Towing a camper 400 miles in a Tesla Model Y

This weekend we're taking the Tesla to northern Minnesota for Grandma's Marathon. It is 85

miles

from my home in Rochester Minnesota to Baldwin Wisconsin where we will pick up a

camper

that we will rent on RV share once we hook it up. I will be 200

miles

from our camp in Two Harbors Minnesota, not far from the start of today's race. I'll share my experience

towing

a Flagstaff A-frame

camper

with my Tesla Model and 2023 with the factory-installed two-inch trailer hitch. Our RV rentals share thanks for helping us connect and for the amazing overseas rental experience a couple miles from the city and I think my first impression is wow, this Tesla is solidly built.

I can tell there's something behind me. I don't see who's driving behind us, but I can see the trailer pretty well. I can see the lines on the road. It automatically went into tow mode when I plugged in the electrical system for the lights that disables the autopilot. I'm not really sure what else he does. It's been really smooth so far and I'm excited to see what kind of impact

towing

will have on power consumption. Now we can see right off the bat 519 watt hours per mile is about double what is projected in the rating. The range is 87 miles.

We are planning to stop here in 60 miles for dinner and then load up. There are plenty of chargers on the road so we'll play it by ear and charge when necessary, as I mentioned autopilot doesn't work in the trailer. mode but the cruise control does and let me tell you it's nice to kick that cruise sit and watch my mirrors the car drives itself another thing I'm looking at is the battery gauge it's trending now where it is now it's at 49 The car is doing a good job of adjusting its projected finish percentage, it has been hovering between 20 and 25 percent.

We'll see how accurate this projection is when we get to North Branch, 40 miles from Baldwin where we picked up the camper and we have 25 miles to go and it's still showing a projection of 18. We've been averaging 500 watt hours per mile so that's down . We're going up a pretty steep hill, but I still have more pedal I can keep pushing and we're accelerating. this thing really works as a tow, like i said you just have to be prepared to take a hit on your range and be very planned about where you are going to stop and load, and now that this stop sign has appeared you can see how awesome it is regeneration.

The brake is now here. I think the brake pads had to be tightened, but also a lot of regen capacity, which again makes towing a lot easier when you don't have to worry about wearing out the brakes, they should have come on there, so there's the charger I think I'm going to use uh there's a supercharger here in North Branch they don't have fast food stands and I really don't want to block a bunch of stands for other people and there are better eating options where we can Currently it's really nice to use that camera but here we are , we'll stop now, unfortunately it looks like I'll be blocking some of these level 2 chargers, but I don't think too many people will want to use it. them tonight here we go I'm going to pull out my phone, this is a Zeph charger so they have their own app.

I'll open the app, plug in my data, and we'll start uploading. Okay, so we charge approximately one hour 57 minutes depending on the pedestal. I stopped charging in the car because I'm using my CCS adapter, so we're going to go ahead and just pull out, press the plug button and then release my adapter here so We got here with just under 20 percent, 18 or so and now we're up to the 74 percent instead of heading up to Two Harbors tonight, we found a campsite at Sandstone in Banning State Park, the day got away from us. We will stay there tonight and prepare the caravan and then start first thing in the morning.

Here we go, so we've gone 15 miles and we've used about 10 11 of our battery. Now you can see. This is when we hit the highway, there is a big spike in power usage and then it leveled off at about 630 watt hours per mile. Now we're going 65 and since we hit the highway we have a projected finish of 31, so I think we have some energy to play with. I'm going to accelerate to 70 and see what effect that has on our energy consumption about 10 miles later. This is where we increase our speed and in the last five miles you can see that our consumption has increased.

At 690, almost 700 watt hours per mile, going from 65 to 70 resulted in a net 10 percent increase in power consumption. If you're cutting kilowatt hours, the best thing to do is drive slowly, so here's the charging setting that overnight managed to hit 64 percent now, uh, frugality and safety don't always go hand in hand, look at how many adapters I have installed right now, the Nema 1450 to 620 and then a home made 620 to 515 and then a 515 for my Chevy stud charger in the car and last but not least the j1772 to Tesla adapter, but hey, it works after a nice comfortable night here at camp, it managed to increase from 30 percent to over 60 percent, enough to potentially reach the destination, we'll see how well we do. this morning overseas, a little more, the official Model Y trailer hitch comes with two tow hooks and a standard North American seven-pin connector for powering lights and brakes.

We are 31 miles into our first leg of the day. The destination is Buffalo House. Camp that we are going to visit with my parents to have coffee uh, there are 18 miles left and we are projected to arrive with 28 batteries now it is also something I want to show you, check the energy consumption in the last 30 miles that we have been doing. 65 since we hit the interstate and averaging about 550 watt hours per mile, but then you can see that we started to hit the hills and the power consumption really started to go up and down at those events, you want to continue to maintain your speed yes We are changing speed too much to try to absorb those hills and you will end up wasting energy.

We are doing quite well. 551 hours per mile is better than what we did yesterday at 65 miles per hour, so things are looking good. I just had a nice lunch with my parents who were here for a couple of hours and managed to get the five percent back through the Central adapter. We also have the 1450 connector on your caravan socket. Now I'm definitely going to invest in a mobile connector kit. With all the adapters you can get from Tesla, I would have been able to charge two and a half times faster last night and more than two and a half times faster here than with my 12 amp 240 volt charger for my stud. to my parents for letting me load a little at their camp and have lunch with us and now we are on our way to visit my brother and pick up our numbers for the Grandma's Marathon The Grandma's Marathon started in 1977 and now One of the most biggest in the United States, the Gary Bjorkland half marathon that I will be running, had over 7,000 people participating this year.

The finish line for both races is at Canal Park in Duluth, Minnesota, located at the southwestern tip of Lake Superior. Alright we're here at Canal Park in Duluth Minnesota there are eight AC chargers all 48 amp so I got about 20 percent out of them while we were walking and having lunch and then I realized it was open it's a zeph of 50 kilowatts. charger just like the one we charged at North Branch, all of these sessions are free today, which is pretty awesome, probably because of the marathon and it's being powered by this 54 kilowatt solar panel that we have over all the charging stations.

We're probably using 44 of those 54 kilowatts, so we're probably using some power from the grid to charge these other cars, but it's pretty amazing to think that the sun is powering my charge right now. Thanks, well we watched the 5K at Canal Park. and in that solar canopy I managed to reach a charge of 90 and we suffocated for a few minutes because I decided I was going to push a software update right before we were about to leave, so we had to sit and wait for the software update to complete. software. Came back, had some pasta, now we're heading to our camp at Two Harbors, we shouldn't have any problems getting to Two Harbors.

I'll plug it in when we get there and hopefully a 240 outlet or where the 120 is and we'll be off to the races now. on the load, getting ready to run a half marathon tomorrow, okay foreign brother, like 35 miles of range, okay, today we are on the way back to Rochester, we are planning on using the Carlton supercharger that has a draw sight. which will be really good. I won't have to unhook the camper and it's also a V3 supercharger so it has a maximum efficiency of 250 kilowatts. As you can see, last night we were driving the car alone, we get about 300 watt hours per mile and Today we average 650 watt hours per mile and that's just driving 65 on the highway.

It's going to be another day of fighting the inefficiencies of towing a trailer here, but I'm sure we'll have enough loading stops along the way to make it happen. to our destination, come with us for the ride now, the shared outlet says there is a stall that is for trailers, but I don't know where it is, oh there we go, there is a sign right there that says Trailer Towing in that direction and over there. We are arriving with a battery of 50, we will complete. I'm projecting a need to go up to 85 percent to get to North Branch, that's where we'll stop next.

I don't anticipate being here for long, maybe 20 minutes. max and we'll be on our way thanks he's there yeah it's pretty close but if it works well we're here at the North Branch supercharger. uh, you can see this is a station with eight V3 superchargers. Now, fortunately, no one was here. I was able to get in and I'm only blocking three mags at the moment which is good now obviously the pull site in Carlton was ideal because I wasn't blocking any but this is working just as well for me at least. Hopefully, no one will stop here.

I'll be able to get out right away and get on the road, but I don't anticipate us having to be here for long, maybe another half hour, and we'll go to the gas station and get a drink. snacks and we will be on our way to drop off the camper in Baldwin, so we dropped off the trailer and included our RV rental. We have changed our destination to home 60 miles away. Now you can see that the car is estimating that We'll arrive with only two percent battery, but originally when we set the destination it was zero percent and it was telling us that we needed to charge, but I think it's still holding on to some latent efficiency calculations from when we had the trailer because now that I don't have the trailer we want to make it as good as our rated range should be.

I left the trailer there and now we have been running almost at rated range meaning we have about 111 miles on the battery which is more than enough to get us home so it was something to keep in mind when leaving your trailer. I wouldn't trust Tesla's projections until you've got some miles under your belt, really just see how your driving is based on your conditions after the first few miles and then use that information to plan accordingly and one way to do that too is if you go into the power menu and hit instant range and just after the last five miles you can see how it's driving right now and how it matches up with a really impressive projected range today managing to get from Two Harbors to Baldwin on just two charges each which takes about half an hour each and now from Baldwin home without needing to charge again, I'm very happy with how we did today from an efficiency standpoint and how well the Tesla handled the caravan so we're back on track in Rochester with 17 years of battery life and a few more miles to go until we get home, but we performed at rated efficiency from when I left the vehicle until now, so we now have about 236 watt hours per mile.

I would do it again? I am interested in seeing other campers, other folding ones that will be efficient for towing but that will also allow you to enjoy the camping experience without many sacrifices. The vehicle towing is really excellent. I think it was totally reasonable to have two half hour stops today to charge and you know, go hundreds of miles, so it's a great vehicle to tow, you just have to be prepared to take it. A few more charging stops along the way so thanks for watching and we will definitely post more videos in the future with future camping endeavors.