Silverado EV or 2500 HD for towing?

tsuintx said:

You want ICE, but wife doesn't?

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No I want BEV - ideally. But I've owned ICE trucks before and worked on a farm so am comfortable with big trucks. Anyhow just had a talk with my wife explaining the practicalities and she sounds open the idea. The other problem is I'd like to go back to visit Canada and Alaska - did many fishing trips through there with my Dad and I think my wife would like it. But there's not much charging infrastructure yet. Talk about expansion North, but you know ...

Anyhow at the moment I think we're probably serious enough to go ahead and get a 2023 Silverado 2500 in the next year, then a EV sometime later. GM's plan is that the last vehicals to convert to battery will be the HD trucks - 2500/3500, in 2035. That's going to depend on avilability of higher energy density batteries, so we may be waiting a decade or more.

Burbman said:

I would opt for an HD diesel at this point

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Good thoughts - thanks and I agree. But diesel is a non starter, reviews I've seen of the 6.6 V8 look good.

2kwik4u said:

I would go a trim or two above the WT personally. Maybe not all the way to a High Country, but something in the LT range. If you're going to be spending a bunch of time in the vehicle, make it a comfy place with some nice features. Heated seats in particular will be a nice touch on your Alaska trip!

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Fair point, but easy when you're spending my money

Meanwhile I've come to find that the Silverado HD is getting the interior refresh in 2024 - which is just fine for my timing. But the upgraded interior will probably only come on LT and above so yeah will probably be getting that anyhow. I'll stay at the low end of those trims though, but I do want the upgraded dash and screen.

Diesel vs Electric for your plans......Diesel every single day and twice on Sunday!......And that's coming from a guy with a boat and a camper!

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Yeah, never had diesel, never will. I swore I'd never buy an ICE again, so this is a big stretch already. Truth be told as an engineer I've always hated ICE cars. We take this beautiful energy source that just bubbles out of the ground, waste most of it with a complicated system that wants to expensively break down, and is polluting and noisy to boot. Can't tell you how happy I am that the transition back to BEV is here (cars were originally Steam and Electric).

But ICE is at the pinnacle of its development, and BEV's at the beginning, so in this one application as we've discussed here it makes sense to go ICE. The last cars GM will convert to battery will be the HD trucks, in (planned) 2035. I am holding off though for a few years, if GM comes through with a big network of tow friendly charging I might just say screw it and just get the Silverado EV anyhow.

Actually ... the network looks pretty good


I don't mind stopping more frequently, we're slow travelers ... and I could rent a truck for Alaska, hmmmm

NutsnBolt said:

I live in Alaska, and just a couple weeks ago drove the Alaska highway -- pulling a new camper up from Idaho for a friend. Let me know if I can help with your Alaska trip/planning.

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Thanks - very kind of you. Did it in the 90's with my brother and Dad, tried to get to the North Sea but turned around at the Arctic Circle (worried the car might break down). Great trip otherwise, Skagway was interesting. Anyhow my Dad is in his 90's now and would love to revisit that trip, but at his age we're running out of time so don't know if it can happen in time. I was hoping to get the old Suburban we used for that trip but he sold it by the time I started thinking about this. If it happens might be my only trip as I suspect my wife would not be OK with the mosquitos

But hey if you can figure out how to do the trip with an EV now we're talking! Anyhow, I'm waiting for the RV market to cool off from pandemic panic buying, and got a few years to retirement, so plenty of time to figure that out.

Holeydonut said:

I think someone that tows frequently should stick with the ICE variant. EVs just aren't ready for Towing.
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But market research has suggested the majority of truck buyers don't actually tow more than once a year (if at all). So for those buyers, the Silverado EV seems like a great step forward to get nominal truck utility and move toward electrification.

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Great article. As for whether the Silverado can be useful for towing let's look at that

Use Case #1: Around town, 'in the trades' workers and fleet
According to that article that's the majority of individual truck owners. I lumped fleet and trades in there as I think that's also mostly short distance. For example I've worked many such jobs, like a commercial hardware (doors) shop that had trucks for delivering doors at job sites. For these guys present BEV trucks look like they'd work fine.

Use Case #2: Travel trailer towing (recreational)
According to the industry average driving time is 4-5 hours, which makes sense as you'd want to follow the 'leave by 10 arrive by 3' rule of thumb. According to the GM Chief Electrification Engineer Josh Tavel EV's have the same range loss as ICE of about 25%. On unscientific YouTube videos of the Lightning it's been between 0% (pop up camper) to 50%. Biggest factor is speed you drive. Anyhow take Tavels 25% as the average loss.

• 25% average range loss, maximum range if going 100% to 0% charge: 300 miles
• 80% of battery = 320 miles (for fast charging you don't want to go above 80% as it goes slow and is harder on the battery)
• 20% of battery = 80 miles
• (1) Drivable range between charges not towing = 320-80 = 240 usable miles
• (2) Drivable range between charges while towing = 240 * .75 = 180 miles
• At 55 mph (reasonable EV) driving 180 miles therefore would be three hours
• So a single day driving of 5 hours could be accomplished by a single charging stop, with 350 kW of charge support you'd be done by the time you hit the bathroom and picked up a drink.

If GM comes through with their towing friendly chargers then this back of the envelope indicates that this wouldn't be a problem. Their goal is a charger every 50 miles.

Amendments to this would be

1. Mountain driving (need more charging)
2. Slow driving like coastal or back roads (need less charging)
3. Aero of the camper
4. Total GVWR (you'd have to watch the weight and tow a lighter trailer, say 5000-6000 lbs)

Looks to me that if you're willing to pick a good on the lighter side trailer, and not drive like a maniac (e.g. granny driving of 55) you'd be just fine. The key is the trailer friendly chargers, without that it won't work as otherwise you'd have to unhitch at Electrify America.

(1) Subtract max battery allowed (320 miles) - min battery allowed (80 miles) distances
(2) Knock 25% off that for towing

Just found an article from yesterday on this topic at Car and Driver
Tested: EV Pickups in a Trailer-Towing Test — Hummer, Rivian, F-150 Lightning

Summary here I think


Key points

• This is a 29 ft 6100 lb trailer - which isn't unusual for RVing but on the larger size
• 70 mph!
  • Yes this is frequently the interstate speed in the US, but I either go max 60 or simply draft another vehicle if going faster
  • Resistance goes up almost exponentially above 55
• Real world trailer driving includes a lot of off interstate
• The article notes that others BEV's are a dream for towing, notably ...
  • These new electric pickups are wonderful towing companions, aided by massive horsepower and torque that allow for easy merging with the flow of interstate traffic
  • and their heavy curb weights (between 6855 pounds for the F-150 and 9640 pounds for the Hummer) lend an impressive stability when lugging a three-ton trailer.
• The physics aren't different from towing with an internal-combustion pickup; in both cases the range will be sliced roughly in half
  • As noted above that's freeway driving at 70mph which is worst case, including lower freeway speed and off freeway driving 25% or something would be more reasonable

So this doesn't look too far off my estimate, which is using a lower GVWR trailer, slower speeds, include non freeway, and increased range of the Silverado should give you 150-180 miles say. It also doesn't include that GM engineers say the Silverado has the lowest aero of any truck. However nne thing I'm puzzled about is they got 110-140 miles by running down to near zero on the battery, where I left a 20% save the battery margin. So what do we conclude?

I'm willing to think that considering the Silverado aero, extra range, your willingness to drive 55-60 or draft and a lower GVWR and aero trailer would give you say 150 miles or three hours of driving, which is sufficient for a single charge stopover for a typical day driving a travel trailer.