Hello everyone, I don't post to forums much but thought you all would be interested in our experience pulling a pop up camper trailer with our Clarity Our Clarity is a 2018, build date I think is around March. It now has a bit over 36k miles after this trip and we really haven't had any problems with it. I installed an etrailer hitch to it which was really quite painless, and then a fancy wiring harness that has the clips that go around the wires. The pop up trailer we pulled is a super lightweight 2015 LivinLite Quicksilver 8.0 - it only weighs about 850lbs with about 10% of that on the tongue. It is about a 7ft wide by 8ft long box with a couple feet of deck on the back. We pulled the trailer from here in Raleigh, NC to Utah to see some the dinosaur stuff they have there for our kids. There were four us in the car - My wife and I and our two young kids - 6 and almost 8. Also a full trunk. What I was most worried about was that pulling the trailer would ruin the aero enough that it wouldn't ever "lock" the engine to the output, but this wasn't actually the case. It seemed to do fine for all but the steeper climbs, and it was able to maintain the battery level fine. I didn't keep detailed logs of how much gas we used but looking at the computer I'd say we averaged upper 20s to lower 30s for the entire trip. I did find that it was really important to keep a significant charge on the battery - if I was below half I'd put it in charge mode. This was especially true in the mountains. When we first hit the mountains in Colorado with only 2 bars of electric it really stuggled up the mountains - one climb out of Denver I had my foot to floor and we were going 39 and the battery depleted to zero bars. I new this would have been a problem but for some reason I couldn't get the battery to charge in charge mode when it was at two bars. We of course were at a bunch of campgrounds and we were able to charge it there which was nice. Going down the larger passes went really well too - the regenerative braking was enough to slow it down - although there was this one downhill where I was worried it would fully charge and I'd have to use the brakes - lesson learned: Make sure your battery isn't close to fully charged when going down a steep, long grade! Overall the trip was great, except the steep climbs which it still handled pretty well, I hardly noticed the trailer was there - although they do tend to bounce around a lot over bad parts of the road. We put in a few 12 hour days of driving and I felt really comfortable and relaxed during the whole day. The already low range was of course totally trashed - we only got around 150-180miles before we needed to start looking for a gas station, but in all honesty - and I wasn't expecting this - it made the trip more relaxing to just do the driving in 2.5-3 hour chunks before a break. Prior to this, like a lot of families during the Coronavirus, we were looking to do some RVing. We watched a bunch of Youtube videos to find the right fit. Nothing was obvious though. We thought about getting a smaller Class C but they still get at best 10mpg, and are still huge. We thought about getting a Tahoe and a smaller travel trailer - which is kind of the setup my parents have - but even a smaller trailer for a family of 4 would have been huge and cumbersome to drive around - especially in high winds. I'm not really sure if there is a setup available that I would have preferred to this. Anyway, hope this helps anyone curious!
Thanks for the tip! You'd have to know the road pretty well to be able to hit each peak just as you exhausted the charge you saved or built up for climbing.
All the roads were new to me. The strategy is pretty easy - for a long climb make sure you have some electric bars to expend going up, and then make sure you have enough empty capacity to fill up going down. The longest pass we went over probably used 5 bars going up and then gained that many going down.
What an awesome adventure! Thanks for sharing your story. Very fun to read. The advantages of a PHEV drive train are even more so for towing. Regen braking is very powerful without overheating like friction brakes can, and then that stored energy can be used to get you going again. I wish someone made a mainstream PHEV truck for medium towing applications. Seems like a logical fit. Ford has the all electric F150 in development, but I'm sure that's at least a few years away and then for a limited release. A PHEV is better suited for long distance towing, especially in regions where the electric charging infrastructure is minimal.
What modes were you in during the most sever hill climb? Eco, Normal (no sport, no Eco), Sport? HV, Normal (no HV, no Hv charge), HV Charge. Also when you say you had the peddle floored are you sure you passed passed the “click point”. I tell people to use Sport mode when going up a steep hill since the peddle mapping will kick in full power before the click point.
Interesting, thanks for the write-up! Glad nothing terrible happened too lol Yeah, I would think it's pretty critical to have the ICE going almost at all times basically when towing.
