Comment by Workaccount2
7 hours ago
The lighting is fine for towing, especially the type that people usually do. You can tow up to 10,000lbs and the truck has ridiculous power to pull it.
What you can't do it tow it long distances (>90mi, worst case) without 40 minute stops every 1.5 hours. That sucks.
But the truth is very few truck owners are towing huge loads long distances.
However, if you are pulling your lawn care trailer around town, you will not have a problem, because every day you start with a full charge.
As an aside, the main killer of range for a trailer is a function of speed and drag. Low drag trailers driven at highway speeds (60-65) have marginal impacts on range, regardless of weight.
Again, the whole thing is ridden with misconceptions and misunderstandings. The majority of people who tow stuff, can still tow stuff while reaping cheaper operating costs.
> But the truth is very few truck owners are towing huge loads long distances.
This pattern also applies more broadly. Most people don't actually need to drive 400 miles without stopping, don't actually need an SUV, and in some cases don't actually need a truck. For a huge swath of the population some variation on a hybrid/electric hatchback/wagon or minivan is actually the best match for their needs, but practicality is rarely the prevailing factor in vehicle purchase decisions.
The reason I'm holding out for a 400 mile range vehicle is many fold.
1: Sometimes I actually do drive 400 miles in a single sitting, and I want to be able to keep doing that.
2: The last 10% of charge seems to take the longest. If I can safely fast charge in 20 minutes from 30 to 300 miles range, then I would have no range anxiety even when I'm on a long road trip.
3: I know the tech is coming, and I can wait until it gets here. I don't have an "only" option when it comes to vehicles.
You can do a 400 mile trip with a model 3 long range (~320mi range) and one 15 minute stop.
The thing is that you can also take that stop anytime after the first 80 miles, and usually you optimize it for the batteries sweet spot, so you might only need 7-8 minutes.
Trips are structured so you arrive with low battery, with the expectation you will plug in and charge overnight.
> However, if you are pulling your lawn care trailer around town, you will not have a problem,
I live in a high CoL area, but I still can't imagine a lawn care business affording an $80k truck. Most of them seem to drive used Tacomas and Mavericks.
> The majority of people who tow stuff, can still tow stuff while reaping cheaper operating costs.
People who are paying $80 to $90k for a luxury pickup truck aren't particularly worried about operating costs.
With perhaps the exception of a few climate-change believers who happen to also run construction companies or farms/ranches (they do exist!), what F150/Cybertruck owners are worried about is signaling to others that they paid $80 to $90k for a luxury pickup truck.
To this day, I've seen 1 Lightning loaded with construction gear.
I've never seen a Cybertruck doing heavy work - they are usually rolling squeaky clean around ritzy parts of town, or getting stuck in snowdrifts in the mountains.
The EVs I see doing work: Ford Electric transit vans.
The Lightning has an incredibly low charge speed given the huge size of both batteries. 155..175 kW is laughable for a 130 kWh net battery.