T8 towing
 

Hi forum,
Do any of you have any experience or knowledge of towing with a T8?
Was wondering if there is anything special that I should account for. I already towed few hundred kilometers when I bought my caravan and now I am getting ready for my holiday. Beside setting the suspension to dynamic (according to the manual) I kept everything in default. When the battery is full I can even tow fully electric up to about 50km/h (2000 kg caravan :) )

Thanks for any advice

Lots of money and plan your file stops!

I am currently in the South of France having towed 1100 miles down here and averaged just over 16mpg, filling up on the motorways at €1.76 a litre hurts like hell. The biggest issue is that the car has no idea what gear to stay in, it stays in third or fourth most of the time, even when I shift up on the paddle about 20 seconds later it reverts to automatic again and drops down.

I have a large caravan but the car clearly isn’t cut out for towing, I did the same journey previous years in an X5 and then Range Rover Sport and the journey was far better in them.

Lots of money and plan your fuel stops!

I am currently in the South of France having towed 1100 miles down here and averaged just over 16mpg, filling up on the motorways at €1.76 a litre hurts like hell. The biggest issue is that the car has no idea what gear to stay in, it stays in third or fourth most of the time, even when I shift up on the paddle about 20 seconds later it reverts to automatic again and drops down.

I have a large caravan but the car clearly isn’t cut out for towing, I did the same journey previous years in an X5 and then Range Rover Sport and the journey was far better in them.

On our way back up from the south now, did 224 miles yesterday and averaged 15.1 mpg :angry_smile:

spend £60000 on a car and worry about temporary fuel costs ? you weren't hanging around either i bet .. stick to 50 mph and all will be a lot better .

Surely a Range Rover Sport and an X5 wouldn't do better mpg ?

A few assumptions there maybe, what makes you think they weren't hanging around?

If I had to put my money on it, I'd guess a similarly aged RR or X5 could potentially return better fuel economy while towing, particularly if they were 6-cylinder variants. Ultimately, the T8 is efficient in a relatively narrow band or driving situations and journey lengths, after that you're carrying round a bank of largely flat batteries with a 2 litre 4 pot engine, which is going to have to work hard to pull a caravan. I feel in this situation there is no replacement for displacement.

:wq

I cant imagine you doing 50 mph on the motorway :-) over 60 even without a caravan the wind resistance builds up massively , even though when driving it , it feels like there is no wind resistance at all .

Yes any hybrid is useless on the motorway even without a caravan .. i guess you buy the car to suit your everyday needs , hopefully when you get home you can benefit from a lot more electric power . No lack of power and torque from a supercharged and turbocharged 320 + bhp ( with empty batteries ) car ... it should match a lot of V8 engines ..

Hi guys,

I’m back from the trip and switched my VOC app to imperial, so I can report here :teeth_smile:

In total I had three trips, about 170 miles each. The consumption was about 25 mpg. Each trip I started with a full battery. The majority of the miles were done on highway at legal speed (50 mph).

I guess the results are as expected. The only problem I had with the car was that I had to always use the speed limiter.... otherwise I would have reached 130 km/h without even noticing :)

L.E. We were two adults in the car with less than 40 kg baggage and the caravan weight was a bit below 1850... maybe this justifies the higher mpg compared to ratkat’s

25mpg is the best I have acheived in my XC90 D5 power pulse towing 1500kg 2 adults + two 11/12 year olds, but being three females they packed everything for every occasion. Plus wine lager and gallons and gallons of drinking water.