Could An EV Make A Good Trail Rig?

Full electric is the future of the automotive industry. But what about the camping industry?

Automotive technology has a history of staying stagnant and relatively unchanged before leaping ahead decades into the future, tossing their predecessors into the textbooks in a relatively short period of time. Carburetors, conventional brakes, and bias ply tires were all phased out with breathtaking immediacy with the advent of electronic fuel injection, anti-lock brakes, and radial tires. Closely trailing the cell phone and personal electronics industry, the automotive industry is one of the most rapidly changing markets in the world. Models are facelifted and refreshed every twelve months, and in the midst of all of this change one big step looms on the horizon: full electric.

With the hybrid marketplace booming and electric cars coming into their own, the idea is no longer theoretical. In previous years, green vehicles were somewhat undesirable. They were economy cars with hybrid powertrains, so you got the same minimal features, cheap materials, and bland design but with a hefty price tag. But today, even base-model hybrids boast loads of tech and luxury features. Teslas and Nissan Leafs can be seen running around all over the place, and several manufacturers are scrambling to get a piece of the high-voltage pie. While that’s all good and well for the pavement princes and princesses, what about the lot of us who prefer adventure off the grid?

Tesla’s Cybertruck is among the most famous offerings of a battery-powered dirt cruiser. The polarizing design can’t detract from Tesla’s success on the sales floor with their other models; the company clearly knows what they’re doing. Jeep has released a concept of an electric Wrangler, and GM is bringing the Hummer name back as a luxurious GMC EV. In this article we look at how attractive full-electric would be to the average camper, and if any of them could dethrone the mighty Wrangler, 4Runner, or Tacoma.

Note: I’m going to be using a late model Toyota 4Runner and a new Tesla Model X in this comparison as they represent the best of their respective niche; the 4Runner will represent the best fossil fuel vehicle you can buy, and the Model X will represent the best EV. While the Wrangler might be a better out-of-the-box off-roader, the 4Runner’s luxury amenities bring it closer to the Model X’s market. This makes the comparison slightly more apples to apples. I use a Tesla as the benchmark for an EV because their hardware and reputation has made them the standard of full electric. Let’s begin.

Reliability

With any adventure rig, reliability plays a huge factor. Toyota’s reputation for toughness has made them a staple in the off-road segment since the 1980s. While Jeep might prove to have better suspension geometry, it’s Toyota’s bulletproof powertrains that have kept them ahead of the pack for decades.

When you start getting into electric motors versus internal combustion engines, reliability would seem to improve vastly. Motors have fewer moving parts and less required maintenance; i.e., fewer things to go wrong. You never have to worry about coming down hard on a rock and putting a hole in your oil pan, or an engine overheating and spraying coolant all over the trail. Aside from the drivetrain and suspension components, which would all be identical in design to a gas vehicle, electric seems like a wave of simplicity and reliability.

Reliability, however, decreases with use just like a conventional automobile. Each vehicle with an electric motor still requires gears that need lubricated, bearings that need greased, and rubber bushings that degrade. It may have an electric motor, but it still has the same struts, sway bars, and steering knuckles as any other regular car. Even a fully-loaded Tesla can’t disobey the laws of physics, and things will break down eventually. A 2021 Model X boasts a basic warranty one year longer and twice the mileage as a 2021 Toyota 4Runner, but neither of those coverages help you when you’re 40 miles downstream in the middle of the brush. Once again, we go back to that little motor, which is the operative difference between an electric and a gas powered. Suspension and brakes are universally identical in terms of fundamentals, so having fewer parts to fail in the powertrain could be game-changing.

The biggest hurdle is those pesky little computers. It takes dozens of modules just for radar cruise control to function properly. The BCM needs to see a seat belt is buckled, the ABS module needs to see perfect wheel speed signals, the RCDLR needs to recognize the key; the list goes on and on. Despite all the R&D that goes into these cars, all manufacturers still release pages of recalls and service bulletins. Sometimes it’s simple things that can be solved with a 5-minute re-flash of a module. Other times, it’s major things like insufficient welds, erroneous programming, or improper wiring routing. I can remember a recall for the first-gen Chevy Cruze where the battery ground strap fastened onto a painted body stud. The recall required the technician to simply scratch the paint off of the stud and install a new ground strap and nut; a simple repair for a ridiculous engineering issue that never should have made it past development testing in the first place. Tesla also has a reputation of poor build quality in certain models. Customers have reported ill-fitting body panels and one customer even experienced their glass roof fly off on the freeway just hours after picking up their new car.

Despite all of these quality control issues, Tesla is still sprinting ahead with sales. The horror stories, while significant, seem to be isolated and not reflect the average product experience. They moved nearly 180,000 units in 2020 alone, a year when car-buying took a plunge due to the pandemic, and reviews are generally favorable. Theoretically, an EV could stand up to the abuse required during long-hauls in the backcountry. The next question is how much of that long-haul it could even make.

Range

Range is one of the biggest limitations of electric vehicles. A new Model X will be gasping for breath at around 371 miles, compared to 437 for a basic 4Runner. That range, however, is a calculated range of combined highway and city. In the backcountry you’re traveling at lower speeds, climbing hills, maneuvering around boulders, and clambering over rocks. And you’re doing all of this loaded up with your tent, survival gear, fishing equipment, or hunting supplies. All of this chips away at your range. Load is the killer of range, be it battery or gasoline.

Load doesn’t just refer to a vehicle’s curb weight and all of your belongings. Load is any strain on the vehicle’s forward momentum, and also dramatically increases when climbing that mountain road while towing the teardrop camper. In a passenger SUV you could see your 22 mpg on the highway plummet to 12 depending on the steepness of the grade and what you’re hauling. Combine that with the parasitic horsepower loss of running a mechanical fan and AC compressor, and you might be dipping into single digit fuel economy. A new Tesla Model X already has a lot of heft to drag up that mountain, tipping the scales at 5,400-5,800 lbs., compared to 4,400-4,800 for a new 4Runner. To put that in perspective, the heaviest 4Runner is still 600 lbs. lighter than even the most featherweight of Model Xs. If we assume that the efficiency drops at the same rate when climbing that hill loaded up with supplies, you could slash your EV's range in half to only 185 miles. That would be the equivalent of a Honda Accord getting 11 mpg. The Tesla makes almost twice the torque as the 4Runner’s V6, so the Tesla uses less of its total power potential to climb the same obstacle. This could theoretically translate to better range, since the 4Runner is having to work harder to achieve the same task. But when the gauge does start to peg, refueling is far easier with the Toyota.

It’s not just a matter of searching for Supercharger stations in the backcountry; an exercise in futility by itself. Gasoline and diesel vehicles have an additional strength of the ability to carry surplus fuel. You can’t carry a spare battery for your EV, and even the most monolithic portable generators don’t have the muscle to charge an entire vehicle. Contrast this to a fully fueled 4Runner with four jerry cans strapped to the roof basket; the range of the big ‘Yota just doubled. For commuter sedan buyers who don’t stray more than a couple dozen miles from the wall outlet, EVs make a lot of sense. But for us, the further away from home our vehicle allows us to get, the better. The ability to carry spare fuel on the trail and extend your tether to the gas station is a massive advantage for explorers. For some people, it might be the decision-maker by itself.

Cost

We all know that the true motivator for car purchasing ultimately comes down to a matter of cost. No matter how many standard features and off road accessories are available on a 2021 TRD Pro, that $60,000 window sticker and dealer markup still deters most adventurers. The average price of a new car in the U.S. is around $36,000, which is still a massive chunk of money. But when we start getting into EVs the paradigm doesn’t just shift, it falls off the cliff.

Tesla’s most economical vehicle, the Model 3, rings the register at $37,000; just a hair over the median price in America. The ticket only increases from there. The Model Y stickers at $49,000, the Model S at $69,000, and the Model X demands a whopping $79,000. Keep in mind, these are all base prices. Therein lies my main complaint with the current lineup of EVs; they come across not as cars, but as toys for the wealthy.

The average adventurer is wholly priced out of the market for anything but a Model 3 or Nissan Leaf, which starts at $31,000. But you’re not going to be able to hit any trails in those two low-slung vehicles that couldn’t also be tackled by a $3,000 Honda Accord with 250,000 miles on the clock. For those of us that want a break from civilization, electric pickings are slim. The price of cars is only going to increase; that aforementioned Hummer might seem like the ideal adventure EV, but at a colossal $112,000 you can forget it. I don’t know about you, but if I paid six-figures for a shiny piece of road jewelry then I’m not going to want to rub it up against shale and thorn bush. Tesla will offer the Cybertruck in a price range of $39,000 - $69,000 depending on the motor and packages which affect the vehicle’s effective range. Its main competitor in the camping market would be the Toyota Tacoma, which ranges from the $26,000 fleet truck SR to the $45,000 trail warrior TRD Pro. If the base model has enough substance, then the “Polygon-Pickup” could be the vehicle to bring full electric to the trail. But once it’s there, the question of range and cost repeats itself. With the base model’s range estimated at a below-average 300 miles, the odds aren’t looking good. Could a $39,000 base model Cybertruck convince buyers to forget about that $27,000 Tacoma SR5? I don’t think so; the value just isn’t there.

As with my previous article on the Ford Bronco’s attempt at stealing sales from Jeep, Tesla needs to be able to convince people to stop looking at the 4Runner or Land Rover they always wanted. The Cybertruck would not only need to meet the needs of a Cybertruck buyer, but also of a Tacoma buyer. This is how companies can usurp sales from their competition and move more units; they do their competition's job better. The Model S has successfully converted many buyers from the BMW and Mercedes sales floors. But explorers aren’t always as easily swayed, especially when the window sticker starts climbing towards the Beverly Hills end of the spectrum.

Longevity

People buy adventure vehicles because it fits their lifestyle. It’s the lifelong adventurer, one that’s been going into the woods for decades, who saddles up with a 2002 Wrangler on 37-inch BFGs and a fancy Warn winch. People like us aren’t going to stop exploring, and we want a vehicle that’s going to last as long as possible. Commuter sedan buyers change cars as fast as they change their phones, but it's not unusual to see a nature junkie with the same beat up Forester they bought new in 2001 or the same 1988 Toyota pickup they drove in high school. With today's car buyer having a bad habit of acquiring and discarding every few years, what kind of longevity could you expect out of a new EV?

Tesla rates their batteries as having an eight-year lifespan and estimates actual longevity being twice that. While a 16-year-old battery is revolutionary, you’d call a fuel tank that degraded in 16 years pathetic. EVs haven’t been around long enough for us to know how they’re truly going to age. Mileage is one thing, time is another.

The commercial freight industry is the perfect place to look for exaggerated mileage, time, and wear. These days, Class 8 trucks can go 8,000 engine hours and over 500,000 miles before needing severe duty repair. Depending on the loads they’re hauling, a commercial truck driver can canvas that time and distance in only five years. What will the cells of a Tesla Semi’s batteries look like after five years of hauling 80,000 pounds coast to coast? What affect does years of salt from the coast have? What about years of arid desert heat and sun, sunbelt humidity, and bitter northern cold? The durability testing departments have absolutely considered these, but they’re simply factors whose answers we won’t know until that much time has passed. Theory needs to be proven through practice in order to know the truth.

Wrap Up

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m fanboy-ing the Toyota and ripping apart the Tesla. My point isn’t to demonize the EV, but to let articles like this stoke the minds of people. Perhaps by bringing up these obstacles that the electric market needs to overcome, we can empower the manufacturer to climb those obstacles better. Let me close by giving a simple answer to the question I posed. Could an EV make a good trail rig? Not yet.

Currently, there’s a technological gap. We don’t have the battery technology to give electric vehicles the range and efficiency that adventurers require, nor do we have the technology to reduce the cost of these vehicles to the level of the average explorer. Those two points are huge. But we will get there, it’s only a matter of time. The automotive industry has not yet been stumped by the demands of the camping industry, and I suspect this time is no different.