Part of my move to the Rivian is to get a daily driver EV that also goes offroad since it'll replace my 4Runner. Trying to have a do-it-all vehicle means something has to give...so 20s it is for me.
That trailer will get worse range. The towing test here was so good because the profile of the car and trailer were below the truck roof line and there was no air damfirst picture is my 2017 ZL1… picture below is my latest toy
A nose cone on that would help.. How much I dont know, but it would..I have been towing sales samples in a 16x10 Stealth Trailer for the last couple of months. Longest tow was 592 miles from Buffalo, NY to ME. Here is some of my feedback;
Range - seems like wind resistance (my trailer is tall and square) is worse than weight when it comes to range. I have been getting 1 - 1.3miles / kwh driving at 65-69mph. I estimate that trailer and samples weigh roughly 6,000 lbs. Not getting that much better range when I tow the trailer empty. Speed changes the range dramatically.
Navigation / Route planning - I quickly realized that that when towing Rivians system is not at all functional. It wanted to send me routes that do not have chargers and longer than what the estimated range was for the vehicle. I use plugshare to map my route. Have informed Rivian about this navigation issue.
Charging with trailer, most of the time I have to unhitch the trailer to charge bit of a pain for sure.
Overall driving with trailer has been really good. Merging in and out of traffic, stability etc. is really really good. I have been using an F-150 Ecoboost for the last six years and the Rivian tows better, albeit not as far..
Their software VP said they will add adaptive cruise in towing support soon.I've been disappointed that nobody has been sharing any experiences towing a car. Lots of boats, but no cars. @gideontherivian had kind of shared some towing teasers, but I assume he was an employee, and so no efficiency, charging, or general experiences notes were really shared. So I had to try it myself!
That trailer, empty, is supposed to be 2210 lbs, and the car I think is about 3685 lbs, so probably just a little shy of 6000 lbs total.
It worked really well. I wouldn't say you couldn't feel the weight, but it felt like a lot less than you would expect. Towing mode sets the dampers to stiff, and I think that goes a long way to taming all that extra mass that's sitting on the tow ball. It was impressive. If you hit a bump, you'd get one nice compression + rebound cycle on the truck, and then you could see the trailer bounce a few extra times in the mirror (but you wouldn't feel it, and it wouldn't pull you around). It definitely tows better than any half ton I've towed with (though admittedly, I've only towed with older half tons).
I'm really curious to learn how regen works along with electric trailer brakes. With the surge brakes on the u-haul, a decent amount of regen would trigger the surge brakes, and then you'd kinda lose the ability to capture that energy until you start accelerating again. In some cases, it would have been really nice to just let the truck regen, and only use the trailer brakes if you really need them. There's a fine line here, I'm sure, keeping the rig stable while also trying to take advantage of regen. But I would expect that the electric trailer brake controller might be able to do that better than surge brakes, which basically have no control. That might impact range?
So, range. After "learning" the trailer, the truck estimated full-charge range of 150 miles. This estimate seemed to move a little throughout the trip though. The energy use summary is below. This is for a round trip with minor elevation change (traveling between Redmond WA and The Ridge Motorsports Park). On the way there, there was minimal traffic, and I was traveling a little over 60mph on average. On the way back, I just drove with traffic, but there was a lot more traffic. So there was stop-and-go, and there were periods of ~70mph. The consumption at 70mph is definitely worse, but the stability is still great.
The bad.
There weren't really that many issues, but I do have a few complaints. First and foremost, I learned that the navigation doesn't use the estimated range that the vehicle shows you. I was at the track with something like 50% battery shown, about 80 miles of range. I entered my home address in the nav, 100 miles away. It gave me a route with zero chargers, and told me I'd arrive with about 30-40 miles of range. I cancelled and tried again, and it did the same thing. It's as if it was just using my non-towing "All Purpose" range estimate for route planning. What gives?!
Second, and news to nobody, I really wish towing mode didn't disable every driver assist. Every other vehicle I know of will still allow adaptive cruise control with a trailer hooked up. Also, I think many half tons will extend your blind-spot detection to reach the length of the trailer. Rivian just disables all of that. Kinda annoying.
Third isn't towing related, but I discovered that the gear guard cable is restrictively short. I couldn't even reach it around a row of 4 wheels in the bed of the truck. ?
And of course, the obligatory fastest-lap video from the day!
To be clear, it's not intended to be an air dam...it's protecting the vehicle on the trailer from rocks and other debris.
Ha. No kidding. I’ve had the Audi for two years and the Rivian for two months. I think you know which one has seen infinitely more OTAs.
The term was incorrect but I'm referring to the air deflector on the front of the trailer which serves to prevent gravel from hitting the towed car.
Yeah it kind of depends what you're towing. A show car that you're trying to get a trophy with it's probably kind of nice. A track car that's occasionally daily driven and beat hard around the track is probably not much of a big deal.
Good luck with your ‘64 build! Here’s the link to my build on lateral-g… finally got it in for interior work last month… been a long road, but getting closer!
