So I guess you’d have to either fill up your trailer with gas or charge it. Now that’s two vehicles you have to power, which kind of defeats the purpose of towing anyway.
It seems a better solution would be a PHEV with a large battery and a range extender for when you need to tow…why on earth do this?
I could see this working if it was hardwired to the lead vehicle for data over a wire and that would also include a safety tether. Since it seems to be aimed at EV owners, give it a big ass battery and allow it to share power with the lead car to extend the range of the pair. If the trailer give you longer range on your road trips, let you have one plug to charge both vehicles at each charge stop, and had a safety tether and did the data wired rather than wirelessly, I could see some rich folks springing for it. As advertised it sounds like a bad joke from a b rated 90s scifi movie
Even then it seems far less practical than building a PHEV where the range extender really only is used during towing. There really isn’t a practical gain here except that it’s another thing a manufacturer can sell, repair, and upsell you on. Diesel electric locomotives still exist and until rails are fully electric will continue to exist.
Fuck it. Why not just get a little steering wheel and a little person to drive your little tow truck behind you? No need to worry about losing Wi-Fi signal.
I can see the theoretical benefit, but yeah, I wouldn’t trust it.
If you’re a person with a car with no hauling capabilities, and no one to borrow a truck or van from, this should be a nice solution.
But yeeeaaaah, no thanks.
I feel like self driving trucks would be viable before the safety issues for this are worked out.
Well this is basically easy-mode self driving… Just follow the leader. You don’t have to worry about other cars or pedestrians… That’s on the driver
This is basically a convoy of 2, it seems framed to minimize legal questions
Electric vehicles lose a lot more range when towing than diesel vehicles, and they take longer to charge.
This would be a good option for a family that has an EV, but doesn’t want to drive an 8,000# EV day to day, just needs the extra juice when towing.
You could use an EV motor home, but then if you wanted a smaller vehicle with to drive around at your destination, you’d have to either drive that separately, or town that vehicle.
This is a solution for people to have a single, smaller EV that can bring an existing travel trailer for vacation.
This is EXACTLY the type of thing that would help prevent people from “needing” an F-350 for day to day driving, cause they have a trailer they use twice a year.
Couldn’t you instead add a massive battery to the trailer and physically connect both it and the trailer to the car. Essentially letting you tow a battery bank with extra storage? Like that you mitigate having to work out the safety issues and you don’t have to pay for another set of motors etc.
You could upsell it by the trailer being extra battery for when you’re camping f.ex… And it could be modular, accepting a camping to / flatbed/ whatever.
Ford has filed for a patent
https://electrek.co/2023/07/13/ford-patents-portable-charging-trailer-power-ev/
here is a french startup
https://europe.autonews.com/blogs/french-startup-uses-battery-trailers-cure-ev-range-angst
and my personal favorite (no trailer, but 2 extra wheels for battery weight. (30 mpg in 1980)
Not surprised people are working on it.
It’s a real shame that we can’t get swappable batteries in my opinion. Standardise the technology and retrofit gas stations. Maybe there could even be a smart way to use the batteries in storage as a buffer in the grid, needed with the increase of renewable energy.
Not yet for cars, but I’ll dream for now
Scooters with battery exchange/charging kiosk
Nicola already has a portable charging setup for its EV tractor trailers. At least they’re marketing one. I don’t know what’s actually in production.
But really there’s already an EV trailer with motors and a battery to make towing with an EV more possible. They picked a stupid name though. https://pebblelife.com/
I think the big advantage here is you could rent the doohickey, rather than buying a massive battery bank you’ll only use a few times a year.
why not both? make it a thing you rent when you need it that also extends the range of your EV when you are on a long road trip without making you haul around extra batteries/weight during your normal commute. If they did this with a data cable and a safety cable and allowed the caravan to share power with the tow car I think it’s actually a neat idea
The doohickey could still be attached physically to the car. It’s probably cheaper to add a hitch than the necessary tech for this to work remotely.
I can definitely see a use case for a powered dolly for vehicles with poor range or low towing capacity.
Of course it takes longer to charge. Who charges a diesel vehicle?
/s just in case.
I think a way better solution would be to just borrow a bigger car for those two days a year.
Everyday, car engineers move closer to the ultimate form of transportation: the train.
I like trains
Doctor Octagonapus, BWAAA!
Oh my God, it’s Alfred Molina?!
If trains are so great why is everyone smoking crack on them
Are there train tracks going to every campground in the country?
Didn’t think so.
A lack of infrastructure is not a failure of the train, it is a failure of us to properly utilise the train.
I mean obviously you would never build a train line to every campsite. That’s what busses are for.
Hauling camping gear on and off multiple forms of public transport sounds like a shit holiday, to be honest.
I’ve done it, was great would recommend.
Obviously I do think that there’s a place for cars in the world. But most transport happens along routes that could easily be trains with good infrastructure. Camping isn’t a good use of trains really tho lol
Public transport is great for commuting, or travelling between urban centres. The point of camping is usually to get away from urban centres.
The perks of sitting their without a care in the world while someone else drives the train is divine though.
People have different definitions of “camping”, so this thread is going to be a hot mess.
For example: I’ve done backpacking (“camping”), starting the trek from a train platform, and ending up somewhere in the wilderness. It absolutely works, but is going to be impossible or not at all to taste for a lot of people. That and infrastructure limits where you can go.
Meanwhile, some people define “camping” as something more like “tailgating”, which is where they pull up their vehicle right to the camping spot and may even sleep in the car. This fits with your take on things and I completely agree: this mode of camping would be a nightmare with trains, uber/lyft, and moving heavy a mile or more on foot.
The first example is a hiking trip.
This kind of extremism is really stupid and self-defeating
Shut up please you never you’re always spouting contrarian half statements that are just trying to bait people into arguments. What is the extremism in the comment you are referring to?
A lack of infrastructure is not a failure of the train, it is a failure of us to properly utilise the train.
I mean obviously you would never build a train line to every campsite. That’s what busses are for.
This is an extremist comment that posits no future for personal vehicles.
It’s neither contrarian nor bait to call out such statements as doing more harm than good.
No. You assume that calls for more trains and public transport is a call to eliminate personal vehicles. Those two things are not the same you made an illogical jump from we need better transit options to ban all cars. Here’s an idea what if better infrastructure took more cars off the road leading to less traffic for those who choose to keep a personal vehicle? Reading through your comments hurts my brain man half the time you seem like a level headed guy then you go off into left field call people communists and extremists just like that.
Yes I would literally always choose to have a personal vehicle.
I don’t really care about your opinion. I don’t think your opinions are valuable. Your opinion of me seems entirely based on whether or not you think I agree with you, and most of the time your assumption there is probably wrong
For instance, I am heavily in favor of increases in public/mass transportation.
The people I’m responding to self-identify as those things. They aren’t insults. They’re acknowledgements of reality
Just have three jacked trailers orbiting you like koopa shells
I’ll take 'solutions for problems that don’t exist ’ for $500, Alex.
You, with your greasy hair, and Dago mustache…
Owning an EV that can’t tow for any great distance is very much a problem that exists.
That’s not a problem that a small machine like this will fix though. The problem with EVs towing isn’t that they don’t have enough power to tow, it’s that the energy consumption goes up significantly due to changes in aerodynamics and the loss of regen braking. Petrol and diesel cars have the same problem, but can refuel quickly. EVs can’t.
Now imagine an autonomous trailer drone behind your EV. It’s most likely going to be electric, as most new automotive things are going to be electric by now. Then there are two options:
- You end up with a small thing that can’t go very far due to limited battery capacity.
- You end up with a gigantic machine that can go pretty far, but that’s in no way cheap or easy to store.
In the first case you might as well use your own EV to tow. In the second case you might as well just rent or buy a vehicle meant for towing. I don’t see how the economics of it are going to make sense.
Aero is very much fixable on these things. Sure you are not going to get zero losses but you can 100% get better than the 2 to 1 loss I get when I tow my caravan with my EV currently.
I don’t lose regen on mine when towing, where you getting that from? I cant use one pedal, but that uses the brakes so I don’t use that mode very often.
The good old airstream caravans despite being massively fat for their size actually get better miles per kwh and they aren’t even modelled to modern aero standards.
The other problem are caravans, particularly American caravans, are massively fat. A lot of US caravans aren’t actually towable within recommended limits by European cars.
Why do so many people think renting a vehicle when you already own one is cost effective, or a reasonable thing to do? Especially if you won’t be using it much once you arrive at your destination.
Whereas the tow bot can be put to work while you’re on holiday, and you still have transport.
Are you suggesting that the tow bot takes your camper to the site and then leaves? It’s like a municipal resource?
More like an Uber, but you get the idea.
I don’t buy a U-Haul truck just for the occasion that I’m moving, am I?
In a less snarky response, in case you can downscale your primary car to be more efficient and less costly, you can save significant amounts of money. In my country, weight, size, type of drivetrain and the sticker price all determine the amount of tax you pay on the vehicle. Getting a small, light vehicle instead of a big one you need for towing can definitely make sense financially, even if you are going to tow a caravan once a year and therefore have to rent a car to do so. Of course the individual circumstances really change a lot and in general people don’t do this due to convenience or the simple fact that they do this more often.
But you also missed the point of my reply. The point is that these tow bots will essentially be a second vehicle on their own. It will be expensive to buy one, it will be expensive to rent one and it will be expensive to own one. It won’t make sense as a product, even if you can still use your car when you arrive at your destination. The economics won’t work out, I’m pretty sure of that.
Why do so many people think renting a vehicle when you already own one is cost effective, or a reasonable thing to do?
The 5 year cost of a fairly base 2020 F150 is ~49k according to Kelly blue book - that’s fuel, maintainence, depreciation, loan interest, etc. The 5 year cost of either a 2020 Civic or a 2020 Chevy Bolt is $37k.
$12k / 5 years = $2,400/year. If you’d spend less than that a year, you’d be better off renting a truck when you need it and driving a cheaper vehicle daily.
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Do you not value your time at all, in this scenario? Renting a vehicle every time you need a truck is a massive time sink.
Think of how much extra you’d pay for a rental service that dropped the truck off at your house, picked it up, and handled all the annoying things like filling the car up or cleaning it out.
Then, just add that into your calculations. That number is going to depend on how far you live from rental places and how much you value your time. Ballpark it.
You are completely out to lunch, my friend.
You are completely out to lunch, my friend.
The right answer is to rent a truck. If someone has trailer/boat money, they absolutely can afford a rental for an excursion.
Sadly, until we see EVs that can compete toe-to-toe with vehicles that can haul stuff, gas-burning trucks are going to be with us a while. Shifting from an ownership to rental economy for such things would still be a substantial reduction in emissions.
If you want to move logistics to electric, this technology matters.
This is how they compete.
Ok…from where?
People use “WiFi” as a generic term for wireless protocols all the time, this almost certainly doesn’t use actual WiFi.
Yeah, the tensile strength of Wi-Fi is way too low to tow anything larger than a jet ski. You’ll need at least some vhf 5G CBRS to tow a camper.
I’m so confused
What’s to be confused about? This is basic metaphysical modulation spectroscopy theory.
Eh, even If it does, it shouldn’t be a problem. Relying on a wireless link that could fail due to interference or jamming for actual control would be Musk-level insane.
The hitchbot would need to be capable of visually following the lead vehicle, possibly using something like a big QR code for identification and tracking.
The wireless link could be for telemetry like range and non-critical controls like “stay here” and “start following”.
If the link fails, you get a big warning to stop ASAP but the bot keeps following.
So… Ethernet?
Maybe, maybe not
Fascinating.
Yeah it would probably use IR
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In Europe, where nobody fell for the lies of the car manufacturers that you would need a big fat truck just to tow a caravan, we just hang them legally and without issues to our cars.
LOL, just commented that I had a hitch installed for $175 on my 2002 convertible. Works great. I’ve towed trailers and small boats all over.
This would conceivably have a much higher rating than your convertible though.
It’s like…people just think of the worst fucking ideas that are possible to imagine…& other assholes KEEP GIVING THEM MONEY for the worst ideas possible. Is this real life?
bus enter the chat
“hey guys, I know yall hate me because poor people can use me but it seems like this whole self driving car thing isn’t working out because it requires an absurd amount of new technology to work perfectly… you know if you just put a moderate amount of money into me I could solve most mass transit problems right?”
mob of angry suburban karens swarm the bus, light it on fire and tip it over
Its not about solving problems. Its about using existing problems to make money without solving them.
My car goes from where I am, to where I want to be, when I want to go there, regardless of time or location.
Buses will never come close to this level of convenience.
My car goes from where I am, to where I want to be, when I want to go there, regardless of time or location.
Hahahaha absolutely not… well maybe in your fast and furious fantasy it does, in the real world everyone else has cars and wants to get places too so you end up in huge amounts of traffic going anywhere. Anywhere worth going becomes inundated with traffic to the point that it massively decreases people’s quality of life, anywhere with enough car infrastructure to actually handle the amount of cars on the road these days is fundamentally ruined by said infrastructure (8 lane highways, massive suburban sprawl with no density, culture or thought in general to pedestrians) and not worth going to. Cars make cities extremely loud (they are by far the biggest sources of the noise you stereotypically associate with cities), unsafe, difficult to navigate and destroy air quality all while taking up the vast majority of space on a street (and making the remaining space miserable to exist as a pedestrian in).
In places that have good mass transit people literally live a more vibrant existence with a higher quality of life than you because the design of the spaces they inhabit doesn’t prioritize cars over humans.
And before someone says “I live in the middle of nowhere South Dakota mass transit will never work”, good for you, the overwhelming majority of USians live in places NOT like where you live in the US. Keep driving your car, this isn’t a discussion about you. For the rest of us living in population centers, cars and especially self driving cars are just sad misguided obsessions with trying to solve a problem by doubling down on doing the very thing that causes the problem.
Tl:DR
Yes. See “Fyre Festival” for more examples.
This is pure poetry, with steady crescendo!
I turned my laptop on this afternoon and my wifi couldn’t connect because my laptop couldn’t find my wifi network.
Took two goes.
So now imagine you are driving at seventy miles an hour down the motorway, and your car loses contact with your cararvan…
I’ve been battling Wi-Fi issues with my soundbar for a week now and because Wi-Fi won’t work properly it’s struggling to remember that it’s supposed to turn on with the TV…
The worst part is it wasn’t an issue with the ISP at my old place so I’m close to the point where I’ll have to go and buy a rooter to bypass their Wi-Fi…
TL;DR: Wi-Fi towing is fucking moronic.
And then there’s a turn ahead.
You can only watch helplessly as your WiFi enabled caravan drives straight into Dairy Queen.
What about wifi jammers?
One asshole with a radio jammer will cause an accident. This could be exploitable by nation state actors in specific scenarios if this gained popularity. Bad bad idea and should be discouraged. Towing should be physical-driven with interconnecting hardware.
I fail to see the usecase in “hitchless towing”. Anyone any idea?
I agree. Changing the oil through wi-fi on the other hand, that sounds neat
I guess if you have a sedan or small car that doesn’t have a hitch? But if you have a trailer you probably have a vehicle to tow it.
The only benefit of the tech required I can imagine would be to allow the computer to reverse the controls of the trailer when reversing the car (like video game flight sticks can) so that the human doesn’t have to process reversing their trailer any differently than they normally in the vehicle.
It would also eliminate the hitch from the vehicle, so there would be no vehicle stress from towing.
This could all be done and still have a physical connection to the truck as a failsafe.
The other thing that springs to mind is you could use a little commuter car with this, so you don’t have to drive a big F350 all the time just because you tow sometimes.
Why this is better than having a truck and a small car, and only using the truck when you need it, I don’t know.
If the towed vehicle moves on its own power, you need less force from the towing car.
Yes, removing the need to buy a huge truck because you tow an RV a few times a year.
This also just seems to be a stepping stone technology for semi truck caravans as well. I can see a scenario with a ‘pilot truck’ that has a few people in it guiding a 20 + long caravan of trailers. Allows for semi autonomous behavior while still having people there to address the occasional problems.
Once again, we’ve invented the train.
Can a train split of to 20 different last mile delivery locations that change depending on the day and dynamically add and remove cars throughout transit?
Do you really think that freight is the end all be all for logistics for a country as diverse as the us for example?
People like them are utterly convinced they’re a genius that has figured it all out, and they can’t be told otherwise.
Same energy as conspiracy theorists.
Almost every single thing anyone buys in their entire life is on a truck at one point.
This could potentially revolutionize the chase for an EV semi
Truck trains already exist though. How does this improve anything?
Less drivers, better control, etc. Pulling multiple trailers is incredibly demanding for the driver and the rig and is limited to a few trailers.
Caravanning multiple rigs means drivers or driver pairs for every rig, meaning 20 trucks potentially need 40 drivers.
Simple and dynamic hitching means faster turnarounds when loading and unloading
There are tons of things that technology like this can improve.
But then you need the giant engine in the RV. Just get an RV that you can drive, and tow a small car instead?
Ok replace rv with literally anything else, boat, parade float, motorcycle trailer, car trailer, etc.
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I would like it if everything I did went without a hitch.
🥁
“where nothing can possiblie go wrong. I mean, possibly go wrong. That’s the first time something has gone wrong…”
Ok, but WiFi connection isn’t strong enough so how about connecting them by a cable, which transports the data…
I love this idea. We could use a rigid metal that conducts sound waves. Steel maybe?
As for the data cable, we would need something to control the taillights, so I’m thinking just a basic set up with copper wire wrapped in an insulator?
This is so crazy it might just work.
Future is going to be thrilling
A hitch is a few hundred dollars and a few hours of work. This is going to be a few thousand dollars. Who would use this?
Few thousand? You basically have to buy most of an entire car as your hitch, including the most expensive parts like the engine or the motor and battery. This will be a few tens of thousands of dollars.
Yeah, the additional cost to get that towing ability is nothing to sniff at, and it narrows down your vehicle choices a lot.
Nah! I had the local U-Haul place put a hitch on my 2002 Spyder (Mitsubishi Eclipse) for $175, including wiring. Towed my boat around a bit, but not advisable!
Still, I can hook my trailers to it and tow stuff all over. Just have a look at the tow capacity for your vehicle and don’t go nuts.
Yes, that’s a regular hitch you’re describing.
This hitchless system would require the boat trailer to also have an entire motor and drivetrain. Effectively, a whole second vehicle, removing the main benefit of a trailer.
That benefit being that it doesn’t have a motor and drivetrain!
I could probably think of something dumber, but it would hurt my brain to do so
I mean, it has a valid use case - you have a car with no towing capacity, like a sports car, and you have a caravan that you use a couple times a year for vacation or whatever. Normally you’d need to own a truck as well, or instead of the sports car daily a truck for the few times you actually need it. With this thing, you could “haul” your caravan with anything, and then when you get to your camp site or whatever you’d have your normal car to drive around at the location with. Shit, you could ride a motorcycle to your campsite with your caravan following you, that would be cool as hell.
But you have the obvious safety and security issues and potential for technical malfunctions, all of which would be super dangerous with no second layer of protection. You have the issue of leaving your caravan behind at the site while you drive your car to the shop and your shit getting stolen. You have a second power train to worry about and a second vehicle to maintain and fuel (or in this case charge, which might take a minute, especially if you are also driving an EV with it, then you’ve got 2 EV’s to charge at each stop).
But the obvious man…if the software tether fails, or freezes, or locks up, or has any kind of issue, somebody is gonna die. It will never, ever get approved.
You don’t NEED a truck. Here in Germany, VW Golfs or Škoda Octavians tow camping trailers all the time.
We’ve (US folks) been told for so long that anything other than a truck can’t haul something for so long that it’s just ingrained at this point. I don’t know how we’d go about undoing that.
People who own cars with a low tow rating, or poor range.
You…do understand a truck is a normal part of that equation too, right?
How? You can use the sedan or compact car you (presumably) already own and use to get to and fro.
…you need a truck normally to tow other large objects.
And this system now requires two trucks.
No, it requires zero trucks if it’s a virtual hitch.
