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Just wondering? Have you ever towed your Airstream with your X and tried to recharge at a Supercharger? Do you first have to unhook the Airstream, park it someplace, charge up and then hook the Airstream back up?
Many Tesla Supercharger now have the charger closest to the transformers setup to pull in forward vs. have to back in. Unfortunately, that usually means your trailer is hanging out behind you blocking traffic flow in the lot. So in most cases you’d still need to drop the trailer unless you don’t mind blocking traffic while you charge.
Yes, many times. I've done both. Driving in sideways and blocking stalls (only at superchargers that aren't busy and I standby to move it if required, see photo) as well as unhitching and then charging. Latter is a bit more involved of course but I'm now pretty fast at the manoeuvre. ;-)
That's true but I've yet to come across a SuperCharger where I could use that stall without completely blocking passage to folks with my trailer sticking out or tolerate the fear of folks driving into it.
What’s been your experienced relative efficiency loss when towing vs not? 50%?
50% yes. You can make that better or worse. Speed is the biggest contributor to range loss when towing. Go slow in mild weather and you can achieve some pretty decent performance.
It should not have any issues. Really it shouldn’t have any issues with most trailers with the exception of range. Personally I don’t have a problem stopping every 200miles for about 30mins. I just don’t want to un-hitch...
Don't be surprised if you need to recharge every 100 miles or so when towing.
Well, with 400+ miles in the max pack for the R1T and my general experience towing with the model X, I’m hoping for a 50% range loss. This would make your 200 miles a possibility.
Only if you're running the battery from 100% all the way to 0 which isn't advisable. Assuming you only use 80% of the available charge and neglecting any weather or grade related range reduction, that 50% towing reduction quickly drops you down to 160 miles of peak theoretical range. Factor in other considerations along with charger locations and you probably won't even reach that. There will certainly be scenarios, such as the first/last leg of a trip, where you might want to use closer to 90% of the battery but in general you will want to charge more frequently just to stay out of the high taper portion of the charging curve.
Of course, but on average, I do get 50% of total range when towing my AS with my X. That’s the average. It will indeed vary depending on weather and road but my point is the Rivian max pack should give us a better starting point than with today’s largest available packs. That’s the 200 miles I’m talking about. After that, up to you to push the limit or not. I’ve certainly towed to 5% more than once. And I’ve also extended my range by slowing down.
It's also possible that since the aero on the Rivian pretty much sucks in comparison to the Tesla, the trailer may not extract as much of a penalty.
