Towing + Efficiency: Please post your experience!

[dubaigary]

I towed my camper trailer for the first time last weekend. Most of the driving was on the freeway at 60 mph with some rolling hills, and some traffic in spots, but no mountain passes. The trailer probably weighs around 7000lbs+ including gear. If you are towing anything heavy and not aerodynamic do not expect 50% range loss as advertised. Expect more like 2/3 range loss. I got less than 1 mile per KWH and went from 100% battery to 40% battery in 55 miles. I was hoping to be able to get at least 100 miles per charge, but reality is I wouldn't push it any further than 75 miles per charge. With the limited infrastructure out West, that really limits where you can go. I have a Max pack on order and will definitely be upgrading once it's available. Hopefully that enables me to comfortably get 100 miles of usable range.

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I’ve been very pleased with our first experience hauling our 22’, 5000 lb airstream. 1.4 up hills, and 1.5 on the flat. It was a 200 mile trip, stopped twice on the recommendation of ABRP, both RAN sites that were relatively trailer friendly, so no need to disconnect. Also, the Rv park in Paso Robles allowed me to charge overnight, $20 flat fee for 3 nights.

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[cwintermeyer]

In May 2025 I towed an empty car hauler from SLC to San Diego, then back to SLC with a vintage Ford pickup behind my Gen 1 R1S Quad. Trip and trailer/hitch details and some pics are here. (My logic for towing an empty hauler to CA is here.)

I wasn't smart enough to capture the results of the trip odometer that I was smart enough to set before the journey. However, I just used Claude to generate some metrics from my Home Assistant integration for Rivian historical data along with details from my trip charging receipts.

According to Claude, I consumed a total of 1,703 kWh and averaged 1.062 kWh/mi over 1604 miles roundtrip. Here is a detailed breakdown of energy, cost and time.

 

[antimatter]

Quick update on the InTech Rover Dusk. We drove from Maple Grove MN down to Whitewater State Park fully loaded. The R1T was estimating the trailer at 5,000 lbs. The trip down was 131 miles with a stop at a Tesla Supercharger on the north side of Rochester, MN where we added 48 kWh in 17 minutes before heading off to the park. We did do one more charging session at the same charger (50 kWh) when we running errands in Rochester, but charged at the campground after that. If anyone asks, we had both a 30 am and 50 amp plugs at our campsite, and we weren't using very much juice (no a/c, just a refrigerator and one small heater), plus I throttled the charging down to 30 amps and checked the pedestal and plug heat while it was charging. Also, the campground was only about 1/4 full, so I'm pretty sure I wasn't putting much of a strain on the system. Average gas prices I say were $4.40 per gallon, so I saved about $30 overall over gas even with the two supercharging sessions (I also have the Tesla membership so I get the lower rate). The trip back was a straight shot from the campground to home, which was about 130 miles. We left with 99% charge, and arrived home with 20% battery left, meaning was had about 1.15 miles per kWh. We went 65 mph indicated (64 mph actual).

All in all, this was a good test run and seems to indicate that, given favorable winds, we can expect something like 150 miles of range with a full charge.

 

[HaveBlue]

Afraid I'm going to blow the curve a bit.

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