The “Peak of Mount Stupid” – What I Learned Pulling a Trailer Across Texas With My Bolt EUV

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The journey to acquiring new knowledge and skills is not a steady climb. Why? Because it's easy to be confident too early. If you actually know nothing about something and then learn a little bit, that little bit represents an infinite increase. When you look back at where you once were, you may feel like you're learning fast and you know A LOT, but you don't know what you don't know.

This idea, an adaptation of the Dunning-Kruger effect, has become a meme, with several versions of this image floating around the Internet:

My “Peak of Mount Stupid”

When I first got my little trailer last year and started building on it, I had a pretty solid plan. Using A Better Route Planner, I drove the trailer on a 50-mile trip while recording data to see what type of energy the trailer was using (4.17 miles/kWh) for future trip planning. With that data in hand, the software can take care of the rest.

When I made some additions to the trailer this year and added a more aerodynamic front box, I took it for a quick drive and it showed slightly less energy consumption, leading me to believe that my old energy estimate was a good, safe planning figure!

When we left El Paso with the trailer, things were going pretty well, but only about 60 miles. Interstate 10 follows the Rio Grande for about that distance, but then the highway leaves the valley and heads into the rest of West Texas. At that point there is a steep climb out of the valley, up to the mesa, and then to a pass next to the Quitman Mountains. The road climbs more than 300 meters in just a few kilometers.

As I climbed down the river, I noticed that energy levels were dropping much faster than ABRP had predicted. I would have continued monitoring with ABRP, but a few days earlier it stopped supporting my OBD Bluetooth dongle, so I had to rely on the guess-o-meter to compensate instead. First I fell on a front road. Then I took it a little slower. Then I stayed on the front road most of the way from Sierra Blanca to Van Horn (the next charger).

The last ten kilometers I had to get back on the highway, but by then the car was already reducing the available power. With my hazards flashing and trucks blowing past me on a mountainous stretch of road just before Van Horn, I struggled at 45 mph until the descent came. With much sluggishness, I pulled onto the front road with only a handful of kilowatts of power and rolled into the Days Inn parking lot as the battery's last 'bar' flashed and the gaming meter read only 'Low'.

At this point I assumed that I had gotten a good estimate for the flat sections, but that I would need to add about 15% extra on sections with big climbs. This worked for two more stretches between the charging stops from Van Horn to Pecos and from Pecos to Midland.

The valley of despair

As I approached the next charging stop in Sweetwater, I noticed my power was running low again. So, as I did on the climb out of El Paso, I slowed down a bit. Then I slowed down some more, as I noticed that the remaining miles on Waze were staying above the estimated remaining miles. The power decreased, and then a little more, leaving me with only 4 kW. As I climbed the last overpass before my exit, the last bar on the gis-o-meter stopped flashing and the car informed me that there was no juice left in it at all.

Luckily I was still going about 50 miles per hour, and it was all downhill to the exit, which was also downhill. After exiting the highway, I used the remaining kinetic energy to pull into a parking lot and parked next to a cell phone store, right in front of an electrical outlet. The people at the store told me I could plug it in, but the plug didn't work, leaving me about a quarter mile away from Walmart and Electrify America.

What saved me from getting towed to the station and leaving my trailer in a strange parking lot was that I had a Jackery 3000 Pro in the trailer charging from the Bolt during charging stops. With a 3 kWh storage capacity, I was able to add about 0.7 kWh to the car in 30 minutes while I went to a nearby gas station to use the restroom and grab a drink.

I arrived at the station feeling quite depressed about things. I thought I knew what I was doing, but it turned out I didn't. So I took a break while the car was charging and decided to work on dinner in the little kitchen I had built into the trailer. I also made some minor repairs to the trailer (which also proved to me that I knew less than I thought).

The slope of enlightenment

Once I finished eating my pizza and my humble pie, I decided to rethink things. Rather than worry about the 4.17 km/kWh estimate I wished the Bolt had towed the small trailer for, I decided to get back to basics. I had tracked the actual energy consumed over the last 700 km at speeds of 100 to 110 km/h, and came up with a speed of 3.3 km/kWh. Entering that reference figure, ABRP's consumption didn't quite match my actual energy used over the past few stops, so I lowered it some more. And lowered it some more and increased it some more until ABRP produced results that matched previous trajectories.

The final figure was approximately 3.15 km/kWh. It's a disappointing figure, but it proved accurate over the next few hundred kilometers and gave me extra energy at some stops.

More charging stops are definitely needed

Once the software was accurate, I became quite confident in EV travel. I could go anywhere! But when my tool stopped working, I had to go back to what new EV drivers often face. Instead of having a plan, I longed for the days when I could drive until the needle got closer to L and then go to the next gas station.

During the two worst charging stops I passed a number of gas stations. As I climbed from the Rio Grande to the Sierra Blanca, I passed the Traveling Tiger truck stop. That would certainly have been a nice place for an EV charger! Later, in Texas, I passed rural gas stations (the few that remain) and wished I could stop for a charge around that time.

Granted, towing a Bolt EUV is a nasty edge case, but it shows that there's a lot more work to be done on EV charging infrastructure. There need to be A LOT more stations and a lot more stalls, and almost all of them need to work perfectly for the average person to feel more comfortable with electric vehicles. So there is a lot of work to do!

Featured image by Jennifer Sensiba.