Yet another electric vehicle disaster is making the rounds on the internet, this time as a YouTuber with over 1.4 million followers tried towing an ancient 1930s Ford Model A truck with a contemporary Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup. Despite setting the bar ridiculously low – he just wanted to tow it just over 100 miles round trip – the entire experiment failed in a spectacularly “complete and total disaster.”
Youtuber Tyler Hoover says in the video, seen below, that “[i]f a truck towing 3,500 pounds can’t even go 100 miles — that is ridiculously stupid. He then highlights the basic argument against EVs. “This truck can’t do normal truck things. You would be stopping every hour to recharge, which would take about 45 minutes a pop, and that is absolutely not practical.”
He says of the exercise: “My plan was to make two trips up today,” he said. “About 32 miles each way, so that’s about 64 times two: 128 miles round trip.”
“I had this thing charged to just over 200 miles when I started my day, so ample margin for error when it comes to range and towing and also considering the fact that the trailer was going up empty two times,” Hoover later added.
Unsurprisingly, the trip got off to a worse-than-expected start. Hoover had fully charged the vehicle in preparation, only to watch the battery life drain out faster than a gas leak. As he was “pulling out my neighborhood,” the EV had already lost three miles of range despite traveling less than a mile. Then, after arriving driving for just 32 miles the vehicle had already lost an estimated 68 miles of range.
It only got worse from there, as a warning was soon triggered for low batter. “Are you kidding me?” Hoover can be heard reacting. “That’s almost 90 miles of range in 30 miles. Are you serious? That’s nuts. What a joke.”
Hoover makes his feelings well known about the current state of electric vehicles.
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“So, yeah, that was abysmally bad, and if the future is electric, there has to be some kind of solution for this,” Hoover said. “I have no idea why EVs tow so bad. My guess would be it doesn’t have a normal transmission where there’s gears and a car’s in a lower rev range.”
“If a truck towing 3,500 pounds can’t even go 100 miles — that is ridiculously stupid,” he continued. “This truck can’t do normal truck things. You would be stopping every hour to recharge, which would take about 45 minutes a pop, and that is absolutely not practical.”
He ends his video saying that if people just wanted a big truck to perform like a standard car, then the Ford F-150 Lightning might make sense. However, if people bought an electric truck hoping it would perform like an actual truck with towing capabilities then it’s not a “good idea.”
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