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So, saw a story on a local news station the other day and it piqued my interest in this vehicle. I'm a die hard gas truck guy! I currently own a 17 Tundra with the 5.7 ltr gas guzzler motor, but in my defense, I tow a boat, a fairly heavy one at 4000 pounds. What kind of distance do you figure this rig will get towing that kind of weight? I mean really, 400 miles on a charge is great and all but what about towing? I do tow fairly far on occasion 200 plus miles one way.
Real truck guy with real truck questions, thanks.
I'm assuming you're asking about the R1T pickup. Rivian claims the R1T has a Trailer Weight Rating of 5000 kgs (11,023 lbs) . The R1S SUV is less at 3500 kgs (7716 lbs). I've heard RJ and other Rivian reps say on more than one occasion in interviews that the R1T can tow much more but it wouldn't be practical due to the large loss in battery range. To come up with a number they went with a 50% battery range reduction which landed them at 11,000 lbs. So the 400 mile range with the 180 kWh battery pack option on the R1T towing 11,000 lbs would be around 200 miles.
So towing a 4000 lbs boat should get you a range greater than 200 miles. However, keep in mind without knowing more about the towing scenario, road conditions, weather, etc. (such as aerodynamics of the towed, will route include inclines and if so, how steep and for how far, and wind speed/direction), which can greatly impact battery range, any estimate without that input would be a WAG in my opinion, just as it would be trying to calc the MPG with an ICE.
FWIW, check out a ABetterRoutePlanner.com , select the R1T and battery pack of choice, and plug in a route you typically tow your boat, to get an estimate of how far and often you would have to stop and charge, if at all. Note there are other settings you can tweak like weather conditions (temp, wind speed, etc), road conditions, etc, to give a more accurate, or worst case, scenarios. Note, there's no real world data yet for either Rivian EAV so the author of the website is working with the specs released so far (which are pre-production) and what you enter, hence the "(alpha)" notation appended to each of the 6 Rivian EV choices. Have fun and HTH!