Towing a T/A with an EV - real world
If, like me, you have an 1850KG twin axle, go to youtube, search for the channel of Petrol Ped, and watch his test of the biggest BMW EV (£100k ++) towing a Swift T/A from Chichester to Beaulieu. He does a comparison run without the van first.
I don't think the conclusion will surprise you.
Paul
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Can you post a link and make it easy for us, Nutsy?
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Here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oLeKRNsSn4
I watched on my TV, better than sitting in front of a PC.
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Cheers. I’ll do the same later👍🏻
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The conclusions were somewhat obvious. The range drop is about 50% (300miles to 150miles) when towing an 8foot wide T/A at 60mph in damp conditions, and that charging while towing requires unhitching.
No mention that either going a bit slower can yield longer range, or that unhitching to charge is possible or that the impact is that same on an ICE car (just with a bigger starting range).
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1) I get 250+ miles out of 10 gals of petrol towing my van. My previous 14 gal diesel got much more.
2) going slower will also increase that range
3) I don’t unhitch to refuel.
4) refuelling takes about 5 mins
5) I don’t need to hunt for fuel pumps that are free, working or need a multitude of ‘apps’ for each brand of fuel for which I have pre registered in order to refuel.
6) I don’t need to find a ‘fast’ petrol pump, they are all fast.7 -
CT
Unhitching to charge was discussed - as in having to leave the van in the lorry park requiring being attended to avoid theft whilst the 2 chargers are in the car park.
The impact is not the same with most ICE cars - in my case the range reduces by 30% not 50%, and I can fill up without unhitching - and only take 5 minutes doing it. And even after the 30% reduction, my range is is still 400 miles.
Damp conditions, cold weather, rain all affect the range but we are in the UK. I've seen many stories of having to wear winter coats whilst driving to avoid having the heater on, and what about heated seats, windscreen wipers, in car entertainment, sat on the M25 for 2 hours?
PP does refer to the weather affecting his range - and has done in other reviews of high end EV's (Audi E-tron for example) and he has a Ford Mustang on long term test which continually fails to reach anywhere near its advertised range. Have you noticed that Mayor Khan, whilst forcing "ordinary" drivers of ICE cars off the road , still drives around in a 5 car motorcade of V8 Range Rovers? As do most of HMG's ministers. Hypocrites.
I know you are a big fan of EV's, but they are simply not good enough for most caravanners and probably never will be - not in my lifetime anyway. Not least because of the cost of the things on leasing arrangements (see Sky news app today - around 30% more than a comparable ICE car to lease for 3 years) or indeed to outright purchase if you are so inclined.
As a city car they make sense for folks who have home chargers, no dispute (if you can afford one in the first place).
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It was a pretty extreme outfit? However it did point out some of the future difficulties that those using EV's will face. Will caravanning survive? I missed out motorhomes simply because the choice of electric ones is currently so small, compared to normal cars, its difficult to imagine what things will look like in 2030.
Perhaps Andrew Ditton, via his YouTube Channel, offers a more realistic view of the future using his EV6 with a relatively small caravan. Is that the way forward? He has also experienced some of the difficulties illustrated in the video posted.
David
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slightly off topic ..... but this shows another side of EVs & their batteries. Not quite as green as they would have us believe.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/workers-are-dying-in-the-ev-industrys-tainted-city
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ED you are quite correct. EV users and HMG forcing them on us are conveniently ignoring the human and greenhouse gas costs of manufacturing these things.There are many published reports stating that an EV only becomes "net zero" (which in itself is a weasel phrase) at circa 70k miles. Oh, they use "green" electricity - no they don't, they use leccie from the grid where there is no distinction between the various power sources. Woodchip burning at Drax anyone? Subsidised by HMG to the tune of millions every year.
I know its going off the original topic, but the forums and youtube are littered with horror stories about charging points, inaccurate range, costs (no cheaper than ICE) etc. One guy on youtube running a Porsche Taycan (another high cost EV) reports an annual service cost of £700, requiring 2 new tyres at 19k (£800) due to the weight of the car, and constant recalls for glitches.
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David
Is it really extreme? How many T/A's do you see on any site now? Yes it is obviously possible to downgrade to a smaller van - at what cost? Replace your perfectly good ICE car with an EV, replace your perfectly good van with a smaller one? No thanks. I'll give it all up and get on a plane
I said on one of Chocolate Tree's threads that the future of caravanning / motorhoming is in danger, as is the future of C&MC. I was poo poohed. The whole leisure industry is at risk due to this arbitrary, unthoughtout posturing of HMG. Virtue signalling for the Cop meetings and Davos -and we all know how green (not) those shindigs are.
Paul
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Paul
By extreme I was meaning the cost of both the car and the caravan and their respective sizes. Whilst its difficult to judge and perhaps people shouldn't make such judgements but hardly the combined price of the average outfit on a Club site. Well beyond me BTW!
I am of the age when I suspect it won't concern me. I have a new Hybrid car on order, currently 4 months and waiting, so if that lasts as long as the current one I imagine I may never own an EV?
I don't think we can change the course of history as the die has been cast. Even if the UK moved back the point where only EV's could be sold the entire automotive industry is geared up to producing EV's and it may become difficult to buy an ICE car as we get nearer to 2030? Without doubt we are going through a period of massive change. The trouble, for all of us, is that caravanning and motorhoming is a mere speck in that change and I could see us all feeling that we will have no control over what happens?
David
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We have considered swapping our six year old EV, which has been excellent to use and getting an EV which could tow. We would then consider a small caravan and get rid of our diesel guzzling and polluting motorhome. The caravan would be small as there would no point in towing a large heavy caravan which would draw heavily on power both on the road and on site.
As for lithium batteries ours show no sign of reduced output, I also have a lithium powered radio that has lasted a long time too. Lithium batteries are recyclable. Meanwhile fossil fuels continue to warm the planet so there is a choice out there, things have moved on. Fossil fuel vehicles are on the way out.
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I not denying any of that Flatcoat. If you like your diesel tug and are happy with it - stick with it! It makes life easy.
Just pointing out that experience of one motoring journo - who admitted he hadn't towed anything for 10 years, and that was a horsebox - is not a yard stick by which to judge all towing.
And that if you happen to want an EV for other reasons (cost, environmental, you just like them) towing is still an option and can work well.
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Unhitching was discussed - yes. But only discussed. No actual attempt to do it (as in Andrew Ditton's videos) or my own experience. Quite a lot of "I expect it will be like this", rather than - "this is me doing it to see what its actually like".
Mine drops from 190-210 down to 130-140. Also much less than 50%. And yes the staring range is much less than 600 and the result much less than 400. But it's still over 2 hours towing which (for me) is as much as I like to do before a break. YMMV.
Stories of "having" to wear coats, and range impact due to heating, lights wipers and entertainment are mostly associated with old Nissan Leafs, whos battery will only now deliver 60miles range. I can assure you, I set my climate to 20, use my heated seats and steering wheel, set my wipers and lights to auto, and use my entertainment, and see no perceptible difference in range. These are simply non-issues. Sitting stationary in traffic uses about 1% battery in 90 mins.
Sure - they (mostly) don't reach the WLTP official range. How many ICE cars reach the WLTP official MPG? about the same number. I have not noticed the mayor of london forcing drivers of ICE off the road. I have noticed a charge for non-euro4 petrol (2012 or older) and non-euro6 diesel (2016 or older) cars. Maybe the V8s are all newer than 2012 if petrol or 2016 if diesel. Yes - they should be EVs I agree.
I am a big fan - yes. Define "most" caravaners. I have no idea what "Most caravaners" look like. Perhaps they are the older retired generation who use their caravan for 3000 mile European tours. In which case an ICE tug is probably more suitable. Or perhaps they are like me, still working, with a family, using their company car to tow their caravan for 5 or 6 holidays a year, in which case the use of an EV is perfect.
It's definitely a case of horses for courses.
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Some of us took the plunge and have gone over to the "other side" experience counts and our EV has exceeded our expectations however I appreciate that there are others who won't be joining us. At present it's all about choice and costs and practicality. So we still run a motorhome that produces a shock to the system every time we fill it up and ever increasing limits or costs on where we can take it due to it's older polluting engine and this is the same for older ICE cars too. Whatever the future the one sure thing is change.
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Define "most" caravaners
The massive majority of what I see on sites.
using their company car
and that is the critical bit,isn't it?
Sure - they (mostly) don't reach the WLTP official range. How many ICE cars reach the WLTP official MPG? about the same number.
Cant argue with that, but the ICE starting point is much higher.
I have no objection to EV's - my beef is that we are being forced into this rather than being given the choice. CCP???
When the car first came along no one banned horses, but the change to cars happened voluntarily because the car was BETTER than the horse. If EV's were that good, and better (for the majority) than ICE cars, the change would happen over time. The fact that HMG are forcing the change says it all, to me anyway.
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Yes - its true that the demand for expansion in new technologies results in "gold rush" behaviours as companies look to profit from natural resource extraction, and often governments and legislation lack the speed, agility and somtimes will to curb malpractice. It's not a new phenomenon, and should not be ignored.
But pretending that EVs are somehow especially bad in the face of the impact of oil extraction is to ignore the elephant in the room.
Of the "many published reports" there are two in particular where the 70k or 90k mile number is cited. The Volvo and Polestar environmental impact report. The number is often miss-quoted as it is derived from the higest number based on global carbon mix of generated electricty, rather than the EU mix (that we actually use).
The Polestar paper is here and page 10 shows that my particular variant charged on the EU carbon mix breaks even after 76,000 km or 47,500 miles.
https://www.polestar.com/dato-assets/11286/1630409045-polestarlcarapportprintkorr11210831.pdf
As to "leccie from the grid" and drax woodchip. As you say - you get what you use, but its very dependent on the time of day you use it. Overnight electricty has a lower carbon content than peak electricity. Charge overnight (when its cheap) and you lower the payback time on the car as the electricty mix is greener.
https://carbonintensity.org.uk
The forums are littered with horror stories. There are also facts from others not looking to sensationalise ownership. Like, only having ever waited for a charge point once (and even then only because I was killing time waiting for a train to arrive) in 20 months. Or range being exactly what I was expecting - every time - because the screen is very accurate, or being MUCH cheaper than an ICE with 200 miles costing me about £5.60 at the moment or my annual service from a Polestar service center (Volvo main dealer) being free with the car for 3 years, or 4 new tyres costing just under £1000 after 23,500 miles which is the same price as my XC90 was for 16,000miles, and no recalls and only 1 issue.
You will believe what you like - but its not all doom and gloom.
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But it simply isn't in danger.
Your way of caravanning might be a bit harder with an EV. For mine, it works perfectly. I use the van in exactly the same way as we did starting in 2008.
No one is forcing you into an EV.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research
Not a biased source at all...
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The first non horse drawn vehicle was electric but other designs overtook it. Fuel was a problem, there were no petrol stations but this was overcome.
No-one is being forced to change vehicles, no-one was forced off a horse, in fact ICE vehicles were only affordable for a few....then look what happened mass production came along. The change at present is gradual but the aim is to replace ICE with something which is better for the environment, less wasteful for limited fossil fuel stocks, maybe not even electric in the end, other systems are being developed.
Maybe caravan design will have to change to accommodate these changes, sometimes it's worth thinking outside the box?
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using their company car
and that is the critical bit, isn't it?
Depends how you look at it. I went back in to the company car scheme specifically to choose an EV, knowing I could tow my caravan with it. I could have stayed out, and carried on using my old diesel, but it was cheaper and a better experience to go electric.
It's been so good, we sold our PHEV and bought (yes actually bought with our money) a second EV as our second car. No special discounts. No tax breaks, just plain old cash and personal choice. Can we tow a caravan with it? No. But we don't need to - its a second car.
Clearly not everyone has access to a company car. And clearly EVs are more expensive (for now) than ICE cars up front. And some people just don't want them for all sorts of very valid reasons - like not wanting to unhitch to recharge when towing because they think it's a PITA. Or because they cant charge from home. Or because they don't have a stick to change gears with and don't make a big loud noise. All fine and I have no problem with that.
But it does not change the fact that you can tow a caravan (small or 1800kg MTPLM T/A) with an EV, and some people will choose to do so, because for them, it's the right thing to do.
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We currently tow with a Outlander PHEV using E10 we now see only 28/29 mpg towing as opposed to 31/32 mpg using E5, at present we charge up off peak at home for 5 pence kWh on Friday this changes to 20.4 pence a kWh, the increase from 5 pence to 20.8 pence a kWh has increased the average cost per mile to around 14.5 pence per mile , we no longer use public due to the increase cost.
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Not that I'd be buying the BMW iXM60 .... far too expensive, but I'd hope it comes with a choice of interior colour! That tan is horrible (Obviously IMHO!). And that steering wheel doesn't look too different from The All-agro's Quartic wheel that was deemed to be a laughing stock at the time! 😉
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EV’s are moving to price match ICE cars simply because the costs of compliance with new EU7 regs will add upto £4k to the cost of an ICE and is already killing the budget city car sector. This is pricing low income car drivers off the road (no doubt what technocrats want) and leading to closure of car factories and significant redundancies. As cars gradually become the preserve of the middle and upper classes there will be social unrest. No one voted for net zero and whatever poeple say in opinion polls and the tiny minority post on social media, the masses will rise up and revolt against the undemocratic elite effectively forcing a reduction in living standards on people. Various car industry heads are quietly very concerned about the direction unelected officials and politicians running scared of Greta are taking. As for wood pellet fuelled power stations - a very significant proportion end up at the bottom of the North Sea. They are transported by diesel fuelled ship from North America and because of the risk of spontaneous combustion can only be offloaded in port below a certain temperature. If the load is above a specific temperature they are dumped at sea. This happens quite frequently.
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I thought the pellets were unloaded from the ships on the west coast and transported across country by train - similar to coal in the past.
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Flatcoat
I totally agree with you. Stellantis, VW and BMW CEO's have already voiced that opinion to HMG and EU leaders. They have also said that they cannot justify further investment in Euro 7 for an engine that will be obsolete a few years later.
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You can’t stop so called progress but my real concern is with the massive environmental damage being done and the human exploitation.
In Australia, only two percent of the country’s 3,300 metric tons of lithium-ion waste is recycled. Unwanted MP3 players and laptops often end up in landfills, where metals from the electrodes and ionic fluids from the electrolyte can leak into the environment.
Because lithium cathodes degrade over time, they cannot be placed into new batteries. Researchers are using robotics technology developed for nuclear power plants to find ways to remove and dismantle lithium-ion cells from electric vehicles. There have been a number of fires at recycling plants where lithium-ion batteries have been stored improperly, or disguised as lead-acid batteries and put through a crusher. Not only have these batteries burned at recycling plants, but auto makers are seeing battery-related fires leading to vehicle recalls and safety probes. In October, U.S. safety regulators opened a probe into more than 77,000 electric Chevy Bolts after two owners complained of fires that appeared to have begun under the back seat where the battery is located.
Because manufacturers are secretive about what goes into their batteries, it makes it harder to recycle them properly. Currently, recovered cells are usually shredded, creating a mixture of metal that can then be separated using pyrometallurgical techniques—burning—which wastes a lot of the lithium. Alternative techniques, including biological recycling where bacteria are used to process the materials, and hydrometallurgical techniques which use solutions of chemicals in a similar way to how lithium is extracted from brine are being investigated.
It is estimated that between 2021 and 2030, about 12.85 million tons of EV lithium ion batteries will go offline worldwide, and over 10 million tons of lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese will be mined for new batteries. China is being pushed to increase battery recycling since repurposed batteries could be used as backup power systems for China’s 5G stations or reused in shared e-bikes, which would save 63 million tons of carbon emissions from new battery manufacturing.
Cobalt Extraction Also Poses Environmental Problems
Cobalt is found in huge quantities in the Democratic Republic of Congo and central Africa where it is extracted from the ground by hand, using child labor, without protective equipment. China owns eight of the 14 largest cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo and they account for about half of the country’s output. While China has only 1 percent of the world’s cobalt reserves, it dominates in the processing of raw cobalt. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the source of over two-thirds of global cobalt production, but China has over 80 percent control of the cobalt refining industry, where raw material is turned into commercial-grade cobalt metal.
Like lithium, the price of cobalt has quadrupled in the last two years.
The emotional child having her life taken away has nothing to complain about compared to the ragged and shoeless children being exploited in having to hand dig cobalt mines in Africa.
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Oneputt - sorry but posting the text of an article verbatim from a biased source (specifically - the one you already posted) does not make it any less biased or any more accurate.
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