Power Hungry Tesla Model X vs The World's Toughest Towing Test | Adventure X Ep. 2

[Music] we've been averaging a whopping get this 1828 watt hours per mile this is gotta be some of the highest consumption I've ever seen I'm surprised my feet aren't getting hot guys as you know the reason we bought the Model X wasn't because we wanted an electric crossover it's because we know that electric trucks are coming and the Tesla Model X is as close as you can get to an electric truck it's got the most range the most towing capability and today we're gonna test that we're gonna take it up the eye complet but there's a problem the world's toughest towing test is 70 miles from here sinn it's up the hill it's up a mountain yeah what's the issue Tommy well so the issue is when we did our efficiency loop Tommy Model X we were using get this 1% for every mile driven with a trailer with the trailer so that meant are realistic range with roughly a hundred to 120 miles yeah and this is on the flat highway flat highway near the marathon great show well yes so total range according to the epa right Tommy yeah in the car 325 miles we were using with a trailer 2.7 times more energy on a flat highway rather than running without the trailer which means our towing range is approximately 120 miles and you would say well you could make it 70 miles with no problem but no we're going up the mountain we don't know how much energy we're gonna use yeah that's really the crux of it right we've got realistically on the flat highway 120 miles toing toing but up here this half of low and scare you because so no it's 70 miles and when we did the model 3 uphill it used a huge amount so I think that number will be cut in half again yeah and then there's a realistic chance that we won't be able to make it to the top and one year and lovely there before love them there's no houses where you can plug in a big choice would be to push it down without ok so I think here that we do right yeah we have to use a good old-fashioned ice vehicle to help us get to the top use rock like a truck like we get like a truck a truck so we're here at the THQ Boulder why don't we use the truck to tow the trailer up to the Loveland ski area at which point we'll hook up the Tesla Yeah right and then we'll tow all the way down the IKE which is eight miles of some of the steepest most extreme highway anywhere in the u.s. yeah once we get the silver thorn we'll turn around and then run the world's toughest towing test all the way back into the top let me let me just put this out here I think in that eight miles turn right up the mountain we're going to use like 40% of battery which may sound like a lot to you but the truck would do the same thing so a truck would go from let's say 17 mpg which is what the rebel is getting three or four three or four towing up the egg by the way time to look at this our Tesla is fully charged and in charging all night 327 miles whoo we've got two more than it's supposed to get supposed to get three hundred and twenty five months hey so check it out I made it to the love truck stop where we start our highway efficiency loop Andre can you hear me can you hear me I need you to go 55 miles an hour 52 miles an hour and I'm gonna draft you because it says I'm gonna be negative one by the time I get there according to the FB of 327 miles of range it's time to unplug our mobile connector here so I'm going to go into charging stop charging and there we go so what I'm gonna do now actually is being a little bit cheeky and I'm gonna plug in the Loveland ski area which is where we start our test so you can see that's where we're gonna hitch up the Tesla and if we look at the actual energy prediction here it looks like wow we're gonna be at just 65 percent battery by the time we get to the level of ski area [Music] now those of you have model X's you probably perhaps have used the hitch on the back for may be carrying a bicycle maybe you've done a little bit of light towing that is a proper horse trailer in fact it is bigger than the actual vehicle that we're towing it with it weighs four and a half thousand pounds and the Tesla is capable of towing five thousand pounds this Cimarron horse trailer is provided by our friends at trans West and normally of course when you have a horse trailer you'd be towing some horses but a horse would put us way over in terms of how much weight we can tell but I think we still have something in here that we're towing that is within the capability of the truck okay it's a Tesla Model X there we go that weighs [Music] when we go up the icon which we really do call the world's toughest towing test we see manufacturers testing out there all the time so they know how important this great is for vehicle torture testing because it is just an endless constant steep grade that just keeps going it keeps going and the trucker's they are in the right lane at 3540 miles an hour right so it's a very difficult test and we're gonna use a tremendous amount of power I'm not kidding when I say I think we're gonna use 40% of the battery in eight miles so are you thinking that we should supercharger this before we go up the IKE at the supercharger and Silverthorne it might not be a bad idea yeah it might not be a bad idea because there is a realistic possibility that in eight minutes we will use more than 100 miles of range yeah I think that's very possible well this must be a sign Tesla song [Music] [Music] we went how many miles timing yet so it went 68 and some change miles but the car used 102 miles of range yeah yeah so because we're not going down the mountain all the way the two don't line up hey Andre just for a fun look was your fuel economy well I was towing the trailer all the way here we were following each other eight point seven this truck is supposed to get what 17 18 19 yeah combined and eight point seven is what I have so we're down to two hundred and twenty five miles of range right now yeah you lost 100 miles and the interesting question will be how much will it recoup and eight miles going down the I gauntlet so I think they need to swap out the trailer and head on down the mountain good the hitch on the tests already installed right and you pop it up and it's lockable which is nice and also let me show you the chain hooks aren't really tucked underneath so we'll be using extensions like this and the seven pin connector is way under there yep and it came pre-installed and it also came pre-wired for a trailer brake controller well you got install back well Tesla says anything over a thousand pounds need a trailer brake controller and we're pretty much maxing this vehicle out it has a max tow rating of four thousand nine hundred and sixty and the trailer weighs how much forty five hundred forty five hundred [Music] the Tesla is mostly aluminum the trailer we're towing is mostly aluminum and now this height adjustable hitch is also aluminum solid shank really strong and when you do make the hitch a little bit higher cuts as it sits here it's a little bit too low for the trailer I'm great you just think this your heart and how much he'll know it's not gonna squat you know one because it's got here suspend es so you'll actually self level yeah yeah that's cool let's try this let's try to back it up okay cool thing about the Tesla is once you plug in the trailer it knows that you're in tow haul mode all you have to do is plug it in [Music] you know Andre a lot of people when they're towing this house alright that gets a little tiny travel trailer trailer we are towing the big rig right this is a two horse trailer three horse okay it's a three horse trailer so it's wide and it's big and unfortunately it's wider and bigger than the tussle itself so we need to be able to see around the car so we bought these mirror extenders towing mirrors basically yes very important for safety yeah well yeah you will see what's behind you yeah the Model X came with this pigtail which basically plugs in underneath the dash and we have to connect it to an aftermarket brake controller which we did and we bought a pretty simple one this is a prodigy p2 they have many other models p3 is a little bit better but this is what is available at our local parts store and it does the job so let's install it so a little plug down here underneath the dash you do have to pop out this little panel but that's plugged in and then this panel just simply so it's really important the way you mount it it has to be leveled this way if it's cockeyed it's no good there's an accelerometer inside the brake controller but it can be kind of vertical like this yeah that's what we had last time nice gave it the beam so now this give it the beans this is secured to our - pretty solid and then we also have our trailer brakes here controller I'm - I'll touch the brake controller so I'll just roll forward a little bit and then I'll squeeze it make sure we got brakes okay yeah right point five stop Chandra in the last video you drove but I want to find out what this tones likes are you okay if I Drive absolutely alright Tommy you do the numbers so you ride shotgun there is a supercharger in Silverthorne at the bottom of the mountain so I'm gonna go find out if I can actually get some more juice in this with the trailer [Music] so check this out actually according to the car we're going to be at 73% when we hit that supercharger Wow so you can see actually this is an upward consumption trend because we've got a little bit to go until we get to the very top of the mountain you know maybe two and a half miles and then it's just straight down so I wonder what we're gonna really be out I can tell you that this did not do a good job taking that into account when we towed with the trailer on the flat once we get to the start of the hill which is just through the Eisenhower Tunnel I'm gonna grab the percentage of battery and the number of miles remaining and I'm gonna write them down and see what it's like at the very bottom of the mountain so the way we run this test with every vehicle we do is we come out of the tunnel at 50 miles an hour and then once the vehicle speeds up to 61 we slower back down so we count the number great because we want as a few brake applications as possible because the more we stopped using brakes the more chance to risk overheating the brakes News eight control of the rape okay so here's the side of the test 64 + 64 % 210 miles of range remaining [Music] I am actually having to accelerate the maintain the speed of the coming it's pretty crazy oh that's pretty crazy if I lay off it slows down and this is the steep part of the of the hike right here and it's still slowing down using the regenerative braking so that's no brakes whatsoever let me show you I'll speed up again so this is the exact opposite of what we normally do or the pickup truck right or the pickup truck we go to 50 and then it speeds up to 60 I'm going to 60 and now it's slowing down to their feet watch this check it out so it's the converse of our normal tests so you have to speed up to maintain them it's down this hill but it's worth noting to your acceleration is not really an acceleration it's just a reduction of the regenerative braking so you can see here on this little graph this green section here that is all regenerative braking and the red is when we're consuming power so we've got a really detailed graph that shows where the power is going is it going out of the battery or into the battery you can see I can adjust the scale and you can see you haven't actually really accelerated using the motor once you haven't spent any energy you're just putting less energy back into the pack any time you tell me so basically what I'm accelerating I'm not actually accelerating I'm just decreasing the amount of reach under braking that's exactly right so how many brake applications are ya accelerator applications how many freakin begin zero brake applications and constant accelerator application constant but I gotta tell you so far has a tow rig I think that there's a future in electric towing of course we're just going down the mountain we'll see exactly how much power we use we go up yeah and we'll see if we can actually actually charge it saying in a supercharger on i-70 which let's face it is one of the more popular East went round east-west routes and we're coming to a stop here at the base of this hill okay so the car says we have 220 to 68% coming back down the mountain according to the computer in the center cluster we gain 12 miles of range and 4% battery yeah that's great so we're now at yeah we're now at 68% battery and 222 miles range so I pulled up to the supercharger and it looks bleak guys with I could probably supercharged if I used all eight spaces but this supercharger certainly isn't set up for towing which is not good all right well good thing we had a full charge when we set out on this trip because I don't think otherwise we would make it back home so what's happened on down the hill so that was cool you know how we count down hill brake applica yes we have to count down hill accelerator application what yeah I never hit the brake once you're all right dude how many miles did you gain 12 miles about what sucks is that we can't supercharged dude I mean if this were a regular cross-country trip right yes you'd have to come here unhook the trailer go supercharged to come back here buck up yeah but where do you like like somebody could come here and just tow it away so actually I've read online that certain Tesla supercharger stations are pulling friendly for trailers you know this one doesn't look like one of them because there's you have to back it there's no way well first of all it's a one-way right so the charge is on the wrong side when you pull it right and so you have to go in the wrong way and then you would have to take up like six of the eight spaces the car says we're gonna be at the top of the mountain again with fifty five percent battery remaining which i think is a little optimistic I'm really curious to see how quickly this will accelerate going on the highway I'm gonna give it the beans dude I'm gonna give this all Evy beans it has here we go go on floor it's really pulling hard now when we usually do this only doing like heavy-duty trucks they cannot maintain the speed limit and you're right you let me see to put in suspension but this car is getting a little bit buying that trailer you good yeah it doesn't feel like trailer swag I mean the vehicle itself is just not as planted that like it's a via there's a little bit of the tail wagging the dog consumption let's see oh we are through the roof yep so that is where we were coming down the hill this is up in the last five miles we've been averaging over 1,000 watt hours per mile of course if you expand the range we'll see that's where we went down to make a bigger but a thousand watt hours per mile is just an incredible amount of consumption keep in mind that the Model X already uses a lot of consumption because it's a big heavy crossover and towing 4,500 pounds straight up is certainly not going to help now we can see the consumption and the projected range based on our mileage scale so based on the last five miles we have a projected range of 42 miles if we keep up this consumption which [Music] based on our current consumption for the last five miles our projected range is down to 33 miles with 58% better 33 miles 32 now so on this trip we've been averaging a whopping get this 1828 watt hours per mile this has got to be some of the highest consumption I've ever seen I'm surprised my feet aren't getting hunted I think we're almost at the top actually though yeah oh my god we're gonna make it blue up here I could have gone faster I just got you know stuck behind traffic remember eight minutes is a perfect icon the times now 7:23 he actually exceeded eight minutes I've got a little past the beginning I may have been doing 70 so we got down to 40 percent under 50 miles all right Tommy let's find out what the numbers are yep so to go eight miles up the I got Latoya 4,500 pounds the vehicle consumed fourteen point nine kilowatt hours it used 17 percent battery and fifty eight miles of range to go eight miles Wow yeah that's pretty significant there so if you divide 58 by eight seven point two five seven times the energy of a cigar yep so the question of course we're trying to answer guys is is the electric truck ready for prime time with of course an electric crossover so what have we learned I've learned that this was the quickest uphill towing test I've ever seen in my life yeah the torque is there for sure yes the stability is there yeah even kind of the towing necessities the basics are there but the range isn't there no that's the real problem right yeah I mean to use 58 miles of range to go eight miles or more helpfully 17% like that's uh but that's extreme that's but it's still a big draw I mean it's extreme but this is where we live so let's put this another way guys okay help me ask you a simple question yes and that might actually determine where we're at in terms of electric vehicle towing we can tell back down the boulder with the Tesla yes oh we can hook up the truck so I'm gonna ask each of you guys what you'd rather do and I will tell you my answer so tell me which rather well because I don't want to be a 2% battery again I'm gonna say let's hook up the truck yeah but we're gonna recap energies all that I don't trust it I really don't trust him towing Tesla all the way guys Tesla back to the headquarters all right so I'm the tiebreaker here yes I see we have that for the truck well you don't let the biggest issue is what we have to go charge up the testimony to get back down and we can't turn it up using a supercharger cuz we have the trailer yeah there you go as always guys this is Roman Andre and Tommy go back to TfL car CFL truck and of course Jeff ela protocol now not all fire chapels typical asacs for more news use an electric car reviews you know what we need to do next time guys watch I think we need to actually see we can toll from our offices all the way up to Silverthorne yeah that's right yes back to be the next video [Music]

Channel: The Fast Lane Car

Views: 124,812

Rating: 4.7321477 out of 5

Keywords: tesla model x, model x, tesla, tesla model x towing, tesla towing, model x towing, towing with a tesla model x, tesla model 3, tesla model s, can a tesla model x tow, towing, tesla model x trailer, tesla model x campingvogn, 2016 tesla model x car review, tesla model 3 towing thing, model s, tesla model 3 towing, towing with a tesla, model 3, tesla model s (automobile model), tesla motors, The Fast Lane Car, TFLcar, Ike Gauntlet

Id: DVSHIZihESk

Length: 21min 29sec (1289 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 12 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/D-RO24]

Would Tesla ever build their own trailers with additional batteries in them? It would be pricey, but you could turn a negative (range while towing) into a positive.

[u/steffenfrost]

Does anybody know the physics as to why the MPG(e) drop on an EV is so much more than that of an ICE vehicle?

[u/Pad39A]

These guys have a great channel. It's important to remember that this is extreme towing. Watch some of their other videos and see how F350's and 3500 pickups struggle at their respective weight limits.

[u/kort677]

if you need to tow something that large/heavy the teslas are the wrong tool for the job. the car is not leatherman tool, it does not do it all

[u/acidbluebriggs]

I have seen a couple of videos from these guys. Can someone, for the love of humanity, please tell me why they insist on constantly using the dang app on the phone to “stop charging”, then continue to “unlock the charge port” in the app again when using the mobile connector? Push the button on the damn charger handle!

[u/ViaAlpina]

I think the trailer brakes stole some of their regen on the way down.

[u/Nightstorm_NoS]

I feel like the Tesla truck is going to address this issue either with tons more battery or some soft of transmutation or gearing. Either way with the truck having almost twice the range on the long range it would have at least 200 miles of towing. With tighter spaced Superchargers it would make towing feasible if you are willing to put up with a little charge time for zero maintenance and cheap operating cost.

[u/SnorfOfWallStreet]

I strongly disagree with their “testing” “methodology”.

Could have gone slower, set up range mode, enabled strong regen. All things an intelligent person would do while towing heavy with this vehicle.

I tow 5k# with a Jeep Grand Cherokee rated at 7800 tow rating and I never exceed 62mph. Why? Due to severely decreased mileage past that point.

There is a reason CA’s maximum towing speed limit is 55mph also...

[u/ekimsinnigcm]

I think the implementation of a gear ratio specifically for towing could help a lot. Not sure how they (Tesla) would do it though.