What's It Like to Tow With: Rivian R1T vs. Ford F-150 Lightning 

Alex, I never dreamed you would come close to equaling the monumental achievement of your RAV4 Hybrid towing videos. I hope this incredibly detailed, thoughtful and insightful video gets the audience it deserves . 👏👏👏👏

Did I miss something? Was there a summary for the Lightning?

A very complicated subject broken down to the essential essence of where each of these stand. Great job‼️

Thanks for this video! Good information. Most of my towing is 20 miles or less so an EV could work. However, I don't really need a truck. We currently use our Kia Sorento for the light towing that we do now.

Perfect trailer choice! That is about all I see dragged around the Chicago area. Mostly landscapers. Although I've even seen a Tesla pulling a small trailer.

In Wyoming people be going 90 mph while towing. It's nuts

We want a review on your collection of trailers that you tow :).

19:20 It's funny to hear you say this because this is my exact reasoning for why I don't like EV route planners. Even when making the argument that they are primarily for people who rarely drive their EVs long distances, I find that the background knowledge and setup required to make a route planner function effectively and properly are more taxing than simply planning a route oneself without using any special tools.

Love the channel(s)!! Keep bringing us great reviews

Aren’t we missing the Lightning results?

13:00 This is not exactly true, especially in the context of comparing EV trucks to ICE trucks. While it is true that you use more additional energy climbing in elevation than you can recoup through regenerative braking on the descent (most modern regenerative braking systems have 60% to 80% roundtrip efficiencies depending on exactly what losses you're factoring in), when you compare that to ICE trucks, it means that EV trucks are actually less affected by towing over mountain ranges than ICE trucks are. Even if an ICE truck can Jake brake or otherwise avoid using friction brakes, it is still only getting a "free ride" back down hill. It isn't recouping any of the additional energy that it expended when climbing in elevation. EV trucks, on the other hand, both get the "free ride" back downhill and get to store additional energy that can be used for driving later.

I guess I missed it in there but what was the comparative miles/kWh between the two? I saw it for the Rivian but not the Lightning.

But for towing around town, electric is awesome. Huge power, tons of regen braking, no exhaust.

Am I missing something. You put time stamps for the rivian final thoughts. What about the lightning? Where’s the final numbers?

These are essentially first-generation EV trucks. Even as an EV enthusiast, you'd have to be quite naive to think these are the perfect option for long distances. Until the vehicles improve, they're great commuters for people who like trucks.

Where the heck are the lightning final results? Kinda odd to do this whole big test and not show results. Were the results for the lighting so bad that you didn’t want to post them?

Thank you for the detailed assessment! It's strange. Others who have done towing reviews have often said that they don't feel like they're towing anything, particularly when the trailer is substantially below the towing limit. In other words, some others have said that it feels like they are towing nothing at all. Have you seen these? What are your thoughts?

80MPH here in Utah and I see towing vehicle going much faster plenty of times or extremely slow.

NOPE. My ICE truck gets 16mpg empty and 12 to 13 towing NO MATTER the temp. I have seen video after video showing F150 towing range at less than 100 miles total.

I really dislike towing a trailer regardless of what powers the tow vehicle.

I am probably too late for you to still pay attention to the comments so I will probably post this on the next relevant situation but: people talk about these range variances being unique to electric vehicles in a ludicrous way. They are also true with ICE vehicles; we just think about it due to the difference in ease of replacing fuel vs. replacing electric charge. My example is thus: I drive a Mercedes Metris- I don’t tow with it, but for the first 5 years of the vehicles life I drove it as fast as I thought I could without ending up with speeding tickets, with a decent amount of highway driving, some magically in Mexico at speeds up to the vehicles up to its maximum velocity of 101 mph, and consistently where possible 10-15 mph over the speed limit in ‘mexico’. My father became diagnosed with Mesothelioma a few months before the pandemic hit and the three way hit of that, the pandemic, and my father inevitably succoming to i made my thought process change drastically, including conserving money, to the point where I drive gently, the limit up to single lane 55s, 5 under on multi lane 55s, and 55 mph anywhere faster. The results of this shocked me; indicated mileage on the computer for the last 15,000 service interval before he got sick was 21.8, the lowest in the life of the van for such an interval was 21.2. For interval after full implementation of this change, indicated mileage was 30 mpg. I also calculated things more precisely since the pandemic, and have self calculated miles driven over gallons consumed for that interval at 26.984, suggesting 19.6 for the 21.8 and 15k interval low of 19. Converting this to consumption, strictly for the 21.8/19.6 and 30/26.984, we have 12 l/100km and 8.74 l/100km, or an increase in consumption of 37% for the higher speed. I think it would be beneficial to the viewers of this channel to have an as close as possible to apples-to-apples comparison of consumption efficiency of, say, a Ford F-150 lightening vs a F150 Ecoboost vs an F150 V8 on both conservative vs normal speed, and towing vs non towing. I also have more anecdotally noticed I have inferior fuel consumption on cold winter mornings vs more moderate temperatures, and think that would be an area worth exploring, too.

Regen braking helps a ton when towing. Less wear on the brakes, less likely to overheat the brakes. It does also help put energy back in the battery, which is a benefit over an ICE vehicle that has no ability to put fuel back in the tank. ICE vehicles just waste that energy to heat through the brakes. Just another one of the things that make EVs more efficient. Once battery technology catches up to the energy density of fossil fuels (or even gets close) and charging speeds get better, nobody is going to want ICE tow vehicles anymore. EVs are so far superior to an ICE vehicle for towing…except for the range and recharging speed. EV drivetrains are like the combination of all the best points of both gas and diesel engines, but even better. Although the Rivian is a good first attempt, it is still a first attempt, and now that it’s been out for a while and been getting used a lot, it’s becoming really apparent. It’s kind of feels like a truck that was designed by a team that have only read about trucks in a magazine or forum. It kind of reminds me of something like a Porsche Cayenne or a Range Rover or something, just in truck form. It’s designed for people with lots of money who don’t actually use the capabilities of their vehicles, but seem to want them anyway. Rivian has taken the Tesla approach to the BMS. The low regen at higher SOC is because the Rivian has basically no top buffer, same thing Tesla does. That’s why they are very adamant that you should not charge it to 100% except for the occasional long trip. If the battery is charged to very near the maximum voltage allowed by the battery, they cannot do regen because it would push the battery voltage too high. The only (safe) way they could fix that with software would be to reduce the usable battery capacity and give it a top buffer. The unsafe way would be to allow the voltage to creep higher or essentially overcharge the battery, but uhhh…we don’t need more EVs catching fire. The Rivian is body on frame with a rigidly mounted body. The body can be completely unbolted and removed from the vehicle and still leave a rolling chassis, but it doesn’t use rubber isolators between the body and frame like a typical body on frame vehicle (like the F150). This allows them to put the frame and body closer together and also allows them to make the frame wider (to fit more battery), but it means that the suspension and drivetrain have to be individually isolated more than than they would on a typical truck. Unibody vehicle, like the Ridgeline, the frame is part of the body. The drivetrain and suspension are attached to separate subframes that bolt to the unibody for manufacturing purposes. You can remove the subframes, but they don’t run the full length of the vehicle and they won’t roll separately from the vehicle unibody because they require the unibody for support/connection.

No mileage no mileage

Are EVs really ready for pickups?

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻🚘⚡

Rivian hands down..... it has adjustable air suspension uses the 2170 cells vs the ford using pouch cells watched munro video they are lacking on cell cool/heating

I really don’t understand how people make these videos. Put this much work and effort into it and don’t watch it through / edit it properly. Blows my mind.

All excellent information. However, if I were buying a truck for towing, it wouldn't be an EV.

Rivians are bricking and their service is a joke, suspension failures, rain water sloshing inside doors, this is majorly horrible stuff.

Easy answer is if you tow get a real truck

Does the L in his name mean LOVES ??

Watch JerryRigEverything 10000k trailer load test. Rivian sucks. With range gauge recalculation and software bugs, you never know how far you will go.

The answer is a whole lot easier than he makes it out to be…the answer is laughably short distances. EV’s effectively have no towing range.

55mph speed limit for towing vehicles in Commiefornia is a joke 😂 Meanwhile everywhere I drive across US most semis and towing vehicles go 70-75mph no problems. Most speed limits in US are 65-70mph for semis/towing vehicles.

WOW, JUST WOW.....Did we learn ANYTHING from this exercise? Did you get enough views?