This EV Towing Test Left Me SHOCKED - Watch and See Why ! | 4K

foreign [Music] hey guys and welcome to petrol pet and welcome to perhaps the most luxurious Caravan I have ever been in now you're way well we're wondering what on Earth we're up to today well it's quite simple whenever I review an electric vehicle or a hybrid for that matter in the comments there will always be questions about what happens when petrol cars aren't available for new anymore I tow a caravan what am I going to do and I've always thought one day I want to do a caravan Towing EV video and that day is today well actually it's two days so I'm here thanks to the guys and girls at Chichester Caravans who've been so helpful making this video happen and also BMW UK I have the biggest Towing Caravan I could get my hands on and one of the most expensive and highest capacity Towing electric vehicles you can get your hands on and we're going to do a range test but before that I'm going to finish this coffee and I gotta say I could get used to this [Music] so welcome to Chichester Caravans it is a beautiful sunny day today it's a little bit cold which probably hasn't helped things but what are we up to today today we're going to do a range test Towing this a 26 foot long 1.6 ton twin axle Caravan now when I wanted to set this video up the first challenge I had actually was getting hold of a press car a full electric press car with a tow hitch and actually the only one I could find was this one BMW UK kindly lent me this absolutely stunning IX M60 the top of the range IX now I know the IX has Marmite looks but believe me these things are Sensational to drive and this I'll tell you more about it when we're going along but headline figures 619 horsepower 1100 newton meters of torque now it weighs 2.6 tons but it will still do naught to 60 in 3.7 seconds and most importantly it can tow up to two and a half tons so we've got plenty of capacity and I know this isn't probably going to be everybody's go-to EV Towing car but it was the only one I could get hold of so to compensate what I've done is basically ask the guys here at Chichester Caravans for the biggest Caravan they had that thing is absolutely immense so if you had a smaller EV no doubt you would have maybe a single axle smaller Caravan so what we're up to today we're going to take this car and we're going to drive it to the bewley motor museum in the New Forest it's just shy of 50 miles there we're going to turn around and then come back and that will be the range test with the EV with nothing connected to it and then tomorrow we'll return with a fully charged battery we'll hitch up the Caravan and we'll do exactly the same journey and we'll see what the difference is I know it's not very scientific but I'm really intrigued to see just how different the range and the efficiency of this EV is going to be when we're Towing that massive thing next thing let's jump in the car and head off to bewley now you may well notice that we've actually been joined by the petrol pup and the petrol Pooch because they fancied a day out to be honest so I have plugged in uh National motor museum bewley into ways let me just um and it is uh it's 40 miles I thought it's a bit longer than that I looked on Google Maps and that said it was 50 so the range test is a little bit shorter than it was going to be and I've reset the um trip meter so um I can get a mass per kilowatt hour and an accurate range and we are currently on 95 miles of range um for my massively unscientific test um I'm gonna go home tonight fully charge the car and then come back here the same route so I should be tomorrow at 95 of range so let us uh be on our way and get going to the National motor museum in bewley [Music] does make a very funky noise this car so I've just come through Emsworth and there was actually some Road works and we were really creepy slow traffic so I'm gonna have to come that way tomorrow so that I mimic the same Journey but every ounce of me just wanted to turn around and go around another way so premise for the video how I'm gonna do it so I charge the vehicle overnight now even though this car has a wltp range of 348 miles um on a full charge it was only showing 250 miles but then it was only one degree Celsius when I got in the car this morning we've left Chichester Caravans with 95 of battery and about 250 miles of range it's quite interesting that range figure didn't change a great deal and I think that's probably because this car's been driven to its maximum performance rather than its maximum efficiency the way I'm going to approach the range test I'm gonna drive this car like I would do normally so up to the National speed limit of 70 miles an hour whereas when it's Towing the Caravan tomorrow the maximum speed you can do when you're towing a caravan is 60 miles an hour so um but I'm I'm gonna drive this car up to 70 miles an hour because that's how you would drive it I want to try and do like for like and then the last thing just to explain because it's not the most scientific test and I'm sure I'm going to get some grumbles and comments why only 40 miles to the Beulah motor museum well the original idea was I was going to drive to a really nice Caravan Park in the New Forest but then found that they were all closed until March and this was the only time I could get this car because it basically goes off Fleet in a few weeks time so I know it's not a massive distance I also didn't want to go too far because I've got no idea what that big Caravan is going to do to the range of this car tomorrow absolutely no idea so I thought 100 miles that's about right and also just from a Time point of view even doing um you know it's an hour there hour back with all the filming that's still actually by the time you do all the filming it's a stretch to get it all done in a day and I've got lots and lots of things ready to get done this week one last thing while we're driving let's explain the journey data I reset that to Chester Caravans so I'm going to be keeping an eye on the miles per kilowatt hour now this car it's very big and very heavy but it's also aerodynamically very efficient it's got a drag coefficient of just .26 so won't have that when it's Towing that massive Caravan tomorrow so it'll be interesting on this journey I would want that miles per kilowatt hour figure to be up at least north of three so it's currently 2.4 um it will also tell us the mileage you've done and how many kilowatt hours of battery we've consumed so so far we're running at uh 0.2 kilowatt hours of battery for this journey this thing's so high-tech it's got so many cool gadgets and gizmos I've set the adaptive cruise but it has full on level two autonomous driving look ma no hands so it's basically keeping me in Lane it's steering for itself it's keeping the gap between me and the car in front it's just told me to put my hands back on the steering wheel um but yeah it's for a long journey super super simple so I've just set the cruise to 70 miles an hour um or whatever the car in front is doing and let's just Cruise along and see how we get on [Music] so we're now off the motorway and literally over this cattle grid tada on to the New Forest but say though these roads are quite narrow I think driving the Caravan down here tomorrow is going to be um interesting we're only three and a bit miles away from bewley but I must say every time I come to the New Forest I just it blows me away and it's so beautiful around here and I guess if you were a caravanist this would be the perfect place to come because you'd you know you'd be able to stop in one of the car parks and kind of you know have a bit of a picnic in the back there's loads of campsites shot until March but it is a beautiful beautiful part of the world so yes just a few minutes to go until we get to bewley [Music] and as if by Magic here we are at the Sony Forest there's just a random donkey in the middle of the road look excellent so um apparently there's a big car park um up here that is nice and easy to access I wanted to come to a destination where it wasn't going to be horrible and challenging to kind of turn around a massive great big Caravan and hopefully this is the car park here that they were talking about ah look at that it's mehusive wicked so let's just park up here and see where we are on the stats before we take get the girls out for a bit of a leg stretch so let's just uh put the car in park so uh we've got 82 percent of battery left so on that Journey then uh that was 40.6 Miles um it's taken us just over uh or an hour and seven minutes 2.9 miles per kilowatt hour and we've used two and a half kilowatt hours of battery now let me remind myself this has the biggest battery of any car I've ever driven it has a 116 kilowatt hour battery so we've used hardly any of it so let's um should we get the girls out and get my legs stretched and then we've got to turn around and go back here they are then my filming partners for the day do we need to have a bit of a leg stretch hmm what are you shaking for all right some clip here no no no hold on let me lift it out I'm here all right let me lift you up ready go go and have a leg stretch go go go come on this way come on yeah it's a nice big car park ing Caravan in tomorrow okay important things done the girls have had a week you're right should we go back again they're like what did we not get a nice big long walk so I've put the uh to just the Caravans in my Saudi all the parking cameras I mean are amazing I'll show you the parking cameras that help you hitch the trailer uh tomorrow uh but yes let's head back so we'll go back the way we came now on the way back to Chichester Caravans I just want to drop into the services not that I need to charge but I want to explore something so I'm coming into random services and I thought I need to do it in this car and with the van tomorrow to make the two Journeys as similar as I can so let's just um go and have a look to see what the accessibility is like for the electric car charge stations here at the services now I've actually driven past them on purpose because if you are filling up a petrol or diesel car with a caravan you'd come to a petrol station like this you'd pull in to one of the fuel pumps with your Caravan hitched you'd fill up and you'd be on your way I'm not so sure but that is how it would be if you had a caravan so let's see what happens tomorrow when we pull in and go and find the electric car charge points because I don't think it's going to be the same and that's another common thing that I get is ah if you're towing with an EV how do you charge it up how much of a pain is it how accessible are the charge points so stay tuned for later on the video we'll find out because I don't know a quick route update instead of turning off the a27 going through Emsworth where all the road Works were I've kept on the a27 and that will take me all the way up to Chichester and then I have to kind of double back on myself but that has added I don't know about eight or so Miles onto the journey I think here we are back safe and sound question is how far have we gone what's the efficiency like so 96.1 miles we have 63 percent of the battery left what's that that's 32 percent used up our Master killer our 2.8 miles per kilowatt hour so that's our Target tomorrow so what I need to do now is go home get this on charge get it back up to 100 of charge and then we'll come back tomorrow that Caravan up and do exactly the same route Again by the way 195 miles of range left but I'm not really going on the miles of range figure it's too accurate it's battery percentage for me but 2.8 miles per kilowatt hour I am disappointed that I thought we could get more than three because I haven't really been driving it that hard [Applause] so day two the weather is not nearly as nice today it's absolutely horrible in fact it's raining it's a bit warmer though but let me tell you a little bit more about the Caravan that the guys here at Chichester Caravans have lent us today because it's it's quite Spectacular Now this is a swift Challenger SE Grande 650 L basic stats is 26 feet long and it weighs 1695 kilos and it can have a maximum Laden weight of 1805 kilos it is empty though today it has a really nice set of twin axle alloy wheels which is always a good thing let me just show you very briefly in here and then we'll get on our way because it's super luxurious you've got a nice family seating area where I shot the intro to the video yesterday now we basically unpacked everything and put it away so it's not going to move around and then if you come this way you've got a lovely kitchen you've got a toilet in there you've got a shower and around the corner you've got a double bed it's proper proper nice in here but the bit that amazes me is this is just under 37 000 pounds I thought it'd be way more than that but the next thing we need to do is Hitch it onto the back of the IX and get going to the New Forest now the Grande in the name of this Caravan means it's the extra wide one this Caravan is eight foot wide so we've had to put these mirror extensions onto the IX so I can have some chance of actually seeing behind the van but now let's come around the back we've got a boot full of stuff but if I push this magic button and we just look down here with a bit of luck there we go so let's hit the glam right let's make this IX 26 foot longer thank you now I've just been briefed on the Caravan and it's been a while since I've towed a trailer to be fair and it was a horse box and it didn't have a huge amount of Technology on it this so two things this ball socket where it goes onto the tow hitch um basically there's a mechanism here to clamp the tow hitch and slow down if you do get any kind of snaking going on that basically helps with that now in the past I've seen big kind of hydraulic Rams and stuff connected to cars you don't need any of that now that's in I think it's called an AKs and then it's got traction control this green light here basically the ATC system here it's got a traction control system on the the two axles if if you go past a truck and there's some wind or the Caravan starts to move the computer on the Caravan will apply the brakes to slow that movement down so you don't get that horrible snaking and anyone who's ever towed a trailer who's ever had a trailer start to snake on them it is the most terrifying thing ever so with those two things we should be well protected against that but I just found that fascinating I have no idea Caravans had so much technology so the other thing is as soon as you've connected onto the back of this The IX knows you've got a caravan on the back and it actually asks you whether it's a caravan or a bike carrier because it changes the traction control and stability settings on the IX as well so we are well protected but let's get cracking you've probably been wondering who's holding the camera Mr Richter spot has joined me today I found this on the floor do you want this yeah no it's all right mate he's doing a bit of filming and also it's just useful to have someone with me with the trailer on the back and he's very expensive Towing trailers as well so let's get on our way um a few stats to go through 100 charge this morning gave us 280 miles whereas yesterday it was only 250. I'm at 95 charge again because we've driven here that's given me a predicted range of 275 miles but that's not the important thing trailer type maximum speed permitted I'm going to put that at 60 because that is the maximum speed permitted what does it go up to huh what does it go up to no um that's quite interesting that we've got to do that and then I've reset the values for our journey let's just next the last thing I need to do is just put our destination into ways which is bewley estate and motor museum quite intimidating having that massive thing stuff yeah you just got a plan everything pulling out Maneuvers clear my way I think I can't see past this thing yeah still clear yeah weird the sensation of Towing but with no engine noise I know and actually it's really weird I'll tell you what straight away the car feels different because of the weight on the back and I know that's a stupid thing to say because that's 1.6 tons we've got on the back but straight away there's a lot of weight there it just fit it's just weird there's a lot the sensation of having a trailer you just feel it like kicking your water I've used a percent already it's pulling away so yesterday we used 32 of the battery let's see how we get on now while we're on our way I want to give a massive shout out to um Dean and Nigel from Chichester Caravans and the lovely girls who've been making us tea and coffee and looking after us for the last couple of days they are it's a really if you want a touring Caravan they do Statics as well they've got a mega selection in stock they've got a really cool shop with everything from barbecues to awnings to that blue stuff you need to put in the loo and you kind of oh yeah yeah yeah horrible stuff yeah yeah um but yeah no so I'll put all their details in the description below but for now we've got this roadworks and yesterday took me ages to get through here so we'll uh we'll join you back in a moment when we're back on the motorway I just realized actually have pulled in here and you forget there's 26 feet yeah we're off the roundabout but the road caravan's still on the road so there weren't any roadworks but we got through them really really easily so um we're just about to join the a27 and I just thought go launches no launch control oh so one of the biggest requests I've had so far is can he do a naught to 60 test with the Caravan and the simple answer to that is no because I honestly think it would rip the front of the camera or rip the tow bar off it's just just too much yeah or you might rip the chassis out from underneath the Caravan leave the top of the road but instant Impressions is I can I mean it's an obvious statement it's you can feel the weight even as a passenger I'm sure you can feel it yeah um but there's so much talk in this car 1100 newton meters at all yeah it doesn't it doesn't struggle to get going but when are you going you can feel it once we're going yeah it nods a little bit but in terms of accelerating away um actually it's fine although I am pretty sure and I'm going to make an early estimation here we're definitely going to use more than 32 of the battery okay I can just feel uh yeah the power needed to get this Trucking so I'm going to address two issues here um I actually had someone say yesterday um I hope that you drove the car yesterday at 60 miles an hour to make it a fair test I didn't I drove it 70 miles an hour because that's not how you don't drive a road car when you haven't got anything okay yeah I drove it like I would normally Drive yeah and then the second comment is I didn't carry 120 kilos of ballast to make up for you being here 120 kilos cheeky so it's more like about 150. we did actually because I really wanted Rick to come along because we all have a good bit of Bounce while we're here but we did say bear in mind you I'll rip the Spud all the social details below you did say I can lend you um yeah that's what I said the other day but we kind of didn't put some potatoes in the passenger seat so so it's my stunt double if you are being um uh really scientific about it yes we're carrying a bit more weight in the car because we've got two two humans instead of one we've still got the same two dogs in the back but one of them six and a half the other one's eight so they're not gonna make a massive difference and they were here yesterday um so that that there will be a little bit of difference but honestly when this car is 2.6 tons and the trailer is 1.6 tons I don't think having 90 or over but like you said once you're up to speed yeah it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever so so that that's the thing and then what I am going to do is you can't legally go more than 60 miles an hour with a trailer anyway although you see people doing that quite a lot so I'm going to limit myself to 60 miles an hour um and interestingly we've set the maximum to 60 miles an hour here and even though we're in a 70 limit my head-up display is telling me I can't do more than 60 miles an hour oh that's interesting um so um the next thing is just to sit on the a27 we've used four percent of the battery already so let's keep cracking and we'll we'll report back very shortly but it's just a shame that the weather today is so utterly dire mate we're at the New Forest it's um it's a bit more uh concentrated down these narrow roads but it is mate so the difference between drive driving one of these on a dual carriageway yeah you've got a big wide yeah one of these down that little narrow road really isn't but yeah we're only three miles away um yeah well I'm not gonna give too much away I can't believe the range has gone up yeah that's right you're right best late plans are mice and men and all that uh that's the car park I went in yesterday and it's shut [Applause] so we're now at beulie but I thought I'd just walked down the length of the car just to show you the scale really these two cars do go brilliantly together it's like they were specked together even the Alloys are very similar look there's the Alloys of The IX and then we wander down the Challenger it's a little bit dirty sorry it's just a Caravans and look the Alloys are so so similar but I think for me the thing that the standout is it's just the length it is such a long thing 26 feet it makes the whole the whole combination of the vehicle just huge absolutely huge question is how do we get on from a range point of view now I'm not going to tell you how much battery percentage we've used I'm going to save that till the end it's a very unsubtle attempt to get you to watch till the end of the video but in terms of efficiency yesterday we were running a 2.8 miles per kilowatt hour today 1.4 miles per kilowatt hour and the reason for that I think is twofold first things first there's a weight element but actually on the motorway at 60 miles an hour there's so much drag aerodynamic drag that is not helping at all and that's normally the weak point for electric cars you know sitting on a Motorway at 60 or 70 miles an hour is terrible for efficiency the problem this has got when you come off of the motor and you come onto the shorter roads firstly it's very wide and very scary but then it's the way you can feel every time you accelerate and I guess you get a bit of a benefit from a regenerative braking but yeah it's it's doing terrible things to the range but I can't wait to see what happens when we get back home to the Chichester Caravans but let's jump back in the car and head off again So Yesterday mate as I keep saying the views around here were just amazing but this bit of road I have to use it says they're six foot six wide except for access this is eight foot wide um is this been a road I drove um oh man four or five years ago I came down to Simply Aston Martin in a db11 and we did some Chase footage down here with the db11 a V12 Vantage yesterday it was wicked but today with a caravan and I'm with a caravan and it's not it's really the kind of weather you want really it's pretty foul to be fair but it's a great bit of Road unfortunately it's a 40. which doesn't really affect us today because we're in a caravan but in the Aston Martin you're doing 40-ish oh yeah but in all seriousness though um when you are in one of these in your Towing and you know you you do end up coming down roads like this so I thought it was quite a good yeah a good test right then I don't know whether this is a good idea or not we're coming off the service offered to the services at roundhams just to demonstrate a point we're gonna come into the car park where the um because the charges are literally in the car park I saw them yesterday so I think you have to go um out here into the car park which hopefully isn't going to be too scary in here like this and then the charges are over there somewhere see if we can find them shall we here's a problem there's only one car charger here around and services there's a car in it already but if I did need to charge the car I'm not going to be able to do that with a caravan couple to the back I'm gonna have to unhitch the Caravan leave it in a car park somewhere hope someone doesn't Nick it come in back in there because the charge ports at the back of the car charge my vehicle for I know half hour 40 minutes and then hits the Caravan back up and be on my way yeah like that's gonna happen nightmare road trip snacks now um get it out of the car park from where that charger was was a bit emotional a bit emotional granny had one lady showing us oh man uh yeah that's that that honestly I think that's a really big a really big problem and to be fair like that woman say one one woman is actually trying to be helpful she said haven't they got charging bays in where the coaches are and you're like no that's why we tried to come in here with the Caravan yeah the other the other emotional bit mate is I've now got to reverse luckily start some Cinema awesome at reversing trades you can see it now me I know it's just I can't actually see anything you need a banksman do you like it do you need a Bankston so you can't actually make you can't actually see just how awesome that reversing was on on camera sadly but it was awesome of one of my few skills in life is I'm pretty good at reverse trailer wait we're nearly there mate we're nearly there some of you stupid are we there yet so um we are about five miles away um and we're coming up to the first big roundabout where we've got to kind of turn back on ourselves but I'm gonna wait till the very end to tell you what the percentage of battery that we've got left is and what the range the predicted range is because it's shocking it's really bad it's way worse than I thought it was gonna be it does stop I mean it's obviously a brake Trail I'm going to carry on going there I mean um so the brakes are actually very good but yeah when you are going around something as big as this roundabout you just have to be so aware of everything okay do you do it now I've got five miles to go and we're getting used to it yeah stop yeah massive big load coming through here we go oh boy we are nearly back in fact we are back let's come in here and try and try back off of that golf Civic though that's very cool so are we ready honestly here we go so let me just stop put it in gear turn the brake on So Yesterday yes let me recap yesterday's figures yesterday we started at 95 yeah we finished at 63 percent 32 of battery used all right yeah today we started at 95 yeah the same we finished with 31 of the battery we've used 64 of the battery and the really amazing thing is our projected range this morning when we left was like 280 miles and now it's saying I've only got 59 miles left and the the actual Journey let's have a look at the journey stats so we've done 96.7 miles and we've averaged 1.4 miles per kilowatt hour that's half of what we were doing yesterday so the the scary thing for me is I mean I think it's been a really interesting range test but this vehicle was meant to do like 300 miles or so on a full charge and you know on its own it'll probably easily do 280. yeah today we've done 96 miles and it's saying we've only got another 60 left that's a cough yeah I don't know I know that's not a massively scientific test but I'm not really interesting but it's interesting and I think the main thing that you flagged up is that the moment you'll turn a caravan we realistically we haven't gone that far no and if we've gone much further we'd have to charge yeah which would then flag up the problem we had in Services is that there's only a handful of charges and they're all right by the door yeah of this of of where you go into the services so you'd have to have you'd have to drop a caravan off yeah have somebody to wait with it yeah well you weren't in charge but you couldn't you both have to wait or whoever charge in the car obviously doesn't have to wait a bit because they can lock that up you probably wouldn't leave the Caravan on its own and you might say okay well it was a very big Caravan but you could tow a smaller Caravan with a smaller car but the smaller cars like this has got a massive battery pack so I'd like to have a smaller battery pack less rain so either way uh towing a caravan with an electric car doesn't do great things to your range I think that's the conclusion yeah and a great place to end this video now massive thanks to Rick for helping me out today um I'll put the details of his channel in the description below hit him up give him a follow petrol can approved please massive thank you to all the guys at Chichester Caravans um we could not have made this video without them they've been absolutely awesome and a huge thanks to BMW UK as well for the loan of the IX please let me know in the comments below are you a canavan caravanist and if so what do you think you're going to be doing um I think probably with just all the big three and a half ton Towing diesel SUVs because honestly I don't think at the moment anyway towing a caravan or any Trail big trailer in an EV is an option no oh it's a painful one yeah it's a very painful one especially for long distances yeah definitely to be honest I thought that might be the case I genuinely genuinely I didn't think it'd be the scientist twice it's twice the consumption anyway yeah I hope you enjoyed that if you did give me a thumbs up comments below are always welcome and if you haven't done so already please subscribe to patch Federal plenty more content to come and I'll see you in the next film as you take care thank you [Music]

Channel: Petrol Ped

Views: 325,838

Keywords: petrol ped, ped petrol, petrol head, petrol ped youtube, youtube petrol ped, vlogger, youtuber, cars, supercars, performance cars, motorsport, car review, press drive, automotive, suv, ev, electric vehicles, ev towing, ev towing caravan, ev towing range, ev towing test, ev caravan towing, ev towing range test, bmw ix towing, bmw ix tow hitch, bmw ix towing weight, caravan towing with electric car, electric car towing caravan, electric car towing capacity, electric car towing

Id: 0oLeKRNsSn4

Length: 35min 27sec (2127 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 24 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/SatanLifeProTips]

For the TL:DW crowd they lost around half of their range.

Basically, towing a brick still sucks.

[u/vandy1981]

I really wish that we had more euro style-RVs in the USA. They're generally more compact and aerodynamic and better for EVs than the beasts on sale in here.

[u/klysium]

Tl;dw Spark notes?

[u/Just_Fly1277]

https://youtu.be/auzeHfp-nF0