We pulled our 1100lb (empty) utility trailer today (plus maybe 50 pounds of rust) with our Model Y. It's a small trailer, but made out of unusually heavy duty steel (it's 45+ years old), completely boxed except for the top. The box itself is 6.5ft long, and a hair under 4ft wide. Wheels stick outside this box.
We ended up making the trip out and back empty. Stats for our trip are itemized below plus attached photos. The trailer has a gross weight capacity of 3500lbs, so it's fairly heavy duty for a small utility trailer.
- Starting Charge level: 80%
- End charge level: 30%, car had 91 miles of remaining range.
- Total Trip: Distance: 93.4 miles and said we used a total kWrs of 36, so about 50% of battery depletion (but note 2nd and 3rd bullets below)
- 65 miles of the journey was by freeaway at a consistent 65mph
- 28 miles surface streets with frequent stop lights (every 0.5 to 1 mile), and we spent about 75 minutes during this 28 miles on the surface streets running errands for our business, with the ac full tilt on the whole time, stopped several times for 5-10 minutes (again with AC on even when stopped).
- The lovely Arizona temperature today was 108-110.
- kW/mi - Best observed instantaneous (well, 10 minute average) kWhr observed after first 10 minutes or so on the freeway was on the straight and level was 356 (ish) based on trip computer that restarted on our last stop just before starting up and getting on the freeway.
- kW/mi Total Trip efficiency 384, but this included all of the stop and go noted in the bullets above. It was 380 as we got off the freeway.
- Total kWrs used: 36 during nearly 4 hours of total driving, and lots of idling with AC on.
One note, the MY gets used for a lot of Real estate business work without the trailer usually, and does a lot of sitting with AC on, cruising from one suburban neighborhood to the next, in the Arizona heat. So even without the trailer, in our Arizona summer, we seem to be averaging around 320-345kw/mi which puts us in the lowest 10% of all Tesla drivers based on the iStat app over the last 2000 miles - when NOT pulling the trailer! This is mostly due to the fact almost all the miles miles put on the car since late June have been during an unusually hot summer (even for us) with high daily temps usually hitting at least 110deg and often closer to 114-115. We know from our Chevy volt, we get about 20-30% better efficiency in the 8 months that are not crazy hot like June-Sept. We don't ever really have to use any heat in the fall/winter/spring months here. The sun on the windows is usually more than enough. The point being, 320-345 is only about 40 or so better than what we saw today pulling a 1100lbs square brick of a trailer around for 4 hours.
General observations is that the MY pulls this trailer easily (see pictures), the trailer is almost not noticeable except for the hitch rattling noise. The MY receiver seems looser than the one on my Ram truck. The noise on unibody vehicles is always louder than receivers mounted on truck frames which are isolated from the truck body. A pathfinder I had years ago was surprising loud, like the MY, when Nissan switched the Pathfinder to unibody many years ago. I have a rattle preventing receiver pin coming that should mostly eliminate the noise, I've used these before, and on light duty trailers they work fine.
For small trips and loads like this the MY works well enough that I'm preferring to just use the MY vs taking the cover off my Ram truck that is now parked in the back yard pretty much full time except for really big jobs. It only gets pulled out about once or twice a month now.
The MY pulls the trailer as easily as my ram 1500/10-speed with a 7500lb tow rating. After using the MY to tow about 3 times over the last couple weeks, I really have no concerns pulling the trailer or having range enough to even make cross-town trips like today running lots of errands and such along the way.
The Tesla energy usage/range estimator chart while pulling the trailer seemed to be spot on when I checked it on the freeway (again, see pic), and we seemed to actually do a bit better than what it originally forecasted by just a bit.
PS: Oh, and the Model Y pulling a trailer seems to be Model S owner approved... we got a big "hanging out the window" smile & thumbs up from what looks like a very friendly retired couple driving a super nice looking Model S.
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