah and went to Houston, TX and back.

Stats:

Miles driven:	3,420
kWh used:	2,686
Wh per mile:	785 Wh
Time Driven:	66 hours
Average Speed:	52 mph

I'll see if I have the stats for how many of the charging stops required dropping the trailer, but it was less than 50%, and I got the time needed to unhook the trailer to around 3 minutes (I was using a sway control hitch).
EDIT: 30 supercharges when I had the trailer, only had to drop the trailer 10 times. Most of the rest of the time the superchargers were empty, and I could get in and charge across multiple chargers (only blocking 1 or 2 other chargers if I could approach from the left and leave the trailer outside of the supercharging area).

We live in SLC too! Loved reading this post. What a gorgeous sight seeing a CT towing an airstream

 

[Woodrick]

And that is exactly why the relatively small pack size in the current CT makes it a not-so-great choice for towing. If you try to keep the stops short by only charging to ~50%, that gets you 150-ish of rated range. Cut that in half pulling a trailer, and now you're at 75. Stopping every hour to charge for 15-20 minutes is already not ideal, and now add the fact that there are very few pull-through stalls available, and you are adding another 5-10 minutes at each stop to drop and re-hook the trailer. If you get lucky and arrive at a normal charger and it is empty enough to pull in without unhooking, leaving the truck and trailer blocking stalls while you go eat lunch is poor etiquette and honestly not much better than someone ICEing a supercharger.

I very much appreciate the OPs data and honesty that the CT is not a better tow vehicle than other trucks. For those that tow, you just have to decide where that tipping point is for the added inconvenience when towing vs the benefit of the EV when not. For me, I'd rather have my 2 model Ys to cover daily driving for both me and my wife, plus my old tundra to handle towing and other "truck" duties for about the same overall cost of one CT that would be more of a compromise in both scenarios.

The CT is an amazing vehicle for a lot of people, and I still hope to own one someday. But that day won't come until they offer a larger pack for my towing needs.

Try looking at the charge curve and do some math. The results are not obvious to most. I know they weren't obvious to me when I first heard about the concept.

But even so, most camping is done within 100 miles of a person's home.

Road trips are those one or two times a year thing.
I live near a recreational area, the North Georgia Mountains. While a little on Thursday late afternoon, the roads become full of rigs heading for weekend camping. And of course, around noon on Sunday, the exodus of the campers back to Atlanta occurs.

 

[SuedeLlamas]

Here is a selection of drives with more details.

I am assuming the CT doesn't charge the trailer while traveling. Do you have solar on the roof of the Airstream?

The CT does charge the trailer's batteries while plugged into the 7-way plug.

I do have 100W of solar on the roof of the airstream, and I hauled around an Anker SOLIX F3800 with 400W portable panel, and I have some bigger (not "portable") panels so I can boondock in the desert with ~ 1500 W of solar to add a couple miles to the truck a day and power the camper.

 

[Stinky10r]

Yes, that's why I counted 8 stops for gas vs 30 stops for charging.

But unlike gas, once you're plugged in, you can wander off and go pee, get snacks, stretch your legs, eat dinner - just like you'd have to do on you gas powered drive. But with your gas powered drive, you're leashed to the pump the entire time you're fueling. And woe is you if a station isn't giving you 6 gallons a minute.

-Crissa

I don't know how often you drive long distances, but when you post sometimes it gives me the idea that you really have no clue as to what you are talking about. First off, I drive an Audi Q7 with a 17 gallon useable tank. At worst, it is a 3 minute affair to get filled up. I'm not married at a pump for any unreasonable amount of time.

This is where your lack of understanding how an EV works and operates as your Mazda simply isn't anything remotely close but let me help you understand.

When you have an EV on a road trip, if you get down to say 15% or at absolute worst 10% of battery; you are stuck absolutely waiting for that car to get some juice. You're absolutely stuck.

Once again, I don't know how you do road trips, but you can eat in the car as you drive and if you have a very comfortable vehicle you can actually drive much longer distances in between stops for fuel. In my Q7, I'm actually able to go an entire 400 miles with 2 kids before needing to stop and I still have 150 miles of fuel left in the tank. On an 1800 mile road trip I've done twice, I've stopped for fuel 5 times and i have done this 4 times as both trips were round trip. None of the stops lasted longer than 20 minutes. Do the math for an EV.

You need to get out more.

 

[SuedeLlamas]

Did you took note of energy usage on uphill climb, grade and temperature along Colorado mountains?

Appreciate if you can post it as a subset of your trip.

Nice write up.

Here is a selection of various trip legs with more details. It's not easy to draw any straightforward conclusions, and I think Teslafi gives the average MPH based on distance divided by drivetime - so if you are sitting at stoplights for half of the drive, and driving 100 MPH half the time, you'd get an average of 50 MPH - I wish I'd noted more what my cruise control was set to for each leg. Based on my impressions:
- Drag had more of an impact on the efficiency than weight. The computer constantly overestimated how much regen we'd get on a downhill stretch, while often overestimating how much energy we'd use going uphill.
- Headwinds are a terror to range.
- Going 55 MPH is much more efficient than going 65 MPH; I'll be able to go further when heading into the mountains at low speed, compared to cruising on the interstate.
- The CT does not tow long distances faster or cheaper than ICE options. Cost is not worse, but not better, and I'm willing to take it slow, so I have no regrets, but the current weakness should be acknowledged. This is one of the few "cons" in the pros and cons comparison, so for my use case (which does involve some long distance towing) the CT is still the clear winner.

 

[Woodrick]

I don't know how often you drive long distances, but when you post sometimes it gives me the idea that you really have no clue as to what you are talking about. First off, I drive an Audi Q7 with a 17 gallon useable tank. At worst, it is a 3 minute affair to get filled up. I'm not married at a pump for any unreasonable amount of time.

Have you ever timed yourself?

I know that when I was pumping 17g, the overall time was more.
And if you want to be fair, how many of those 3 minutes fill-ups did you do in a year. Now total all the time waiting for power in an EV. Charging at home takes maybe 5 seconds? 1 or 2 500 mile trips take how long?

 

[Woodrick]

Once again, I don't know how you do road trips, but you can eat in the car as you drive and if you have a very comfortable vehicle you can actually drive much longer distances in between stops for fuel. In my Q7, I'm actually able to go an entire 400 miles with 2 kids before needing to stop and I still have 150 miles of fuel left in the tank. On an 1800 mile road trip I've done twice, I've stopped for fuel 5 times and i have done this 4 times as both trips were round trip. None of the stops lasted longer than 20 minutes. Do the math for an EV.
.

Oh, you are one of "those" parents.
That's not really something to brag about. And it's far from healthy.

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