Good question, generally speaking I didn't go above 55 mph.
The lack of the 500 mile range is making me rethink my reservation. When you can't go to the boonies and back where there is no charging infrastructure it is discouraging. I know I will get a bunch of comments that nobody needs that much range from the city dwellers that never tow something to the boonies but they are wrong. I am considering a diesel truck to my dismay due to exactly what you experienced. And you are in a state that has more chargers available. Quite disappointing.So this past weekend (May 17-19) I rented a 3400 lb travel trailer on Outdoorsy to go camping in Upper Pines at Yosemite. Going into the weekend I didn't plan too much as far as charging goes, since I didn't know exactly what the range would be (aside from a previous trip to Dillon Beach). I picked up the trailer in Morgan Hill, with a bed full of camping gear (1 adult bike and 2 kids bikes) and my wife and young kids then we started heading to Yosemite. Unfortunately we got a much later start than I wanted to, but in some ways it worked out. We ended up making it roughly 130 miles to the Mariposa, CA supercharger and because it was so late there was no-one there and I could block a few stalls to charge while leaving a bunch more open. I was fully prepared to unhook and charge but I made a judgement call since the whole station was empty:
Stayed there roughly 45 minutes to get as close to 100% as I could with a car full of tired people and so close to Yosemite. I think I got to 86% which the navigation was saying we would arrive with 30%, which was pretty accurate. When we got there, it was pretty easy to find our spot. Backing in wasn't too much of a problem with the 4 wheel steering and the front bumper camera since this was at an angle. I wish the truck came with a wireless magnetic camera I could stick to the back of the trailer, because I had to keep getting in and out of the truck to get it in the spot I wanted it. Then I had to park the truck sideways and lift it to high mode to clear the curbs, but that wasn't a problem. As it was late I hated having to make some noise for the other campers, but really the only noise was the backup sound, which would be nice to selectively turn off if possible for a situation like this.
The next day I hooked the camper up to the truck so we could use the microwave:
Then when we planned our hike, I got everything we needed out of the truck and threw our bikes in the back and drove 0.5 mile to Curry Village Rivian Level 2 chargers (20 of them) and left it there for 8 hours:
One thing I learned from there was Rivians get instant updates on these level 2 chargers in their trucks, similar to supercharger status in Teslas. So we ended up bringing the truck back around 4pm at 90% as we were ready for dinner and needed to plug in to do a few things. So brought it back and plugged it in for the rest of the night. Then in the morning we had some time so I let it charge back up to roughly 90% again (it got down to about 66% overnight and the morning microwaving, didn't use AC or heat or really charge anything in the camper). Then we started making our way back home. Because we had a few things to do and I had the camper for an extra day, we opted to go directly back to our house and I would bring it back to the owner the next day. Before it picked Ripon, it kept switching different stations which was a pain because the car didn't have much signal. Driving back we had enough energy to make it to Ripon, CA, but as we were getting close, the kids needed to stop so we quickly switched to another supercharger on the way, which didn't give us much time to precondition. So we stopped at the Bystrom/Modesto Supercharger. This one we did have to unhook as it was just a handful of stations that you had to back into and it was pretty full. So as we're trying to find a spot for the camper I got a bad angle and took up two spots in the back:
Then here it said it was gonna take 1 hour and 25 minutes to get full, so we walked over to the Taco Bell and had lunch. Then coming back we got to around 85% and it said we would get home with 10%, which seemed like enough of a buffer for us. And it ended up working out to about that. It seems to be good at estimating distance after it has some time to figure out the weight of the whole system. I wish you could modify the weight so that I could tell it right away what weight it was (maybe after it calculated it initially). It needs to be faster at knowing what the real range is when towing, and maybe even use the rear camera and tow mode to know that it will be towing something rather large.
Ultimately we made it home with 10% as it predicted which was enough for me to park the trailer in front of our house and back into the garage to charge back to 100%, then the next day I drove it back to the owner's house. All in at the end it ended up getting 764 Wh/mile over a distance of 454 miles towing the camper (that's not counting the drive to pick up the trailer), which really wasn't too bad at the end of the day.
Pro's from the trip:
- So easy to drive, sometimes you forget you are towing.
- 4 wheel steering helps getting it parked exactly where you want it, but if you are used to towing it may take you a little bit to get used to the extra maneuverability.
- Having a plug for the camper at a spot that doesn't have electric hookups was a nice convenience feature.
- Auto leveling was nice, it surprised the owners of the trailer as I told them it would happen when the trailer was placed on the truck.
Con's and things that could have gone better:
Overall it was an enjoyable trip but mainly because of nearby charging options in the park. If I had to exit the park to go to the supercharger in El Portal, it would have added too much time to the trip. So if you're going to tow a camper, make sure you have at least a level 2 charger nearby. Some other pictures:
- Biggest gripe is not having a filtered list of supercharger stations in the truck that support pull through campers without unhooking (which I know there just aren't many of those yet). And separately if a vehicle is approaching one of those stations while towing it should not let anyone else use that station unless there are no others available. Also will help once there are more V4 superchargers with the longer cable and faster charging speeds.
- Rear camera was useless, wish there was a magnetic wireless camera that I could take out of the console and stick it to the back of the trailer that gives an additional camera in the camera menu and maybe lets you pick which camera is the rear view camera on the screen.
- The camera is nice for letting you back up the trailer hitch into the right alignment, but with the air suspension I found myself I had to keep checking the height. I ended up lowering the hitch shank ball to a lower setting on my adjustable Gen Y shank as I didn't take into account the auto leveling feature when adjusting the ball initially.
- Lack of 500 mile range (initially promised) added a lot of logistics to this trip that would have been avoided with the bigger battery. And I don't know yet if the range extender would have been helpful, as we filled up the bed of the truck with other stuff. But it was possible to do with the current range. Although with the Crossbars I could have theoretically put our bikes on that and free up a lot of space in the bed.
- Small complaint, let every function of the phone work over bluetooth when there is no cell coverage.
- Give us the ability to download Netflix shows to the car, as we ran out of cell coverage near the park and it would have helped a bit on the last stretch.
I don't regret my reservation, still the best vehicle I have driven. But just a wish on the range. I'm curious to see what they do with the range extender, but we will see.
It's true, hard to see but things are happening. Only the bad stuff tends to make to the news.
That's great!
I do believe it is the best vehicle out there. Just very disappointed by the range. Also disappointed by the range extender as it takes up so much room in the bed. Not good for my property maintenance business to lose that space. I hope Tesla comes to its senses and increases the standard range prior to my reservation being called.
