They have to solve a real problem for people hauling cargo, they don’t really do that as they currently exist. They get significantly worse range when hauling than a normal gas or diesel truck, their only benefit is making feel better about their carbon footprint.

I was legit considering getting an F150 lighting for a little while but when I saw how much your range decreases when towing something it became obvious that it’s not really practical. It’s just objectively worse at hauling than a gas car.

Hopefully we see more battery tech breakthroughs that make electric trucks viable work vehicles.

▲

dyauspitr 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

It is worse at hauling. I can get between 150 to 200 miles while towing my 4000 lb RV with my lightning. What’s nice though is I can get a full charge at my campsite for the night so I never really pay for transportation. Turns out 200 miles per day is good enough for cross country RVing.

For everyday driving, I pay about $8.50 for a “full tank” of charge that gets me around 300 miles. That’s about $100 worth of gas in an equivalent gas truck.

That’s being said I think the ideal truck would have about 2x-3x the current battery capacity of the extended range lightning.

▲

Alive-in-2025 5 days ago | parent [-]

The new huge GM EV & SUV trucks do have way more battery - and weight. The GM Silverado EV Work Truck is EPA 492 miles, tested at 530 by edmonds. So take the common rule of thumb, divide range by half or maybe a little more and you get about 250 miles of towing range. https://news.gm.com/home.detail.html/Pages/topic/us/en/2025/....

In a couple of recent youtube videos, "Aging Wheels" thoroughly tested a variety of trailers towed behind a variety of vehicles and then also added weight to the trailer to see the efficiency impact of towing a trailer with a lot more weight. They found a 4.3% efficiency drop by adding weight to max out the towing, compared to towing without the extra weight. Weight isn't what matters on towing impact, it's the wind resistance of the trailer that matters much more.

They did a long series of comparison drives (in the about 30 mins video) with different trailers and then loaded them with extra weight to see the impact. It was smaller than you expect. The video with all the tests is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmKf8smvGsA.

I heard about this on the batteries included podcast where they interview the author of the video above, and kind of give high level summary with some details, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGJv-xAqcTI.

	▲	dyauspitr 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		That first video was very well done, answers so many questions all at once. I’m going to put effort into making my setup much more aerodynamic. That’s a potential 30-50 miles more per charge there!

▲

masklinn 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s pretty complicated. The issue with hauling is that it craters your aerodynamics and explodes your rolling resistance, so you need massive battery capacity. Or to slow down, but most people don’t want to do that.

Aging wheels has a recent video on the subject: https://youtu.be/UmKf8smvGsA

▲

disentanglement 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

They are cheaper to run almost everywhere (depending on the cost of electricity versus gas of course). No breakthrough in battery technology needed for that.

	▲	bluGill 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		They don't run everywhere though. They run until the fuel runs out. At least with liquid fuels that just needs a short stop to refuel, and stations are everywhere. a recharge takes longer and places to do it are not as common. If you are towing there are places you can't get.