Towing a Wake Boat

Vincent · 2025-01-10T19:33:15+00:00

A friend needed to support his son who would be running a 'very cold' marathon on Sunday while rucking a 30 pound pack. The outside temps will be around 15F-20F the whole time. The location of the race is nowhere close to any L2 chargers, but he's not worried about driving distance to or from the race - it is 50 miles away from his house. He says he will be sitting in his ruck with his laptop and watching his live track+Garmin inReach data for the duration of the race (about 4 hours). He thought about taking his Honda EB2800i gasoline powered generator, if he can use the level 1 EVSE attached to the generator and keep the truck running with full heat + power - without really consuming much of the truck's main battery? He feels it's super dorky to have a gas generator running while attached to a Rivian in the woods, just so he can stay warm, but don't know if it would work ok this way and 'preserve' the main battery so he doesn't need to worry about driving range when we wants to head home. He talked to me about it and I told him the simple answer is NO. I tested this theory the other night when I was plugged into a 5.9kW charger. To maintain the interior amenities (interior and exterior lights, radio, heater, seat heaters), it took almost all of the charge. I charged for 15 minutes, it delivered 1.6kW, and the truck consumed 1.4kW, delivering only 0.2kW to the truck battery. Told him he would be using a laptop at another 200ish watts. The little trickle charger charges at 1.4kW on a good day, 1.2kW is normal for me. You can slow the bleed, but you cant stop it. My advise to him was for him to charge it up to 100% at home, and roll the dice is what I would do.

Morgan

New member

Dec 24, 2024

First-time towing, and the estimates via the navigation in the vehicle were way off. Estimated I'd arrive with 41 miles left, but ended up with 16 miles left. It also jumped around a lot during the trip, so I'm thinking it was adjusting based on first-time towing. One thing of note though, is I think it was showing me what I'd have left in All-Purpose mode, not Towing mode. As if it was assuming I would drop the trailer at the destination. This was pretty accurate if that was the case, as I had around 35 miles left when I switched out of towing.

As has been said many times, it handles and rides great. Just really sucks hard on that battery pack.

I found myself wishing I could see the truck's bed camera, which would give me a better view of the load I'm pulling.

Configuration

102 degrees outside
7000 lbs trailer + boat
Factory boat cover
Surge brakes on the trailer
~60 miles total trip
> 80% highway @ ~70mph

Results

1.05 mi/kWh
~55mph average speed
44kWh used

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