768K views · Dec 4, 2019 · 18:02 · 2 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2020–2024
Engineering Explained uses physics to show why today's electric cars, including Teslas, are poor at towing, pointing to battery energy density and weight. It examines Cybertruck and F-150 towing claims.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN points to it as a solid analysis of EV towing range in truck and highway threads.
“Engineering Explained did a good video on EV towing”HN comment, 2021
“see this video for an interesting argument”
Argument about EV towing range
energy, not power. I'm sure the motors have enough torque to tow the battery, what I'm doubting is how efficiently that extra battery capacity gets converted to range. as an aside, the cybertruck is (probably) pretty bad at towing. see this video for an interesting argument: this video
“Engineering Explained did a good video on EV towing”
EV towing range analysis
> charging networks matter for most people Yes, best to go with the common charging standard so you can easily use (almost) all charging networks with no adapters. The F-150 is CCS so it's got that covered. > Also, how will the range actually be when you tow something. Probably poor. Engineering Explained did a good video on EV towing: this video
Source for battery power-to-weight limits when towing
EV Trucks are still a long way off. The simple fact is that the power to weight ratio of batteries simply does not scale for anything that needs to do towing [0]. Super Duty trucks are specifically designed for towing capability. Specifically, they are classified as class 2 or 3 by the federal government. They have higher tow capacity, higher rated transmissions with better towing gear ratios, as well as different suspensions and chassis, all of which are designed separately from the F-series. These changes yield a higher gross vehicle weight, as well. None of this means that Ford couldn't be pushing into better performance and emissions through hybrid technologies. Ford is slowly releasing full-size truck hybrid technology, but I'm unaware of this being brought to Super Duty trucks. The big advantage of hybrid technology is that weight does not directly affect the efficiency of power recovery, and would scale well even to vehicles that need to be towing in excess of 10k lbs. [0] - this video
