EV Towing 3 Years Later: Rivian R1S vs Silverado EV

Three years ago I towed a travel trailer down to Hilton Head, South Carolina in my Rivian R1S, and charging along the way was genuinely stressful. This summer I ran almost the exact same trip again, but this time in my Silverado EV RST with the Max battery pack and a slightly bigger trailer. The question I wanted to answer was simple: has EV towing actually gotten better in the real world, or does it just look better on a spec sheet?

The two setups, three years apart

The old trip was the 2023 Rivian R1S Quad Gen 1 pulling a slightly smaller travel trailer, and I'd only had the R1S about a month when I took it on that trip. 

The new trip is the 2024 Silverado EV RST First Edition with Max battery pack pulling our Grand Design Imagine 2970 RL, which is the larger of the two trailers. Same general route, same destination, same kind of overnight family drive. I mixed in clips from the original Rivian run so I could compare the two head to head: how stressful it feels, how easy the chargers are to get into, and how much planning the whole thing takes.

That's the honest way to look at this. It isn't really Rivian versus Silverado. It's a look at how much real-world EV towing has changed in a pretty short window.

Efficiency drops hard when you put a trailer behind you

On the way down I was a little disappointed. I kept seeing 0.7 to 0.8 mi/kWh, and 0.7 is not what I normally get. I went through the usual checklist trying to figure out why. I'd checked tire pressure before leaving. We had three people in the truck, all our gear in the trailer, about 10 gallons of fresh water on board so we could use the trailer restroom overnight, and a few gallons in the black tank. We were running the AC. Mild overnight temps should have been close to a best-case scenario, and it still wasn't great.

My best guess for the down leg was crosswinds. My weather app showed a sustained 5 mph wind with gusts up to 15, blowing across the vehicle. On the return trip I reset the trip meter and watched more carefully, and efficiency climbed to 0.8 and even 0.9 mi/kWh. Cooler air in the upper 60s, headwinds and crosswinds, and rough construction zones that bump up rolling resistance all moved the number around. The pattern I've settled on with this truck and a trailer this size: expect around 0.8 to 0.9 normally, and 0.7 when it's windy.

Charging while towing is still the hard part

The battery situation is better, but the charging experience is still where these trips live or die. A few stops stood out for the right reasons. The Pilot Flying J in Kenly, NC has pull-through chargers, which are so much easier than pulling up and blocking stalls when you've got a trailer hooked up. The Mercedes 400 kW chargers in Florence were the fastest I hit on this route, not the cheapest, but quick. And the Tesla Superchargers in Walterboro, SC were genuinely good for towing because you can pull up alongside them instead of nosing in.

And then there's Walterboro

The Electrify America in Walterboro, South Carolina is the one that reminds you how far this still has to go. Three years ago I sat there over three hours charging the Rivian. This time I didn't even bother. I used the Tesla Supercharger nearby instead.  I was able to pull 100 kW consistently.  Not great speed at all but much better than my previous experiences in Walterboro.

What the charging actually costs and how fast it ramps

Pricing is all over the map. At one stop I saw 40 cents per kWh, with 30 cents showing as the member price. At a fast stop I was pulling 348 kW at 24% state of charge, and my rough math was that the same fill at a GM Energy station would have run closer to $100.

On the charge curve, the truck held 250 kW all the way to 60%, then ramped down right at that mark. One 25-minute session starting at 11% put 111 kWh back into the battery. Fast, but not maximum speed.  The interesting part was that the charger in Emporia, VA never went above 250 kW but that also meant that it didn't throttle much which I believe allowed me to hold the higher speeds for longer.

Safety note: If you're towing, check your trailer every time you stop. Walk around it and check it up and down, make sure everything's secure, and try not to trip over the charging cord while you're at it 🤣

The software still hasn't caught up to towing

Here's a frustration that didn't go away. The truck itself predicts range well when you're towing. Google Maps in the GM system still doesn't. Early on it told me I'd arrive in Emporia with 19% left, which was never going to happen, and I'd already confirmed I had the latest update with no newer software waiting. By the back half of the trip it had started catching on and predicting arrivals with more accuracy. GM needs to fix range prediction in Google maps for people who tow. On the upside, the new Gemini voice assistant impressed me. I expected a gimmick and it turned out to be a real improvement over the old Google Assistant for setting up navigation on the move.

The buffers I won't give up

I plan conservatively now, and there's a reason. I've pulled into a charger at 0% while towing before, and I had a close call last October I didn't want to repeat. On this trip I aimed for a 20 to 25 mile buffer at every stop, because a couple of legs still got down to around 4% by the time I rolled in. Even with a big battery, towing eats your margin fast, and the chargers don't always cooperate.

So has EV towing actually gotten better?

Yes, but with honest caveats. The Rivian R1S made this trip possible three years ago and that still impresses me looking back. It was smaller, easier to maneuver, and it proved an electric SUV really can pull a travel trailer on a family road trip. The Silverado EV changes the feel of it. The larger battery gives you a lot more breathing room between stops, a full-size pickup just feels more naturally suited to towing a trailer this size, and there's a lot less range anxiety overall.

None of that means it's solved. Charging while towing can still be challenging, efficiency drops hard with a trailer, and you're spending more time stopped than you would in a gas or diesel truck. But compared to where we were three years ago, this feels like real progress. We went from an EV SUV that made the trip seem possible to a full-size EV truck that makes this kind of towing feel almost normal. If you're weighing an EV for longer family tows, that shift matters a lot more than any spec sheet. If you've towed with an EV yourself, I'd love to hear how your route and your numbers compared to mine.

Got questions? Drop a comment I love hearing from all of you.

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