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2021 PowerBoost and Towing... Terrible MPG while towing

Snakebitten

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That's a tiny electric motor. Not nearly strong enough to take a 5500lb brick from 0-30mph. At least not without drawing ire from everyone behind you. :)

But it is enough power to sustain speeds rather easily.
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Desertdweller

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Thanks for the insights here... this is a lot of information and also shows areas I can explore to increase MPG while in tow.
4A will also cost you at least 1 MPG. Use 2H unless you are in slippery conditions. I averaged 10MPG with a 6K lb boat/trailer in tow over 1700 miles, but not babying it at all. I thought that was reasonable. And I dropped it into 9th gear to improve response and reduce the occasional rumble strip feel. To me it just felt like it was in too high of a gear at some times and the rumble went away when I dropped into 9th. Other than towing, I have never felt that otherwise.
 
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imnuts

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That's a tiny electric motor. Not nearly strong enough to take a 5500lb brick from 0-30mph. At least not without drawing ire from everyone behind you. :)

But it is enough power to sustain speeds rather easily.
You can get from 0 to 30+, but it requires patience and having some things go your way. There's a place on my way to work I've actually been able to go from a stop all the way up to 40 mph fully electric, and at a reasonable pace as well. It is an underpowered electric motor for 99.9% of situations though as that's the only place I can reliably get up to speed without ICE.
 

dannko58

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4A will also cost you at least 1 MPG. Use 2A unless you are in slippery conditions. I averaged 10MPG with a 6K lb boat/trailer in tow over 1700 miles, but not babying it at all. I thought that was reasonable. And I dropped it into 9th gear to improve response and reduce the occasional rumble strip feel. To me it just felt like it was in too high of a gear at some times and the rumble went away when I dropped into 9th. Other than towing, I have never felt that otherwise.
ok WHAT'S 2A and 4A?
 

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Trukbed

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I'm getting 26 to 27 on the normal around home in Northern Virginia. Highway, expressway, suburb parkway with traffic lights, inner city (DC), rural country roads. Gradual sloping terrain up and down is consistent.

Video here

How I do it, is Here.

Haven't towed with it really, but I have 12,000 miles of mixed use of terrain, and geography. 5600 miles were two round trips from VA to Fort Worth TX and back.... 70 to 80mph. On those, depending on speed for each trip, I got 21 for the faster speed trips. And high 23 for the speed limit trips.

On a trip like that, 1400 miles one way, going faster, really only vost me about 9 to 10% more in fuel costs... about 20 dollars to get there a good 2 hours earlier.

All 4 trips of 1400 miles each were mid summer during heat waves, 105 degrees in TX at 80+ MPH in the Mornings.

I will also note, I drive straight with 1.5 hour rest stop sleeps. So about half the drive of those trips were overnight where the temp dropped into 80s. So that helps a lot.... lower Temps.

Also, 87 octane.
 

Trukbed

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Sorry folks, just realized this thread was specifically about towing. I meant to put the last thing I wrote in the general MPG powerboost thread, my bad.
 

Seahawk51

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We pulled a 30', 7700 pound trailer from Florida to the St Lawrence Seaway and back. 4,500 miles and we averaged 10.9.
 

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I imagine wind resistance plays a huge factor as well. Versus just weight and size of trailer.

An 8000 pound flat open trailer with stacked concrete bags (which doesn't take much volume to reach 8000 pounds, and doesn't stack near as high as a 3000 pound flat fronted enclosed trailer), likely would get better mpg than an 6000 pound tall travel trailer.

So many variables. Aerodynamics and wind resistance being a biggie. Side winds. Gusty winds. Altitude. Winter, summer gas. Humidity. How the trailer was loaded in terms of weight distribution. On and on.
 

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Trukbed

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My question is, does octane rating have any real affect unless your vehicle is tuned to optimize it? yes, if your vehicle is mapped for higher octane (Benz, Audi, Lexus etc' putting in 87 gets the motor knocking like a popcorn popper but the engine is looking for the higher octane) I mean you hear trained/certified mechanics say that though a dirty air filter is less than optimum the computer is reading what comes out by way of the knock and oxygen sensors etc...it's the reason that our vehicles will function just as well in New Orleans as they well in the grand Teton's on the same day...I often wondered this before I started buying the EB motors; with my tritons I could burn ethanol which was cheaper, had higher octane but made fewer BTU's so the fuel mileage was absolutely abysmal and therefor not cheaper! (I'm a plumber not a chemist so I may have totally contradicted myself with these two thoughts) It's a question I'm putting forth, I haven't towed with this one yet but like others have stated, when I'm pulling a brick on wheels behind my brick on wheels I don't think it is unreasonable to expect mileage to suffer.
Most vehicles don't benefit at all by using higher octane, however car and driver did a 4 vehicle test using higher octane than is recommended in some vehicles to see if there were differences. The F-150 3.5 was one of them.

The F150 3.5 responded well to it and actually had performance improvements.

Seems the engineers accounted for higher octane gains in the design, without the need for a tune in order to realize the gains.

I touch a bit on it in this article.
 

Mostlyok

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We just canceled our order for a custom order PB.
We were going to trade both our vehicles for a PB, and it would have been our only ride.
oh I wanted this so much….

But we have a Prius that truly gets 50+ mpg and a 2018 F-150 XLT 2.7 EB that pulls our TT and gets 12-14 mpg towing. With the fuel prices climbing I think we will have to wait on our “F-150 Prius” until the numbers are a bit better.

In the meantime I will give some love to our awesome 2.7 EB and look forward to our next camping trip coming up.
 

UGADawg96

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We just canceled our order for a custom order PB.
We were going to trade both our vehicles for a PB, and it would have been our only ride.
oh I wanted this so much….

But we have a Prius that truly gets 50+ mpg and a 2018 F-150 XLT 2.7 EB that pulls our TT and gets 12-14 mpg towing. With the fuel prices climbing I think we will have to wait on our “F-150 Prius” until the numbers are a bit better.

In the meantime I will give some love to our awesome 2.7 EB and look forward to our next camping trip coming up.
We've done the one vehicle thing and would never do it again. From a finance, risk, and logistics perspective, you made the right decision. Don't beat yourself up.
 

uavmx

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Sure thing. The only thing to keep in mind is that my tires are 1/2" diameter larger than your stock tires (assuming you didn't replace them).

Looks like my shank has daylight through the top 3 holes, and the sway bars have 1.5 holes visible. Note that if you adjust the shank height, you will need to readjust the sway bar thingies (is that the technical term?) to make the friction pads colinear again!

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I finally had a camping trip this weekend, so I adjusted my hitch setup to match yours and it handles WAY BETTER! Much more stable, sits nice and level, and if there was no wind, I could use the lane centering....

Unfortunately however, my MPG did not improve as I would have hoped/expected. I towed between 70-75mph, no real wind out and still averaged about 7mpg on the 300mile round trip. But I powered my trailer all weekend off the powerboost, I loved how it drives...just not happy with the MPG. It's not about the cost of the fuel, it's the need to stop so frequently, especially if you're boondocking with the powerboost, you'll want a fairly full tank for the weekend.

Next step is to check my tongue weight and make sure there's nothing off with that, or it's a matter of driving slower. I'm curious for those that report getting 10mpg towing, what speed are you towing at?
 

130 Ghost_Riders

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I think wind/air resistance seems to make a bigger difference in MPG's (very small data set)
I agree with this, especially with the common trailer type being a travel trailer.
I second this, I have a 16 ft enclosed with a flat 8x8 face and empty or almost 8k lbs loaded I got almost the same fuel economy with my ‘08 5.4
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