Real-World RV Towing With The Silverado EV

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If you’ve never towed a medium or large travel trailer, it might sound like it’s an easy task. I mean, you can just hook the trailer onto the back of a capable pickup truck and drive off, right?

Sadly, it’s never that simple, even for a diesel truck. On top of the normal rigors of making sure everything is safe, EV towing requires a little more homework. In this article, I’m going to cover what I did to make sure we’ll have a safe and reliable towing experience as we get back to visiting national parks and proving that EVs have what it takes.

If you want to follow our full journey as we do this, please consider subscribing to e-mail updates on the Charge To The Parks website or following us on Bluesky or Facebook.

Checking Squat & Heading To The CAT Scale

While you can’t just hook up and drive off on a long adventure, hooking the trailer up is the first step. Even heavier duty trucks like the Silverado EV (it’s basically a 3/4 ton truck hauling a bunch of batteries), there’s going to be a certain amount of “squat” that happens when you put the trailer onto the ball.

We don’t have the RST Silverado with the self-leveling air suspension, so we had to measure that to make sure we got the correct hitch drop to keep the trailer level and happy going down the road. It turned out to be a pretty standard 2” drop we needed, so we ran down to Tractor Supply Co (a surprisingly good place to get trailer stuff) and picked up a hitch rated for 8,000 lb with the correct drop.

The great news: we didn’t get that much squat. Even without a weight distribution hitch, the truck’s front wheel wells only sit about a half inch higher above the tires than the rear. The Silverado’s manual says that for weights under 7,000, WDH is optional. This is great for EV towing because unhooking and rehooking at charging stops is a LOT easier without having to hook those bars back up.

Once we were confident in hitch setup, we took the truck and the trailer to the CAT scales that truckers rely on to stay out of legal trouble on the highway. Our nearest scale is only a short distance away at a TA truck stop.

After taking two weights (one with the fully-loaded trailer and one with the truck loaded with family), we determined that the trailer’s weight is about 5680 pounds with 680 pounds of tongue weight. Some weight had been lifted from the truck’s front wheels, but not enough to matter. The truck’s heavy, low-slung battery pack kept good traction on all wheels, and once I put some tools in the e-Trunk (Chevy’s preferred term for a frunk), things should be about perfect.

We checked these numbers against the vehicle’s door sticker, and they’re all well within all of the safety limits. Gross vehicle weight (GVW), real axle weight, and trailer weight were all in great shape.

Real-World Stability & Range Testing

With the safety numbers all checked out, it was time to see how the truck actually did on the highway. For an ICE truck, the important thing is that it’s stable and safe. But, when you’re towing with an EV, you have to also see what your efficiency numbers look like for trip planning to make sure you never get stranded.

To do this, we ran from Las Cruces to Deming, New Mexico, and back on I-10. Sadly, we forgot something at home, and had to run back right after climbing out of the Mesilla Valley, so we ended up towing up that steep grade twice, giving us a total of 130 miles with some extra terrain along the way. The temperature was about 40°F (4°C) and we set the cruise for 65 MPH to get good numbers for A Better Routeplanner.

Stability was beyond excellent. Because our loaded truck is about 50% heavier than the trailer and has a very low center of gravity, it rode like it was on rails. Passing semi-trucks would make it barely flinch, even with the stock tires.

The roughly 650 horsepower and 750 lb-ft of torque made it feel like the trailer wasn’t there. Even the steep hill climbing out of Las Cruces was nothing for the Silverado EV. There was no need to worry about engine RPMs, damaging a transmission, or anything. The truck just steadily pulls the trailer up hills and holds a steady speed going down them with regenerative braking.

All in all, the experience was far, far better than towing with a half-ton pickup truck or Suburban (what we usually tow with). You can basically just set the cruise and forget it.

The only aspect where the Silverado EV falls short of ICE trucks is range. Over 130 miles, we took our 170 kWh battery pack from 100% down to 23%, achieving 0.9 miles/kWh on the truck’s screen. Plugging this consumption figure into ABRP led to fairly accurate trip predictions compared to reality, so we’re now ready to plan longer trips confidently.

What These Real-World Numbers Mean For Future Travels

We’ll probably get better range during the daytime, during warmer months, and with better tires aired up perfectly. But, even if we had to do everything just as it is today, we’d be fine. With this trailer, the truck has:

• About 153 miles of 100%-0% range on the first leg leaving home
• 135 miles leaving with 100% and arriving somewhere with 10%
• About 90 miles added doing 10-60% rapid charges
• About 105 miles added charging from 10-80%

At 65 miles per hour, ideal charging spacing gives us the following trip cadence:

• Leave home and drive for two hours
• Charge for 15-20 minutes at an 800-volt charging station, or 30 minutes at most Tesla Superchargers
• Driving another hour and a half
• Rinse, repeat
• FREE fuel at RV parks that let us plug the truck in

Because we aren’t in the habit of wearing astronaut diapers on road trips, this is really not bad at all. 15-20 minutes is enough time for the family to use the bathroom, stretch legs, and hit the road again fresh.

The Silverado EV would suck for OTR hot shot trucking, but it’s great for family RV trips and local hauling of all kinds.

Next Steps

Now that we know that the truck is safe to tow, does an excellent job pulling the camper, and we know what kind of range to expect, we’re ready to finish integrating the camper into the Silverado’s systems. The trailer already has 1800 watts of solar and 8.2 kWh of battery storage, but I will be using automatic transfer switches and some custom adapters to have the option of pulling power from the truck or from RV parks.

While I don’t have to deal with removing a weight distribution hitch to charge at non-pull-thru charging stations, I am going to be adding an electric jack to the trailer to make life easier, especially when unhooking to charge on hot, humid summer days.

Finally, I’m spending a lot of time in A Better Routeplanner cooking up some epic trips. My plan is for the truck to see most of North America over the next few years.

If you’re interested in following along, be sure to follow CleanTechnica and Charge To The Parks to make sure you don’t miss my real-world testing!

Featured image: My 2025 Silverado EV LT Extended Range at a truck stop with my all-electric 24-foot travel trailer attached. Image by Jennifer Sensiba.