Electric car pulling a caravan
Hello, I was wondering whether anyone has an electric car which they are using to pull a caravan. If so I’d be grateful for as much information/advice as you have the time to give. Thanks very much.
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Check out the 'sticky' threads at the head of the towcar section. There’s loads of info there.
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I get 120 to 130 out of mine, and have towed 258 miles one way in a day with 2 charging stops, could easily have been 300. Thats 6 hours of towing in a combustion car.
If towing 600 miles across a continent in one day is your thing then an EV tow car is probably not for you. If you tow a few hundred miles in a day with a couple of stops, it can be very workable.
The actual towing experience is excellent.
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Providing of course there is a working, unoccupied fast charging point available for which you are registered and will accept your payment just when and where you need it. If an EV cannot equal, let alone better towing the towing experience with an ICE towcar then the tech is still flawed. There is a post over on CT forum from a novice caravanner buying their first caravan to tow with an as yet bought EV into France. Good luck with that…..
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Well - yes. Charging an EV goes with the territory of EV ownership. I would hope that anyone considering an EV would spend some time understanding the solo aspects of the technology along side towing. Towing to France, there are at least two Polestar owners I have come across who have done just that. The infrastructure over there is pretty good.
As for bettering the experience of towing with ICE, thats pretty subjective. Personally I love my EV as a solo car, and it makes a fantastic tow car too. Being able to tow around 120 to 130 miles from home for £6 with absolutely no loss of capability (in fact a significant improvement for me) is a definite improvement.
Indeed - I just sold my V60 PHEV previous tow car. Its not needed any more with the EV for my needs.
This is of course my (actual real world) experience - others may have other needs and other priorities.
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I think that’s a perspective thing JVB. For me using an EV to tow is extremely convenient and range limit is not an issue.
For others, that may not be the case…3 -
If we could tow with our EV we would, the fuel savings are so great now that buying a new ICE car and filling it with very expensive fuel is never going to offer much of a payback. Our EV has paid for itself over the last six years, what a shock it is when we fill up our motorhome!!
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I’d say the main consideration for most people at present in buying an EV is not its towing performance. People like ChocT are the pioneers in terms of towing and it’s feedback from them that’s likely to affect what manufacturers do far more so than comments from the nay sayers who have not tried it.
All that matters to ChocT and others is that they are happy to tow with their EVs and their feedback is invaluable. Well done you tuggers with EVs.👍🏻
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I didn’t say they were, JV. Re-read my post and you’ll find I said "…nay sayers who have not tried it".
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The thing is affordability is also a matter or perspective. As is the term “high end”. For example, some folks are lucky enough to be able to select an EV as a company car. If they are looking to use their company EV as a 10% tow car and 90% business machine, knowing it can to tow within limits might give the option to pick an EV over an oil burner.
The question then is not “are EVs affordable? “ or “are EVs equivalent to ICE?”, but “how good is an EV at towing and what are the limits? “.
It’s a different perspective that needs an empirical, not a comparative answer.
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I hope that Chocolate Trees begins to realise that lived experience does not trump whataboutism.
From my personal perspective we have an EV which we do not tow with. But I did 400miles over 2 days earlier in the week this includes 2x 180mile journeys. I charged up twice once on the way down after 3 hours and I needed a break and once on the way back. It took me 2 attempts to charge on the way home because I couldn’t get the chargers at Oxford services to work. So ended up in Warwick, this was a mild inconvenience. The charging on the outward leg probably added 10minutes to my journey and on the way home 30 minutes. I could have got to my destination so only needed to charge once but charging twice made more sense for my bladder.
My personal opinion is that there isn’t yet quite the range to make towing with an EV close enough in terms of convenience as with an ice car. But I hope that
a) I am wrong
b) things continue to improve.
A final thought, I first went caravanning with my Parents in the early-mid 70’s. I wonder what the effective range was then? I bet it wasn’t that much different to the EV ranges quoted today, especially if you were towing with something like a series Landrover.2 -
That is why you make sense & empiricism carrys weight👍🏻
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Thanks Boff. Talking about range my Mum was an intrepid driver with my Dad as mechanic, in the 50s we had a holiday in Alnmouth, Northumberland. It took two days of travel with an overnight stop in York from the Midlands. It also involved road side wheel changes and topping up the radiator and a crank to get the whole thing going!
Driving an EV at present has that certain element of challenge but it's no worse than previous efforts to get out and about. The Quicksilver Mail passing near us must have been epic!
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Boff, sometimes I do wonder if Whataboutery is the new truth…
I do recognise that I am very fortunate to be able to drive an EV as a company car. It’s a very cheap way to own one. I also recognise that for many, a brand new towing capable EV is not affordable. And for others, they may want to tow 300 miles no stop and 600 on one day. For those folks, maybe an EV is not right.
But I am sure there are many folks who tow caravans, go have the opportunity to take a company car, and are considering the option of an EV. Knowing what can be done is far more useful than understanding what might not be done.
We have also just sold out V60 PHEV and are awaiting a Fiat 500C EV. Personally owned and financed.
I did two decent solo journeys in the last week too. South Northamptonshire to Goodwood FOS (250 miles return) and up to Manchester (280 miles return).
For Goodwood, I needed a charge on the way home. The first charger pair I went to in Chichester, both were available, but the one so plugged into was on a go slow (25kW instead of 50), and it’s sister became occupied before I could move onto it. So I went on to Havant, and plugged in there. The charger would not recognise my RFID card, but I started it from the app, and got 50kw right off the bat.For Manchester, the business park I went to had a pair of 22kW AC chargers. I plugged in there at 26% and was at 87% five hours later when I left. Zero waiting.
For your Oxford issue, next time you pass Banbury, stop there. There are 16 Instavolt ultra rapids near the M40 junction, and 6 Osprey and 12 open Tesla Superchargers 2 mins drive further on. Fantastic facilities.
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@Chocolate trees. One of the aspects of EV ownership ok (leasership) that has surprised me is in 20K miles my Wife and I both agree that we have spent less refuelling than we would have with an ICE car.
I did charge up at Banbury on the way down, 57p/kWh a bit pricey but easy to use.
Friends of ours within the last 3-4 weeks got a Fiat 500 EV from stock. Not sure that’s a tow car 😀.
Please keep posting it is an interesting perspective.
@Brue my abiding memory of holidays is radiator hoses leaking. Apart from once in about 1967 borrowing his father’s Renault R7? (It was rear engined)) because his car was so unreliable and a spring breaking. What ever else modern cars are so much more reliable.
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Yep, we have undoubtedly spent less on fuel in the 15k miles in the last year than we would have done on diesel. Not just a bit less, but a lot less. My guess is of the 15k miles, perhaps 3000 tops have been on public charging. The rest on home charging. The cost of 12k miles charged from home? About £360. My guess (and I would have ti work it out) is that we have also spent less time waiting to charge during those 15k miles than we would have done fuelling the car with diesel too.
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Interestingly, we were at a party at our neighbour's, yesterday and three of the people there all work for a major energy company who have massive gas storage facilities in this area. They were saying that EV's are a short-term stop-gap and that the infrastructure for widespread use will never be possible. They are starting to invest in hydrogen production and are waiting for the government to get on board at which point they were saying that there will be an industry-wide move in that direction. Interesting times and I have a feeling that this is what will happen.
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Don't know about that JV - but these guys are fairly senior in the company and seemed very positive about the direction in which things would go to the extent that they are in the process of converting an existing BP gas site to hydrogen manufacture.
They didn't go into detail but they also said that they vent enough gas off on a daily basis from their existing storage facilities to run thousands of homes for a year!
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It makes way more sense looking at the bigger picture, the building of EV plug ins has never really moved at a pace. I’m thinking they(both) may be the new Petrol & Diesels going forward into the future.
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For Manchester, the business park I went to had a pair of 22kW AC chargers. I plugged in there at 26% and was at 87% five hours later when I left. Zero waiting.
Maybe no wait for you, but the chap behind who wanted to use that charger had to wait five hours!
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I thought one of the problems the U.K. had was it didn’t have massive gas storage facilities.
Onto Hydrogen. It takes far more energy overall to move a vehicle 1 mile with Hydrogen than it does with Battery electric. Look it up. Maybe for heavy transport hydrogen has a future. But for personal transport it doesn’t have a future.
However touting Hydrogen is classic merchant of doubt territory. You don’t need to do anything now because a new technology is just around the corner which will save us. Just like the cigarette industry were going to introduce safe tobacco in the 70’s, so there was no need to give up smoking.
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Navigateur, there are two distinct chargers types for car charging. Rapid, where you are expected to charge your vehicle quickly and move in as soon as you are ready. These often have time limits and overstay charges if you are longer than is reasonable. The other is a destination charger. These are much lower power, and lower cost. They are designed to charge you while you go and do something else, for hours or even all day. The entire point of them is to charge slowly for a long period of time, and you don’t use them if you are in any sort of rush. Waiting for a destination charger is like waiting for a space in a long stay carpark.
Having said that, I display a clock on my dashboard with my estimates return time, and a link to an app that will actively alert me if someone needs to charge and chooses to contact me. No one did.
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I think we are doing quite well in the UK producing renewable energy and at present this points to us being able to support electric car charging. We are short of public chargers and this is where we are lacking. Hydrogen has always been a consideration but it's known to be more expensive than electricity and similar to fossil fuel costs. We should be able to produce cheap electricity which will benefit all in the future.
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My point is still that the charger, whether fast or slow, is not available for long periods of time while in use. So those following who had planned to use it can't, and have to have a Plan B to go on somewhere else, with hopefully enough range for a third stop should the Plan B equipment also be in use.
There would have to be considerably more chargers in the country than there are individual fuel pumps at present to give a reasonable certainty to be abe to charge when needed.
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You can check if a charger is in use via an app before heading for it, Nav. It’s not as bad as you seem to think.
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