Towed boat from RI to FL & Back

Hey Everyone,

I thought I would share my experience with my most significant towing trip yet. I have a '20 MYP "stealth," which was originally rated at 315 mi of range. Now my 100% range is about 298.

Something I've wanted to do for a long time is bring my boat, a small trimaran, to the FL Keys, and WFB (work from boat). The boat & Trailer weigh 3200 lbs, and compared to the car, the boat is quite large from an aerodynamic cross-section point of view.

I used to have an '08 Subaru Outbakc XT, and it wasn't a great tow vehicle. Mostly b/c it was a manual, but also its suspension wasn't durable enough for towing my boat, even though I was within the towing capacity. When I bought the MY, it was with the explicit intent to be able to tow my boat, including long distances.

Rather that over-analyze the whole trip, I'll just share my top take-aways and final charging/driving strategy, and we'll see what questions people ask. I'll also share summaries of the trips with charge-stop maps. There were three legs, RI-> Sarasota, Sarasota-> Bahia Hoda Key, and BHK -> RI.

• On the way down, I was originally trying to maximize leg length. I dropped that plan quickly. I could have done 100mi legs every time, but it would require charing to 100% which is really slow, and it also required driving 52mph or less - while driving with a big boat makes going slow a good idea anyway, driving this slow adds to faigue simply b/c it takes longer to get to the next stop.
• 75-85 mile legs seemed like a good balance - I appreciated the rest every 70 minutes or so.
• 27 charges on the way there, 25 on the way home
• Weirdly, on the way home i was able to maintain 60-64 mph on most legs, it came down to 58 in the northeast
• I think the warmer temps & smoother better maintained highways in the south helped a lot with range
• However, I also noticed that giving myself about an 8% buffer meant I could try out different speeds (every leg was different), while still having enough reserve to not stress if driving ended up being less efficient on that particular leg.
• I also think that driving with a buffer of 6-8% of charge lets you make overall higher average speeds: I was able to test out higher speeds at first, but watch the SOC and remaining distance diverge, and slow down until they were matching each other. Without at least 5% buffer, I would have to drive 51 mph instead of 60, b/c it really is an emergency to build your buffer back up if you end up even a little in the hole in terms of making it to your next charger.
• Ultimately I chose charging stops based on #1 if they were on the highway, and #2 if they had a lot of stalls (16+). That pairing is worth having a leg be short by 20 miles b/c it's so easy when you don't have to go off into some town to charge, and when there are 16 stalls, there are usually 4 in a row free that I can pull in front of sideways, to charge w/out disconnecting, and with enough other free stalls that I wasn't blocking anybody.
• When I had to drive 51 before, that was because I had no margin for error on my charge; if I was projected to be even at 0% at the next charger, then I had to slow way down to build up a buffer asap
• The car's power and power delivery are so good tha I repeatedly forgot I was towing a 3200 lb boat & trailer, and had to look in the mirrors to make sure I still was.
• As before regenerative braking works perfectly while towing near the limit - I was nearly always able to stop single pedal.

 

[Metralla]

Thank you for this- we're waiting on a Cybertruck order to replace our Ram, to tow a boat /trailer combo of around 7500-8000 lbs.
Our towing will be about 100 miles, twice a year. Drag may well be less than yours but I think planning a stop will make sense!

 

[EatsShoots]

Ever since the movie True Lies I wanted to visit the keys. I did a few years ago, and it was every bit as cool as I had hoped.

 

[Unclepaul]

Common to read that Tesla make excellent tow vehicles, as far as power, suspension, braking, handling and generally tow with relative ease. Of course, downside is they need to stop frequently to recharge on longer trips as the weight and aerodymanics really sap the range.
This post shows how a one time thing can be relatively easily achieved, but for frequent heavy towing, a diesel is still the champ.

 

[DBeckwith]

Hey Everyone,

I thought I would share my experience with my most significant towing trip yet. I have a '20 MYP "stealth," which was originally rated at 315 mi of range. Now my 100% range is about 298.

Something I've wanted to do for a long time is bring my boat, a small trimaran, to the FL Keys, and WFB (work from boat). The boat & Trailer weigh 3200 lbs, and compared to the car, the boat is quite large from an aerodynamic cross-section point of view.

I used to have an '08 Subaru Outbakc XT, and it wasn't a great tow vehicle. Mostly b/c it was a manual, but also its suspension wasn't durable enough for towing my boat, even though I was within the towing capacity. When I bought the MY, it was with the explicit intent to be able to tow my boat, including long distances.

Rather that over-analyze the whole trip, I'll just share my top take-aways and final charging/driving strategy, and we'll see what questions people ask. I'll also share summaries of the trips with charge-stop maps. There were three legs, RI-> Sarasota, Sarasota-> Bahia Hoda Key, and BHK -> RI.

• On the way down, I was originally trying to maximize leg length. I dropped that plan quickly. I could have done 100mi legs every time, but it would require charing to 100% which is really slow, and it also required driving 52mph or less - while driving with a big boat makes going slow a good idea anyway, driving this slow adds to faigue simply b/c it takes longer to get to the next stop.
• 75-85 mile legs seemed like a good balance - I appreciated the rest every 70 minutes or so.
• 27 charges on the way there, 25 on the way home
• Weirdly, on the way home i was able to maintain 60-64 mph on most legs, it came down to 58 in the northeast
• I think the warmer temps & smoother better maintained highways in the south helped a lot with range
• However, I also noticed that giving myself about an 8% buffer meant I could try out different speeds (every leg was different), while still having enough reserve to not stress if driving ended up being less efficient on that particular leg.
• I also think that driving with a buffer of 6-8% of charge lets you make overall higher average speeds: I was able to test out higher speeds at first, but watch the SOC and remaining distance diverge, and slow down until they were matching each other. Without at least 5% buffer, I would have to drive 51 mph instead of 60, b/c it really is an emergency to build your buffer back up if you end up even a little in the hole in terms of making it to your next charger.
• Ultimately I chose charging stops based on #1 if they were on the highway, and #2 if they had a lot of stalls (16+). That pairing is worth having a leg be short by 20 miles b/c it's so easy when you don't have to go off into some town to charge, and when there are 16 stalls, there are usually 4 in a row free that I can pull in front of sideways, to charge w/out disconnecting, and with enough other free stalls that I wasn't blocking anybody.
• When I had to drive 51 before, that was because I had no margin for error on my charge; if I was projected to be even at 0% at the next charger, then I had to slow way down to build up a buffer asap
• The car's power and power delivery are so good tha I repeatedly forgot I was towing a 3200 lb boat & trailer, and had to look in the mirrors to make sure I still was.
• As before regenerative braking works perfectly while towing near the limit - I was nearly always able to stop single pedal.

View attachment 1035368

Did navigation estimate mileage correctly and/or suggest appropriate next supercharger?

Did you have a custom hitch or Tesla's hitch? I'm not familiar but does Y have a trailer mode?

How does it compare to your Subaru road trip?

 

[sirwm]

yes, towing can be done, but I do not believe it should be done.

what is that saying? If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail ...

 

[avramd]

Thank you for this- we're waiting on a Cybertruck order to replace our Ram, to tow a boat /trailer combo of around 7500-8000 lbs.
Our towing will be about 100 miles, twice a year. Drag may well be less than yours but I think planning a stop will make sense!

Which CT? If AWD, I doubt you will have to stop. With a rated range of 340 mi, and a vehicle that is likely less efficient than a MY, you'd probably be good for 120 miles of useable range per leg towing my boat.

What I will tell you is this: It takes 100 miles or so for the car to settle on an efficiency estimate while towing, and it NEVER NOT ONCE got to an accurate estimate during my entire trip. I got to the point that I didn't even consider the car's calculation on how much I needed to charge to make it to the chosen supercharger. It absolutely always underestimated by almost 1/4. The real-time energy app seemed pretty accurate within its range (30 miles is its max) - that would be a good way to start developing a baseline for how many miles to expect per %SOC. Ultimately I had to calculate charge needs myself.

 

[avramd]

Common to read that Tesla make excellent tow vehicles, as far as power, suspension, braking, handling and generally tow with relative ease. Of course, downside is they need to stop frequently to recharge on longer trips as the weight and aerodymanics really sap the range.
This post shows how a one time thing can be relatively easily achieved, but for frequent heavy towing, a diesel is still the champ.

Well, that's kinda like saying a $10 bill is better than a $5 bill. The question is not whether a MYP is as good at towing long distances as a big-ass diesel truck. The question is whether it is acceptable. There are two a really interesting subtleties that I didn't cover in my initial post:

Driver Endurance
One thing that I had no idea what to expect of going into this was what it was going to be like towing this long of a distance driving solo. I have driven to the FL Keys & back alone (from RI) once already in a regular ICE car, not towing anything. It was an '08 Outback XT. The longest I could last before needing a full night's sleep was about 10 hours - and that was with intermediate destinations. I went RI -> Asheville, NC, where I stayed for 5 days. Then -> Keys for 5 days. Then -> Outer Banks for 5 days. On the first three legs, I had to spend the night somewhere. Only on the final leg was I able to make it home w/out a hotel room.

For this trip, I left RI and drove/charged for 39 hours straight before I needed to sleep. Towing a boat that is near the maximum allowable width takes a lot more attention than just driving a plain-old car, and yet my endurance was 4x doing this than it was doing the latter. The reason is that stopping every 75 minutes and chilling out for 30 minutes or so has a drastically different impact on a human being's endurance than continuous driving.

Now if the diesel truck owner has a driving companion, and covered cab with a nice mattress, sheets & pillow set up in it, so they can tag-team without needing breaks, then yeah absolutely, they would crush anyone doing the same thing with an EV. But not many people have a spare driver. If your measure of "champ" is who gets there first, it might still be the diesel, but this isn't the walk-off victory you're thinking.

If I had been more proactive about napping at every charge (instead of being amped up and spending the first half of my charging stops on instagram posting and obsessing about charge-stop planning), I might have made it all the way without needing any down-time for sleeping.

Cost
I just did cost comparison analysis of the trip. It turns out I spent $776 on supercharging, and covered 3376 miles. That's $4.35/mi. I was expecting to get killed on actual driving costs, but it turns out this is almost exactly the same as it would have cost me to do it with my old '08 Outback XT. It got around 15mpg when towing a similar boat.

That's based on an estimate of 15mpg towing the boat in the Outback. I never towed it for the full duration of an entire tank, so I don't really know. I have no idea what a big diesel truck gets for MPG. I'm sure it would take less of a hit than the Outback for towing something large with poor aerodynamics, but it wouldn't be nothing.

 

[avramd]

Did navigation estimate mileage correctly and/or suggest appropriate next supercharger?

Did you have a custom hitch or Tesla's hitch? I'm not familiar but does Y have a trailer mode?

How does it compare to your Subaru road trip?

1. No/yes. It got close, but was always estimating that I needed for example 70% battery to get to a charger that I actually needed 80% to get to. It did a pretty good job of picking out chargers though. Once or twice it picked out a charger that I'd have needed 100% to get to, and would have had to drive 52mph max to make it.
2. Tesla hitch, yes the Model Y has an OEM towing solution in the US. It can be ordered with the car or installed at any dealer.
3. I actually just posted about that, read the "Driver Endurance" section in my previous post.

 

[avramd]

yes, towing can be done, but I do not believe it should be done.

what is that saying? If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail ...

I think you are confusing it with posting on forums about experiences you haven't had.

I'm curious what you think I should have done instead:

• Spend a couple thousand dollars renting a huge uncomfortable truck for three weeks, and then have to use it as my daily driver while at my destinations too?
• Own an entire second vehicle so I can do something like this once every year or two?
• Not accomplish one of my dreams because I don't own a vehicle that you consider appropriate for it?

Personally I don't like trucks. I don't want to own two vehicles, and I don't want to have a big uncomfortable bouncy high center-of-gravity truck be my daily driver just b/c I might do something like this every few years. Sure, maybe there is some really nice ultimate tow vehicle out there that is comfortable and not bouncy, but I suspect it costs a lot more than I paid for my car, and is a lot bigger.

 

[UltronY2021]

39 hours without sleep! You are far more committed to your road trips than I'd ever be. I think this journey would be 3 hotel stays (with chargers, of course) for me. I drove 18hrs 3x and only made the last one on the promise to myself I'd never do it again

I don't know what level Autopilot you have, but did Traffic Aware Cruise Control work, and if so, was it helpful with endurance?

I ask because a lot of what exhausts me driving is maniacs cutting me off, and the way I can set it and it will get there eventually (even if I'm cutoff way more) is very zen.

 

[kgvickers]

I spent $776 on supercharging, and covered 3376 miles. That's $4.35/mi.

$776/3376 miles = $0.2298/mile.

Thanks for posting your experience.

 

[Blacked_Y]

Ever since the movie True Lies I wanted to visit the keys. I did a few years ago, and it was every bit as cool as I had hoped.

Greatest Arnold Movie lol

 

[Metralla]

Which CT? If AWD, I doubt you will have to stop. With a rated range of 340 mi, and a vehicle that is likely less efficient than a MY, you'd probably be good for 120 miles of useable range per leg towing my boat.

What I will tell you is this: It takes 100 miles or so for the car to settle on an efficiency estimate while towing, and it NEVER NOT ONCE got to an accurate estimate during my entire trip. I got to the point that I didn't even consider the car's calculation on how much I needed to charge to make it to the chosen supercharger. It absolutely always underestimated by almost 1/4. The real-time energy app seemed pretty accurate within its range (30 miles is its max) - that would be a good way to start developing a baseline for how many miles to expect per %SOC. Ultimately I had to calculate charge needs myself.

Thanks for the reply.
My preference will be the AWD though I think my wife (who is the one who ordered it) would take a tri motor if it got here first. I'd spec all season truck tires too.
I'm encouraged by your numbers, since our twice yearly tow will be 100 miles with many superchargers on the route. It obviously would make sense to keep the Ram if towing the boat around was going to be a weekly affair, but most of the time the CT will be a cool runabout that can carry/tow other things.

Good points on the driving intervals. I am way past the days of "making good time" on long trips and we pretty much stop at least once on the trip to the coast anyway.

 

[avramd]

Greatest Arnold Movie lol

I think about those scenes all the time when I'm in the Keys! I was in the USAF for 5 years, and even though only the Marines used the Harrier, it was always my favorite plane!

 

[Alonzo]

I have a '20 MYP "stealth,

Just curious, have you driven the car without towing but with that cargo carrier on top? My experience with rooftop carriers is that they hurt efficiency as much or more than a lightweight trailer.

 

[avramd]

Just curious, have you driven the car without towing but with that cargo carrier on top? My experience with rooftop carriers is that they hurt efficiency as much or more than a lightweight trailer.

That is apples & oranges. The weight of the trailer matters very little unless the trailer has brakes and you are using them. If you got yourself 3500 lbs in gold bars, you'd get almost exactly the same range if you put them in your trunk vs if you towed them in a small trailer that fit entirely behind the car's aerodynamic cross-section. That range would be almost as much as when you weren't carrying the loot, all other things held equal - assuming you've gotten pretty good at single-pedal driving.

Yes, the cargo box has an impact. I haven't done a deep dive on it yet. Below 65mph, the impact is small enough for me to not notice it. I say this b/c my commute to work is 30 miles and mostly 50-65mph, and I haven't had to adjust any habits.

The best data point I can give you is a trip last week to Boston & back (about 75 miles, almost all highway). On the way up it was early rush hour, so my speed only ranged from 50-65mph, limited by traffic. I got 356 Wh/mi, maybe 10% more than my norm. The trip home had two legs, one was 565 Wh/mi - that's very high. However it was in torrential rain and wind, and I was driving very sportily on top of it. All of those amplify the effect of the cargo box significantly. My average speeds were only mid 60's, but I was sprinting at 85mph every time I had an opening, and then getting slowed when I caught up to the next traffic clot.

The second leg was just under 400 Wh/mi. Same conditions. I left the charger with 10% more rated miles than I would normally have needed. I forgot to account for the cargo box. About 2/3 of the way home, I had to drastically back off on my sporty driving b/c the car was predicting that I wasn't going to make it home. So I went from frequent sprints of 85mph to driving below the speed limit. I got home at 2%. So the 400Wh/mi trip average is significantly misleading do to the behavior change part-way through. It probably would have been the same, high 500's, if I hadn't had to slow down.

 

[arvindm]

Hey Everyone,

I thought I would share my experience with my most significant towing trip yet. I have a '20 MYP "stealth," which was originally rated at 315 mi of range. Now my 100% range is about 298.

Something I've wanted to do for a long time is bring my boat, a small trimaran, to the FL Keys, and WFB (work from boat). The boat & Trailer weigh 3200 lbs, and compared to the car, the boat is quite large from an aerodynamic cross-section point of view.

I used to have an '08 Subaru Outbakc XT, and it wasn't a great tow vehicle. Mostly b/c it was a manual, but also its suspension wasn't durable enough for towing my boat, even though I was within the towing capacity. When I bought the MY, it was with the explicit intent to be able to tow my boat, including long distances.

Rather that over-analyze the whole trip, I'll just share my top take-aways and final charging/driving strategy, and we'll see what questions people ask. I'll also share summaries of the trips with charge-stop maps. There were three legs, RI-> Sarasota, Sarasota-> Bahia Hoda Key, and BHK -> RI.

• On the way down, I was originally trying to maximize leg length. I dropped that plan quickly. I could have done 100mi legs every time, but it would require charing to 100% which is really slow, and it also required driving 52mph or less - while driving with a big boat makes going slow a good idea anyway, driving this slow adds to faigue simply b/c it takes longer to get to the next stop.
• 75-85 mile legs seemed like a good balance - I appreciated the rest every 70 minutes or so.
• 27 charges on the way there, 25 on the way home
• Weirdly, on the way home i was able to maintain 60-64 mph on most legs, it came down to 58 in the northeast
• I think the warmer temps & smoother better maintained highways in the south helped a lot with range
• However, I also noticed that giving myself about an 8% buffer meant I could try out different speeds (every leg was different), while still having enough reserve to not stress if driving ended up being less efficient on that particular leg.
• I also think that driving with a buffer of 6-8% of charge lets you make overall higher average speeds: I was able to test out higher speeds at first, but watch the SOC and remaining distance diverge, and slow down until they were matching each other. Without at least 5% buffer, I would have to drive 51 mph instead of 60, b/c it really is an emergency to build your buffer back up if you end up even a little in the hole in terms of making it to your next charger.
• Ultimately I chose charging stops based on #1 if they were on the highway, and #2 if they had a lot of stalls (16+). That pairing is worth having a leg be short by 20 miles b/c it's so easy when you don't have to go off into some town to charge, and when there are 16 stalls, there are usually 4 in a row free that I can pull in front of sideways, to charge w/out disconnecting, and with enough other free stalls that I wasn't blocking anybody.
• When I had to drive 51 before, that was because I had no margin for error on my charge; if I was projected to be even at 0% at the next charger, then I had to slow way down to build up a buffer asap
• The car's power and power delivery are so good tha I repeatedly forgot I was towing a 3200 lb boat & trailer, and had to look in the mirrors to make sure I still was.
• As before regenerative braking works perfectly while towing near the limit - I was nearly always able to stop single pedal.

View attachment 1035368

Great report! Gives a good perspective even though I may not tow anything!