Towing has become the battle cry against electric trucks, but is this issue as pertinent as it sounds?
With the release of electric trucks to the market (Rivian R1T, Hummer EV, F-150 Lighting), towing, in particular, has become the albatross around the necks of EV truck manufacturers. Is the issue accurately portrayed by angry Facebook commenters, journalists, and YouTubers alike? I’ll give you one guess.
To start, electric trucks offer an amazing set of benefits to recreational and commercial consumers alike. They offer supercar-like specifications, they offer new use cases to a utilitarian and active market segment, and they do both of these things while remaining cheap to operate. Yet, despite these advantages, there is no denying that EVs face a set of new and daunting challenges regarding towing.
First of all, towing is very energy intensive. There is a reason an MPG estimate isn’t placed on the window tag of a new F250, RAM2500, or Silverado 2500. Not only is the vehicle tasked with overcoming an added thousand pounds or more, but it must do so while also battling increased air resistance. EVs are not unique in this aspect, but they must also deal with both limited charging infrastructure in many rural areas, as well as decreased range compared to gas and diesel alternatives. Compounding this issue, available chargers are often not designed for trailer-mounted vehicles, sometimes forcing the driver to detach the trailer, charge, and reattach, a task not required for ICE-powered counterparts. This combined set of problems can mean that some areas of the country are unreachable by electric towing vehicles.
Rivian R1T’s first real-world towing test shows 62% range loss
Even electric truck manufacturers are acknowledging these issues. On Ford’s most recent earnings call, the company stated that they would continue to sell and develop new gas and diesel Super Duty vehicles; the vehicles often tasked with towing the largest trailers, boats, and the like.
The Fast Lane Truck did a fantastic video covering these exact issues with an F-150 Lightning, a test where they were only able to achieve a range of close to 100 miles and were not able to reach their intended destination due to lack of charging infrastructure.
However, and this is an important question, how important is this problem? This is not to say that people should not have the ability to tow, but perhaps towing can be more accurately placed on their list of needs/wants when deciding on a vehicle to own.
To start, according to a poll of 250,000 full-size truck owners conducted by Strategic Vision, only 75% of owners towed between 0 and 1 time per year, with only the remaining 25% towing more frequently than once per year. And while mileage and towing weight were not included in the poll, it seems as though there may be a vast contingent of truck owners who don’t tow at all.
Furthermore, there are many use cases of towing that would involve traveling less than 100miles; local carpenters and construction workers moving within city limits, a truck towing an incapacitated vehicle to the closest repair shop, or even people towing their boats to the local lake or waterway. These use cases would not only fit even the limited range of 100 miles, but each could find many benefits from unique features such as onboard generators offered on many electric trucks, running power tools, running appliances, etc.
Overall, consumers should be more mindful of their actual needs and more carefully weigh the countless benefits offered by new electric offerings. For many, the conclusion may be that they still need the range and capability of an ICE truck to best suit their leisure activities and/or their livelihoods, but to say that this group is more than a minority is, at least somewhat, a fallacy. For manufacturers and infrastructure planners, this should be a wake-up call; there is a contingent of people who, despite the amazing advances of EV technology, are unable to use them to achieve certain tasks. These should be some of the first things addressed in efforts to expand EV adoption.
What do you think of the article? Do you have any comments, questions, or concerns? Shoot me an email at william@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @WilliamWritin. If you have news tips, email us at tips@teslarati.com!
News
Tesla FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’
“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026.”
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s newest model is coming very soon, and from what it sounds like, it could be “the last big piece of the puzzle,” as CEO Elon Musk said in late November.
During the xAI Hackathon on Tuesday, Musk was available for a Q&A session, where he revealed some details about Robotaxi and Tesla’s plans for removing Robotaxi Safety Monitors, and some information on a future FSD model.
While he said Full Self-Driving’s unsupervised capability is “pretty much solved,” and confirmed it will remove Safety Monitors in the next three weeks, questions about the company’s ability to give this FSD version to current owners came to mind.
Musk said a new FSD model is coming in about a month or two that will be an order-of-magnitude larger and will include more reasoning and reinforcement learning.
He said:
“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026. We’re gonna add a lot of reasoning and RL (reinforcement learning). To get to serious scale, Tesla will probably need to build a giant chip fab. To have a few hundred gigawatts of AI chips per year, I don’t see that capability coming online fast enough, so we will probably have to build a fab.”
NEWS: Elon Musk says FSD Unsupervised is “pretty much solved at this point” and that @Tesla will be launching Robotaxis with no safety monitors in about 3 weeks in Austin, Texas. He also teased a new FSD model is coming in about 1-2 months.
“We’re just going through validation… https://t.co/Msne72cgMB pic.twitter.com/i3wfKX3Z0r
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) December 10, 2025
It rings back to late November when Musk said that v14.3 “is where the last big piece of the puzzle finally lands.”
With the advancements made through Full Self-Driving v14 and v14.2, there seems to be a greater confidence in solving self-driving completely. Musk has also personally said that driver monitoring has been more relaxed, and looking at your phone won’t prompt as many alerts in the latest v14.2.1.
This is another indication that Tesla is getting closer to allowing people to take their eyes off the road completely.
Along with the Robotaxi program’s success, there is evidence that Tesla could be close to solving FSD. However, it is not perfect. We’ve had our own complaints with FSD, and although we feel it is the best ADAS on the market, it is not, in its current form, able to perform everything needed on roads.
But it is close.
That’s why there is some legitimate belief that Tesla could be releasing a version capable of no supervision in the coming months.
All we can say is, we’ll see.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon. Musk replied, basically confirming it.
Elon Musk confirmed through a post on X that a SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) is on the way after hinting at it several times earlier this year.
It also comes one day after Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was aiming for a valuation of $1.5 trillion, adding that it wanted to raise $30 billion.
Musk has been transparent for most of the year that he wanted to try to figure out a way to get Tesla shareholders to invest in SpaceX, giving them access to the stock.
He has also recognized the issues of having a public stock, like litigation exposure, quarterly reporting pressures, and other inconveniences.
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon.
Musk replied, basically confirming it:
As usual, Eric is accurate
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2025
Berger believes the IPO would help support the need for $30 billion or more in capital needed to fund AI integration projects, such as space-based data centers and lunar satellite factories. Musk confirmed recently that SpaceX “will be doing” data centers in orbit.
AI appears to be a “key part” of SpaceX getting to Musk, Berger also wrote. When writing about whether or not Optimus is a viable project and product for the company, he says that none of that matters. Musk thinks it is, and that’s all that matters.
It seems like Musk has certainly mulled something this big for a very long time, and the idea of taking SpaceX public is not just likely; it is necessary for the company to get to Mars.
The details of when SpaceX will finally hit that public status are not known. Many of the reports that came out over the past few days indicate it would happen in 2026, so sooner rather than later.
But there are a lot of things on Musk’s plate early next year, especially with Cybercab production, the potential launch of Unsupervised Full Self-Driving, and the Roadster unveiling, all planned for Q1.
Tesla has added the 15th automaker to the growing list of companies whose EVs can utilize the Supercharger Network this year, as BMW is the latest company to gain access to the largest charging infrastructure in the world.
BMW became the 15th company in 2025 to gain Tesla Supercharger access, after the company confirmed to its EV owners that they could use any of the more than 25,000 Supercharging stalls in North America.
Welcome @BMW owners.
Download the Tesla app to charge → https://t.co/vnu0NHA7Ab
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) December 10, 2025
Newer BMW all-electric cars, like the i4, i5, i7, and iX, are able to utilize Tesla’s V3 and V4 Superchargers. These are the exact model years, via the BMW Blog:
- i4: 2022-2026 model years
- i5: 2024-2025 model years
- 2026 i5 (eDrive40 and xDrive40) after software update in Spring 2026
- i7: 2023-2026 model years
- iX: 2022-2025 model years
- 2026 iX (all versions) after software update in Spring 2026
With the expansion of the companies that gained access in 2025 to the Tesla Supercharger Network, a vast majority of non-Tesla EVs are able to use the charging stalls to gain range in their cars.
So far in 2025, Tesla has enabled Supercharger access to:
- Audi
- BMW
- Genesis
- Honda
- Hyundai
- Jaguar Land Rover
- Kia
- Lucid
- Mercedes-Benz
- Nissan
- Polestar
- Subaru
- Toyota
- Volkswagen
- Volvo
Drivers with BMW EVs who wish to charge at Tesla Superchargers must use an NACS-to-CCS1 adapter. In Q2 2026, BMW plans to release its official adapter, but there are third-party options available in the meantime.
They will also have to use the Tesla App to enable Supercharging access to determine rates and availability. It is a relatively seamless process.
Tesla FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’
SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms
