Towing tested with 6,000lb Tesla and trailer load

[Gigahorse]

So another towing test.
Pulling the medium size travel trailer, was getting around 1,185 wh/mile netting about 80-90 miles of range if using 80-100% of the battery pack.
5,600lb trailer
Max speed of 65 mph Average speed of about 55MPH as a mix of city/town/country driving
Almost whole battery was used for first 92 mile test
Air temp was between 48-58F
Tire pressure on A/T at 65PSI wheels had no aero caps "they are ugly as...."
Minimal HVAC Used
Similar result as other towing tests
When pulling a medium size trailer load you get about 90 miles of range if you use the whole pack.
Using a normal 80% your looking at around 80 miles of range.

Average towing a medium size camper trailer is 1,185 wh/mile or 104 miles of range with 100% pack used.

So real world using 80% battery pack pulling a medium size, decent weight aero trailer your going to get about 83 miles of range.

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[CyberTruckeeTheOne]

I had been watching TSLA stock since the IPO in 2012 but I didn't start building a position until I saw that the risk/reward profile fit my investment objectives, it was the middle of 2019. My cost per share was $184/share then (just over $12/share now, after a 5/1 split and a 3/1 split). So, my shares have increased 18-fold in value. Because I bought and held over the last 4 1/2 years. I expect them to quadruple again in the next 3-5 years.

I'm not complaining, if you are, you are too impatient to be a good investor. It's common for people to get antsy if the share price of their stock isn't appreciating and sell. That's a beginner mistake that has cost many retail investors dearly.

Indeed I am impatient. Been a senior manager in a global multinational company.

We have saying across our organization and pir peers in the industry, eg, P&G, your continued employment is as good as your last quarter's performance -- or one year st most.

And as a day trader, you bet I am very very very short-termer.

 

[HaulingAss]

Because of selling some of my shares and buying the puts (which have more than doubled), my portfolio has stayed exactly the same, while tesla shares have dropped 50. It is not called trading, it is called hedging your long position which works quite fine thank you.

I know how hedging one's position works, I quit doing that over 25 years ago and, in hindsight, it was not rational for me to do it in the first place.

If I had hedged my position over the last 25 years I would be in a much worse financial position because hedging comes with a huge cost of dilluting your gains. The negative impact to your returns is astounding once you consider the the lost compounding potential over the years. Hedging should only be used as a last resort; my strategy doesn't require the negative impacts of hedging because I never risk any capital that I can't afford to lose.

Wall Street loves it when retail investors hedge their position. My strategy involves giving the finger to Wall Street as often as possible. This increases my overall returns over time.

 

[HaulingAss]

You were lucky to get in just at the right time and of course you are going to preach a hold and wait strategy because your cost base is so low.

I was not lucky to get in when I did, I literally wanted to buy the IPO shares so badly that I almost had to physically restrain myself because they didn't fit my investment strategy. It killed me to watch them go up 10X in 2012-2013. I continued to watch Tesla like a hawk, following the quarterly reports, user experiences, anything I could get my hands on, and I didn't build a position until 7 years later, until the investment fit my investment strategy.

While there is always an element of luck in every investment move, this was not primarily based on luck, it was based on patience, and upon knowing how to make the market work for me. My investment style is based upon taking advantage of misinformation (and the misinformation about Tesla was thick in early 2019).

The market is never wrong.

I suppose that is true, but only if you look at it in a circular fashion, if you use a circular argument to make your case. But I don't believe in circular arguments, they go nowhere and add no value.

If I believed the market was never wrong, I would have no logical option but to buy index funds. Because it necessarily implies there are no good deals out there that can be identified, that it's all just gambling. I would have still been working blue-collar jobs for the last 25 years if the market was never wrong. Instead, I purposefully looked for situations in which the truth had been distorted and the commonly accepted narrative no longer fit reality. By 2018 it was readily apparent that electric cars were the future and were ready to hit prime time, the bottom of the S-curve of adoption. Yet the commonly accepted narritive was that electric cars would only sell to environmentalists, that they were seriously inconvenient and too expensive, that once all the rich eco-warriors had electric cars adoption would level out (first they would never reach 1% of total car sales, then 2%, then 5-10%). The narritive was obviously wrong because it failed to take into account the falling cost curve of EV motors, EV batteries and EV inverters.

The truth is that the market is often wrong because the market often uses faulty analysis in valuing stocks. That is the only thing that can explain how TSLA valuation went from $40 billion in mid-2019 to over a trillion dollars in 2021. That's a 25-fold difference in valuation in 2 years while Tesla, the business, was simply plugging away, doing what they had always done, increased production as much as possible while decreasing the cost to produce. The declining cost curves were public information and Tesla's progress going from quarterly losses to quarterly profits formed a clear trend. The result was inevitable in early to mid 2019 when TSLA valuations were in the dump due to all the FUD circulating, FUD that most of the market believed.

The tired old phrase "the market is never wrong" is so obviously wrong itself that it's comical.

The other way the market is often wrong is that the market doesn't look far enough ahead. This is the premium the market pays long-term investors for simply holding through the volatility and it's the easiest way for an investor, that doesn't care to do any research, to profit. But it's far more profitable for a smart investor to do the research, find and identify disparities between the narritive and the truth on the ground, and profit from that disparity.

In other words, the market is not always right, no matter how many times you hear people make that silly claim. That is how I've been able to beat the market over the decades. And not by a little, by a lot. My bad years can be moderately worse than the market, I don't fret over that, my good years make up for it many times over.

Other than building and winding down positions and doing an abbreviated form of balancing my positions when they become too extreme, I don't trade in and out of stocks at all, it's a loser's game. The less I buy and sell, the better so I purposefully have a high tolerance for volatility because I realize volatility only matters if you have a need to sell at a specific point in time. People investing for retirement are building their portfolios, not spending them down, so a lack of volatility is over-valued by traditional money managers, speaking only from a rational perspective.

That said, always keep the portion of your portfolio that you may need to liquidate in a personal or family emergency safe from high volatility. The remaining portion can be managed more optimally, for superior long-term returns. Because volatility is meaningless when looked at on a multi-year time scale, and being overly fixated on month-to-month volatility will prevent you from making the most long-term profit.

 

[HaulingAss]

Indeed I am impatient. Been a senior manager in a global multinational company.

We have saying across our organization and pir peers in the industry, eg, P&G, your continued employment is as good as your last quarter's performance -- or one year st most.

And as a day trader, you bet I am very very very short-termer.

OK, good luck Andrew.

 

[Woodrick]

The real drag to this is there aren’t any EV pull thrus for charging yet. Meaning you would have to disconnect the trailer to charge and then reconnect several times in a long-haul trip. Not ideal. Maybe Buc’es one day will have something to offer.

There are quite a few pull-thrus out there. Not enough, but there are definitely some..

 

[Gigahorse]

The real drag to this is there aren’t any EV pull thrus for charging yet. Meaning you would have to disconnect the trailer to charge and then reconnect several times in a long-haul trip. Not ideal. Maybe Buc’es one day will have something to offer.

Yea dropping the trailer, charging, and then hooking back up, especially if there is not a lot of room/parking every 60-80 miles would be pretty tough. Wonder if they plan to add pull throughs to existing chargers or just have them with new installs.

 

[AustroTom]

Don't need an excuse - if you are seriously towing, you most likely are not considering an EV today.
If you think/thought this vehicle was going to be some game changer in EV towing before today - you might be a bit delusional.

The beloved Rivian tows about the same, but because it's an ? and or by Elon, people have to spew FUD.

Bottom line, it's a lifestyle truck with some utility - just like every other EV "truck"

That's what I've been saying all along! I bet you Elon hated delivering this truck so soon. Anything under 500 miles of range (while advertising great towing capability), seems ludicris. He wasn't comfortable at the delivery event. He knew it wasn't ready, but the shareholders wanted to see their baby coming out of its shell. Well, there you have it. A gentlemens truck to cruise up and down Sunset Blvd.

 

[Woodrick]

That's what I've been saying all along! I bet you Elon hated delivering this truck so soon. Anything under 500 miles of range (while advertising great towing capability), seems ludicris. He wasn't comfortable at the delivery event. He knew it wasn't ready, but the shareholders wanted to see their baby coming out of its shell. Well, there you have it. A gentlemens truck to cruise up and down Sunset Blvd.

While I kind of agree with most of your post, I don't think that Tesla or Elon didn't believe that the truck wasn't ready. Or put a little differently, the cost of the battery needed for 500 miles is just too much, while costs have decreased, they haven't decreased enough.

And that's tempered with the current realization that 300 miles is enough for EVs. People are complaining at the current cost, what if it would have been $20k higher? The cost of enough battery. Of course it would have actually been about $40k more expensive to get 500 miles at 75mph.

It was a losing situation.

Once the complainers get out of the way, folks are going to learn just how much 320 mile range is and how little it matters.

 

[AustroTom]

While I kind of agree with most of your post, I don't think that Tesla or Elon didn't believe that the truck wasn't ready. Or put a little differently, the cost of the battery needed for 500 miles is just too much, while costs have decreased, they haven't decreased enough.

And that's tempered with the current realization that 300 miles is enough for EVs. People are complaining at the current cost, what if it would have been $20k higher? The cost of enough battery. Of course it would have actually been about $40k more expensive to get 500 miles at 75mph.

It was a losing situation.

Once the complainers get out of the way, folks are going to learn just how much 320 mile range is and how little it matters.

Granted. BUT, it ISN'T 320 miles (as proven by the OP). That's what makes it inferior to all current EV goals

 

[Woodrick]

Granted. BUT, it ISN'T 320 miles (as proven by the OP). That's what makes it inferior to all current EV goals

You indicate a Model S, 3, and X. When do you get the EPA range?

I can tell you, drive 60 mph and you'll get it, you'll get the EPA range.

 

[AustroTom]

You indicate a Model S, 3, and X. When do you get the EPA range?

I can tell you, drive 60 mph and you'll get it, you'll get the EPA range.

We're talking about the ct here, and that's what the ct owners say

 

[Woodrick]

We're talking about the ct here, and that's what the ct owners say

How many of the existing reports have driven a distance at 60 mph?

Pretty much ALL the numbers that have been presented so far are in direct comparison to my Model Y and Model 3. I can fairly easily follow the driving or towing reports with my Model Y and get very close to what has been presented.

The only difference is that the Cybertruck uses about 100Wh/mi more, which is where the larger battery comes into play and about 30% longer charge times.

 

[fhteagle]

Shows need for (value of) Ramcharger powertrain architecture,

I have been saying, for a decade now, that PHEV mid, full, and heavy duty sized trucks are needed. I am baffled as to why legacy OEMs have been so incredibly foolish as to sit out that market segment. Especially GM, a double strength AWD Voltec drive train in a Colorado and/ or Silverado would have been perfect.

It will be both a happy and sad day when Ram is the first legacy to actually bring one to market, instead of relying on up fitters....

 

[DelPhonic1]

The model X is a dream vehicle, does not quite fit my needs but had the pleasure of driving one for a few days.
A couple points.
X has FSD - currently the CT does not
X has about300 miles of real world range, CT has about 200
X has a pretty solid charging curve at superchargers, CT charging is pretty slow

I really hope the CT can catch up to it's big brother the Model X but it has a WAYS to go

I usually get about 200-250 with my Plaid X because I'm an aggressive driver, like those that tested CT. And they should at some point roll out the next gen 4680 battery for CT-- hopefully before I get mine. They're using the stockpile of older 4680's that they've been making over the past year.

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