In my earlier driving life I've twice through negligence run out of petrol on the road.

Irrelevant but.... Travelling with my favourite uncle in the Highlands in the 60's he very efficiently drew up a list of the route ... just a shame he placed it over the fuel gauge. We were fairly near a farm who sold him something that managed to get the car to hobble to the next petrol station.

That's correct, towing is out and no towbars are made for them. It's a matter of design for load and weight with a single gear covering the whole speed range. With their immense torque from zero revs they can definitely tow easily, but at the huge cost of rapid battery drain during the much slower acceleration phase towing a heavy weight. The much wider "throttle opening" to pull the weight off the mark presents a near dead short though the motor windings at low revs, not only draining the battery rapidly but overheating the motor.

 

Pulling a caravan on mixed roads my 160 mile range would drop to a third or quarter of that.

 

In an e-car future there will be no caravans, replaced by electric motor caravans designed for the load. Electric pickups, vans and estate cars probably doing away with car trailers too.

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I have been looking into fitting a tow bar and found a website that gives some interesting information (to me at least). By eu competition law car manufacturers can't threaten a voided warranty if you use a non dealer to fit a tow bar (3rd party fitter (£450. Audi £1700), and all cars have to be made with the same tow bar mounting points. If all cars include e-cars, and more and more people want to transport heavier e-bikes, is it reasonable to assume e-cars available today will be tow bar friendly?

https://www.towbarexpress.co.uk/guide/does-fitting-a-towbar-affect-my-warranty/

Edited November 28, 20187 yr by Gubbins

If you run this page through Google translate (or other) there is a fair bit of interesting information from the Salon des Maires in Paris:

 

https://www.automobile-propre.com/salon-des-maires-mobilite-partagee-recharge-carburant-alternatif-etc/

 

On the fly a few things about pedelecs including a Portuguese company offering lamp posts with integrated charge points!

If all cars include e-cars, and more and more people want to transport heavier e-bikes, is it reasonable to assume e-cars available today will be tow bar friendly?

 

No, they absolutely are not and a warranty is voided if towing is attempted with most popular e-cars. On popular ones like the Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe there's no suitable attachment points at the rear, the whole of the centre base is occupied by the battery and no tow bars are made for them anyway. The same with the BMW i3 where its even more impossible due to the range extender option space. The current alternatives of the Mitsubishi e-i car also appearing under Peugeot and Citroen badges and the VW e-Up couldn't tow anything anyway, too small and weak.

 

The position may change with some as i.c designs like the VW Golf and some Mercs and BMWs appear more commonly in their all electric versions, but at the moment they are fairly rare with very limited production.

 

Tesla's provision is somewhat different since their X (SUV) model is designed to be able to tow, but not sure about the smaller model 3 where I think it unlikely.

 

Of course the hybrids can tow so that's the available e-option.

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On the fly a few things about pedelecs including a Portuguese company offering lamp posts with integrated charge points!

 

We are much further on than that in London. We already have 400 lamp post charge points run by German company Ubitricity and there are current contracts out to bring that quickly to 1192.

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