No surprises: Hauling heavy masses reduces EV vary

Fuel engines have been round lengthy sufficient for everybody to determine that towing and hauling heavy masses negatively impacts gas economic system. Although their recognition and gross sales numbers are rising, electrical automobiles – particularly electrical pickup vehicles – don’t take pleasure in the identical depth of expertise. That stated, we’re studying simply as rapidly as new EV fashions hit the road, and AAA’s new research on the consequences of payload on electrical driving vary helps clear up a few of the thriller.

The group obtained its fingers on a 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning for testing and got down to reply two questions:

• How does highway load drive for the loaded take a look at situation evaluate to the unloaded situation?
• How are driving vary and effectivity affected by the added payload?

AAA defines highway load drive as “the drive performing on a car shifting alongside a highway floor in opposition to the course of its velocity, which has the impact of slowing the car.” It would assist to consider this by way of aero drag, highway floor friction, and mechanical friction. The group makes use of one other time period, highway load curve, to explain highway load drive as a perform of auto pace.

The analysis discovered {that a} 1,400-pound load exerted 33.1 % extra drive to the truck than the highway load curve utilized by the EPA for EV certification. Curiously, the unloaded truck had 5.6 % extra drive. Equally, AAA discovered that the F-150 Lightning was 6.1 % much less environment friendly when unloaded than the EPA’s estimates, returning 62 MPGe as an alternative of the EPA’s 66 MPGe. Loading the pickup resulted in a dip to 47 MPGe, which is 24.2 % under the bottom estimated gas economic system.

Vary additionally took a success. The EPA estimates a 300-mile driving vary for the Lightning mannequin used within the exams. AAA solely managed 278 miles with an unloaded truck and 210 miles with a 1,400-pound load. The loaded vary findings had been 24.5 % decrease than the unloaded pickup and a whopping 30 % decrease than the EPA’s estimates.

After all, the identical has lengthy been true for fuel gas economic system, as some automobiles require hypermiling to attain the EPA estimates. The federal government company estimates that including 100 kilos to a car reduces its common gas economic system by round 1 %. That will end in a 14 % discount in gas economic system hauling a 1,400-pound load, however that pales compared to the 24.2 % dip seen in electrical vehicles.

Whereas this quick research is helpful for displaying how heavy payloads have an effect on vary, it’s simply as useful in illustrating that it’s frequent to have variance between the EPA’s estimates and real-world efficiency.