Bowlus, manufacturer of ultra high-end luxury towables, has been testing the tow range of popular electric trucks and SUVs since the Tesla Model X first launched in 2015. The company’s top-of-the-line Volterra model is an all-electric camp trailer with 17 kWh of onboard power, which can provide an emergency charge to EVs in a pinch. The trailer starts at $US310,000, so it makes sense that the company is doing such involved testing with its homes on wheels. In a recent post on LinkedIn, Bowlus CEO Geneva Long informed the world that a nearly-decade-old Model X can tow a 3,250 pound Volterra about 235 miles, while a new Cybertruck managed just 160 miles.
Given the Cybertruck’s dual motor all-wheel drive estimated range of 340 miles, that means it can go just 47 percent of its range estimate while towing. The Model X, by comparison, has a 330 mile estimated range, giving it a towing range of 71 percent of its range estimate. That’s a significant difference in towing range between two different EVs from the same company, but the Cybertruck came out nearly a decade later than the Model X. That seems like a pretty big step backward to me.
If you’re the kind of customer willing to drop three hundred bands on a camper trailer, you probably aren’t willing to put up with 160 miles of range. If you left from downtown Los Angeles, that would barely be enough range to get to Sequoia National Park, and you certainly couldn’t leave until you’d charged up a bit. Hopefully your campsite has shore power, because you’ll be sucking down the electrons for a couple days just to make it back to civilization.
Tesla claims the Cybertruck is a better truck than any other truck on the market, but it’s not even the best truck in Tesla’s lineup. What’s the point of this thing?