Author: French Fries

If you ask me what has been the biggest headache for our company recently, then it must be the office location issue.

I believe 99.89% of bosses cannot ignore the cost of office leasing, especially for start-up teams based in Beijing like us. Let’s put aside the high rent for now. Our teacher Chang has listed the four pain points we face:

1. Beijing is too big, and it’s hard to find a suitable location that accommodates everyone.
2. We travel a lot, so there are usually few people working in the office.
3. The distance is too far, and the boss’s daily commute of 90km seriously hinders the company’s productivity.
4. There aren’t enough shooting locations in the limited office space, which we’ve always sought to improve.

Coincidentally, after learning about the release date of “The Wandering Earth 2,” we had an idea – if Liu Cixin can use a planetary engine to make the Earth wander, then why can’t we use an electric car and a trailer to wander around the office?

Even more coincidentally, MotorTrend, our American counterpart, actually tested how far this type of office can “wander” on the highway.

Size depends on tonnage

First, let’s answer a question – why use an electric car as the trailer?

Apart from the fact that we’re a media focused on new energy, from a practical perspective, the large battery carried by an electric car is a perfect solution for office power supply, especially when the car operates quietly.

Secondly, several new electric cars recently launched on the market have native towing capabilities, such as the Nio ES7 in China and the Ford electric pickup truck F-150 Lightning abroad.

MotorTrend tested the F-150 Lightning.

Since we’re going to use it to tow a trailer, the first thing we need to know is how much weight we can tow.

According to the information found on Ford’s official website, the F-150 Lightning has four different models, each with its own towing capacity as shown in the table below.

The towing capacity of the vehicle starts at 5000 pounds, which is about 2.27 tons, and can go up to 10000 pounds or 5.54 tons.Doubling the towing capacity certainly depends on “financial power.”

We can achieve a maximum towing capacity of 5.54 tons by selecting a larger capacity extended battery pack and the Max Trailer Tow package on the XLT or Lariat models. To achieve this capability, users need to pay at least $75,094, which is almost twice as much as the starting price of less than $40,000. It seems that the towing capacity and price of the F-150 Lightning are proportional.

This tonnage of RV is only about 10 meters long and can easily accommodate 10 people. It is simply tailored for our company.

Wandering Time

The tested model this time was the top-of-the-line PLATINUM edition F-150 Lightning priced at $92,669, but the Max Trailer Tow package was not installed, resulting in a towing capacity of 3.49 tons.

MotorTrend will use this car to tow large, medium, and small RVs that are 10 meters long and weigh 3.3 tons, 8.5 meters long and weigh 2.4 tons, and 5.2 meters long and weigh 1.4 tons, respectively.

The test conditions simulate the high-speed cruising of ordinary users, with the air conditioning set to 22℃ auto, the headlights turned on, and a favorite song played. The speed is controlled at about 105km/h, so let’s start running.

Thanks to the output characteristics of the dual motors with over 1000Nm of torque, towing with the F-150 Lightning is quite easy.

As the saying goes, “there is always a trade-off.” The electric motor takes advantage at low speeds, but gives it all back to the gasoline engine at higher speeds.

Since the F-150 Lightning is not equipped with a gearbox, it cannot obtain greater torque by downshifting like gasoline trucks do for better high-speed acceleration.

Therefore, if you want to overtake on the highway, you may need to be a little more patient.

Ford hopes to alleviate the aforementioned shortcomings through some more convenient and easy-to-use new technologies. Blind spot monitoring can cover the entire 10-meter-long trailer. The PLATINUM model is equipped with a towing technology package, including a trailer brake controller, 360-degree surround view, and Pro Trailer Backup Assist traction assisted system. With it, the driver no longer needs to consider how to turn the steering wheel when reversing with a trailer. Just turn the knob to set the desired reverse direction, and the system will automatically control the steering wheel.

How Far Can It Roam?

Before announcing the trailer endurance of the F-150 Lightning, let’s take a look at its single-vehicle high-speed endurance mileage.

F-150 Lightning Platinum version can achieve 483km under EPA test conditions. EPA cyclic test conditions include both low and high speeds, and we all know that high speed is absolutely the nemesis of electric vehicles. Therefore, MotorTrend independently tested the high-speed endurance of the F-150 Lightning and finally obtained a result of 410km.

The single-vehicle endurance is solid enough, but what about with a trailer? Before the test drive, they knew that the high-speed endurance of the vehicle would be halved when towing a load.

But in fact, it is more than just halved.

Even with the lightest and smallest trailer attached, the F-150 Lightning can only achieve 185km of endurance in the aforementioned high-speed conditions. When the trailer becomes medium or large, this number will further decrease to 161km and 145km, respectively.

However, from this result, it can be analyzed that the weight of the trailer is not the biggest factor affecting endurance, but the size of the frontal area is.

The table below shows that the weight of the small-sized RV is 40% lower than that of the medium-sized RV, the frontal area is 12.5% lower, and the cruising range is 15% longer. This conclusion can also be drawn after comparing the data between the small-sized and large-sized, medium-sized and large-sized RVs.

This means that if we want our office to travel further, we can only choose the elongated-shaped RV.

And if we want a more spacious office space, we can only wander around within Beijing.

It seems that the office wandering plan has encountered a small distance limitation. Fortunately, the above results can only be regarded as a rough reference at most, because we cannot currently buy Ford F-150 Lightning in China.

But there is still hope. For example, we can use the more practical NIO ES7 to test the towing range.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.