Towing range test of the F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck:
Summary of the test in the video:
The Lightning was able to drive for approximately 100 miles while towing a 6000 lb trailer before running out of charge and their gas truck that was towing an identical trailer was able to go over twice the distance before needing to refuel. The poor range means that the EV truck is not very useful for towing, especially to anywhere that doesn’t have fast chargers available like a lake in cottage country.
Additionally, the electricty was not significantly cheaper than the fuel even with the inflated Biden gas prices. The gas truck used $93.79 worth of fuel and the EV recharge cost $27, but that was for only 66% of the battery and they used 91% of it. Doing the math, it would cost $37 to fill up 91% of the battery and therefore it would have cost $74 to go the same distance as the gas truck. If this test was done last year, it would have been cheaper to tow with the gas truck.
Now for some fun economics because I personally hate it when environmentalists try to convince libertarians that it is a free market policy to tax people out of a modern lifestyle because of grossly exaggerated negative externalities that only seem to occur on things that the environmentalist doesn’t like. EVs don’t pay gas tax to maintain the roads, so we can account for the EV’s real externality of road wear by adding the tax that the gas truck paid, which was $7.02 (Colorado has a 22 cent per gallon tax and the federal government charges a 18.4 cent per gallon tax for a combined total of 40.4 cents per gallon and the gas truck used 17.371 gallons of fuel). This means that the “true” cost of charging the EV with that externality internalized was $81.