I mean that's understandable, if the car you buy can only handle small commuting that means at the very least the additional cost of using other transport methods or renting a car or having a second car (all of which may be problematic or impossible) when you need to see friends, your family, or go on holidays. And that's not "par" money as the EV is not going to be significantly cheaper than an equivalent ICE.
A small and cheap comfy-ish EV might actually be a good option there, as it lets you have a regular car when you need to e.g. go to Ikea (which might be out of range of an EV depending where you live) or drive to the next country or go see your sister a few hundred miles away without significant additional costs, but it needs to be small (so it's not an issue e.g. for people living in cities who may not have access to a garage at all let alone a multi-car one) and cheap (so it's not a drain on resources, or at least not a big one, compared to just using the one car all the time).
Incentives are a thing, and currently EVs mostly incentivise using something else if you don't have fuck you money and more surface than you can use. As-is, plug-in hybrids are probably a better option for single people or single-car households.
However, you seem to have illustrated exactly my point. An electric car has some limitations compared to a conventional car. But the gap from an electric car to an electric velomobile is probably even greater.
The difference and point (as noted in the second paragraph) is that it is much more feasible to have a car and a velomobile than to have two cars.
Towing isn’t something a lot of electric cars seem to be homologated for. I think the only current exception is the Tesla Model X.
Unfortunately the post-1997 EU licence restrictions (in the UK) mean that lots of people are restricted to a total gross weight of 3500kg for the car and trailer, so towing even a small caravan with a car that has batteries would need the driver to do another driving test.
Found it on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20121105135914/http://www.mrshark...
I'm sure that handled spectacularly on on-ramps. It would be like flat towing another vehicle and coming into a corner too hot.
To be fair, I think he basically fired it up when he got to the interstate, manually set the throttle to the speed he wanted to cruise at then turned it off again before coming off the interstate.
> Dynamics:
> Despite the facts that I shortened the trailer of the Gen-2 pusher by two feet and added more IC horsepower and much more pushing force with the ability of the AT to downshift...I have still found it basically impossible to get into a condition of oversteer. (This is where the car would want to turn into the direction of the turn if you take your hand off the wheel, normaly if you release the wheel a vehicle will straighten itself out of a turn) Even in relatively tight turns with the trailer at nearly full power, the car wants to straighten itself out. The shortened trailer also drafts behind the EV much better further improving the mpg.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120319173545/http://www.jstrau...
Maybe he just drives really conservatively everywhere (wouldn't surprise me since a light foot was key for extending range on early EVs and many people developed that habit) or maybe the trailer is just light enough and being single axle makes it easy to steer enough that the natural tendency of the car to straighten out is greater.
I wonder if a electric car with a generator in a trailer would still be tax exempt...
But since you are limited to 60mph towing, I often find that my MPG is the same if not better when towing, though pulling away and uphill is affected. Not sure my current car would cope with a caravan!
Also my car has a 6th gear for more efficient cruising on the motorway, but you can’t tow in 6th, it just sounds like it’s struggling.
As others have pointed out, the range also tanks when towing (it tanks with gas cars too but not as badly). This is a bigger deal in an EV because you can't just gas up in 5min but not that big a deal if you're taking a pre-planned trip IMO.
For non Europeans it was a Europe wide televised game series which "featured teams from different European countries in outlandish costumes (often large latex suits) competing to complete bizarre tasks in funny games. "