Electric car range challenge succeeds, towing a caravan

Surrounded by big SUVs and twin cab utes with their huge caravans in tow, the questions inevitably come thick and fast. And people are equally curious about his van.

But the most common question from the EV knockers is the range issue. Can an EV towing a caravan achieve the desired range most people need on a common trip, such as from the South Coast of NSW, up the Clyde Mountain, and back to Canberra on a single battery charge?

Mr Blackburn was determined to find out.

It's well documented that our former Prime Minister famously declared during the 2019 federal election campaign that electric vehicles would "ruin the weekend".

It was the cornerstone of his attack on the electric vehicle industry at the time and inspired a Facebook page entitled "I ruined the weekend", which has poked fun at the Scott Morrison claim ever since, with posts showing EV owners travelling far and wide across the country.

But very few owners in Australia have been bold enough to stretch the capability of their EV by towing a caravan, particularly up a mountain as steep as the Clyde.

Mr Blackburn, from Chifley, was an early adopter to electric vehicles, putting down a $1500 deposit on a Tesla Model 3 long range model back in 2017. In 2019, the car was delivered.

Per capita, Canberra is the biggest market for the Chinese-built Tesla electric cars in the country.

"I didn't have an intention at the time of buying the car to tow a van with it," he said.

"My wife and I had never owned a caravan but we liked the idea of taking some trips so I began to do some research on it."

While his Model 3 was factory-rated to tow one tonne, Tesla didn't offer a towbar. So he tracked down a US company, Stealth Hitches, which did, and the national Tesla owners club, keen to support Mr Blackburn's quest, had it uprated and compliant to tow the full 1000kg.

The next challenge was finding a caravan which fell well under the Tesla's tow rating and provided a safety margin.

He settled on a unique teardrop-shaped design from Canada called the Alto. It's a wholly unusual caravan, designed by an aeronautical engineer, with a lightweight sandwich-type construction and electric actuators to raise and lower the roof so that under tow it has far less wind resistance than a normal van but once on site, within 30 seconds the roof can be raised to a conventional height.

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His Alto van weighs 766kg, which provided a comfortable buffer.

Next came the major Clyde Mountain climb test. Unencumbered by a van, his dual motor Tesla long range usually has a range of around 500km.

"My calculations on the net rise and fall in the highway from the coast to home indicated that with regenerative power to assist, the journey was achievable without a recharge ," the retired statistician said.

"It was always going to be touch and go, but I knew that if I got really low on battery, there were recharge stations at Braidwood and Bungendore as a back-up."

The good news is that he made it home but with an indicated of just 7km of range left after the 198km journey - and some well-chewed fingernails.

"The car wasn't as fully charged as it should have been and my advice to anyone who wants to tow with an EV is to do the maths beforehand; towing does greatly affect your driving range but by how much depends on the topography of your route," he said.