This Earth Day, we’re looking at electric vehicles, and whether the growing number of electric-powered pickup trucks on the road are ready for prime-time as towing vehicles. On Monday we talked to an expert from MotorTrend—who also happens to use an EV to tow to trail rides on the weekends—about their pros and cons. Today, we’re talking to horse owners who have taken the plunge and purchased EVs to tow their horse trailers.

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We spoke to several horse owners who decided to take the electric tow vehicle plunge about their real-life experiences hauling horses: two drive Rivian R1T pickups, and two drive Ford F-150 Lightnings. (These two trucks, along with the Rivian R1S SUV, are the only tow-capable EVs currently on the road in significant numbers, although that will likely change in the next year or two as Chevrolet, GMC and Ram all have electric pickups in the works.)

These drivers all had different reasons for going electric, and all acknowledge that the vehicles have some significant limitations in range (at least until charging infrastructure improves), but they felt electric trucks were an attractive option for riders who do mostly local towing.

Do They Tow Well?

Suzanne Dennis of Charlottesville, Virginia, had a Tesla she used as her everyday vehicle and a older Toyota Sequoia she used for towing to local dressage shows and to go hunting with the nearby Farmington Hunt Club (Virginia). When it came time to think about replacing the Toyota, she started thinking about an electric truck.

“My husband is kind of a tech person; he’s just always on top of everything, and he’s super smart about that stuff,” she said. “He just knows the writing’s on the wall. He knew everything’s going to be moving electric.”

They started looking into the Rivian and held out for an R1T pickup with the largest battery size, which promises 410 miles of range and first became available in late 2023.

“It’s just a game-changer; I can’t even tell you, it’s crazy,” she said. “You have to remind yourself you’re pulling a trailer because it drives exactly the same. It handles terrain so incredibly well. It’s just like nothing’s there.”

Dennis got her Tesla six years ago, when they were still fairly novel and charging infrastructure wasn’t near what it is today, so she was already familiar with the vagaries of EV range and knew her car’s limits. The Rivian is now her everyday vehicle, as well as her tow vehicle, and she’s found it sufficient for her needs.

“For me, I know that for most of my driving, I can make it with my my truck. If I had a long way to go, I could have an issue,” she said. “It’s going to change, but I know I’m on the front end of this. Certainly if you’re doing long distances [with a trailer], it’s not there yet.”

Dennis has a charger at home and said she has never charged away from home with the trailer, but she keeps an eye on the Rivian app to see if any trailer-accessible chargers open up nearby. She said she also appreciates the towing technology on the Rivian, which recognizes her trailer and calculates its weight, and then automatically adjusts her range. The truck also has an air suspension and can adjust its height for trailering.

Can You Trust The Range?

Adriana Jakobsen of Murrieta, California, also has an R1T, but was an earlier adopter, purchasing the truck in September 2022. She and her husband, Erik, are relatively new to horses and so also relatively new to towing, and unfortunately experienced the downside of the trailer’s effect on range one of the very first time they hauled horses.

Jakobsen purchased her mare in-foal a year ago, and took her to a foaling facility to deliver, which was her first time using the truck to pull a horse trailer. Unfortunately the mare and 2-day-old foal had to go to an equine hospital, and it was when Jakobsen and her husband went to pick the pair up to bring them home that they experienced problems.

They towed the empty trailer to the hospital, a little over an hour away. “Everything looked great, and it looked like we were going to have plenty of range to get all the way back,” she said. “The system will tell you, according to your destination, here’s how much range you’ll have when you’re on your return trip. So we thought it should be fine. Yes, we’ll be low when we get back, but we’re not going to run out or anything.”

The first portion of the trip was on the highway and was uneventful. “We live about 15, 20 minutes off of the freeway. It’s unfortunately up a hill, and that was what really messed us up,” Jakobsen said. “We got off the freeway, we were getting low, but we were probably like 20% [of the battery] left. As soon as we started that incline, the car pretty much said, pull over, you’re going to run out. The car software said, ‘I cannot calculate your range.’ Like, ‘You should not keep going because I don’t think you’re going to have enough, and I can’t even tell you how many miles you have.’ It was like it shut down.”

The Jakobsens decided to keep going as far as they could up the twisty, windy road and then pull over at the last safe spot with a shoulder, because they didn’t want to run out of juice on a blind curve with nowhere to park. Then they called a neighbor who brought her truck, picked up their trailer and drove the last two or so miles home.

“We were fairly early adopters. So we were pretty early on in the software, and they were still working out a lot of kinks,” Jakobsen said. “From what I know, they’ve made some very significant updates to their towing software; my guess is they got a lot of people having the same problem.

“I think that was part of the problem is that it estimated the range, and I just don’t think it was a very good estimate. Probably for basic driving on a freeway or surface streets that are flat, yes,” she said, adding that hills are a complicating factor that the software may not adequately take into account. “If you’re going down a hill, you’re good because you’re recharging your battery. But when you’re going up an incline, you have to be really, really careful because that will just eat it up really fast.”

Despite this, Jakobsen—who also had a Tesla before buying her Rivian—still plans to use the Rivian as a tow vehicle. The Jakobsens also have solar panels on their house and generate their own electricity.

The decision to buy the Rivian was “partially environmental, like, we want to be generating our energy, and we’d like to do it just because it’s just a better long-term solution, for everything to kind of be a little bit more self-sufficient, a little bit less impact on the environment,” she said. “And then, obviously, a big dose of ‘it’s a super fun toy!’ “

Jakobsen cautions other potential EV haulers to be a little skeptical of the promised ranges on any particular vehicle. Each EV has an estimated range that is calculated by the Environmental Protection Agency (just like the gas mileage estimate on a regular car), but independent testing under ideal conditions has sometimes found that EVs don’t always live up to their promised range. MotorTrend Senior Editor Aaron Gold noted that hooking up a trailer typically cuts its range in half. An individual EV’s range can also change dramatically depending on outside factors; in cold winter weather, most drop by around 30 percent from their maximum.

Jakobsen suggests checking out some of the Facebook groups dedicated to the particular vehicle you’re considering (there are multiple Rivian and F-150 Lighting groups, as well as various groups dedicated to EVs in general), and ask people about their real-world range when towing.

Above all, be aware that the range the truck shows you is an estimate, and it can change. “Don’t always trust the range that the vehicle is telling you and be really educated on how it calculates the range,” she said. “[Find out what] other people’s experiences are and don’t just trust the computer; you have to actually look at real world scenarios. And that’s why the groups on Facebook [dedicated to the various EVs] are so great, because people can actually say, here’s what happened to me, and people can actually get all those stories before making decisions like that.”

Does It Work Where You Live?

While many buyers cite environmental concerns as their primary reason for making the switch, the cost of fuel is a very close second, and that was the primary motivating factor for Tony Ruggiero of Peyton, Colorado, who purchased a Ford F-150 Lightning as his first EV about six months ago.

“The cost of gas was outrageous; I was probably spending on average between $400 and $450 a month on gas,” he said. “So far, I am averaging about $90 to $100 a month on electricity.”

His previous truck was a Chevy Silverado 1500, and like the Lightning, it was his everyday vehicle. Even though a Lightning is more expensive than a comparable gas half-ton pickup, he expects the fuel savings to add up over the life of the truck.

Ruggiero has four horses, and he mostly does trail riding and the occasional gymkhana, usually within about 60 miles of home. His truck has an extended range battery that gets about 320 miles, or about 157 with his three-horse trailer carrying one or two horses.

“One of the most important things that I think I did before I actually got the truck was I actually sat down and looked at where I drive to,” he said. “You know, ‘How far away is it? Is it feasible? Could I make it with an electric truck?’ You’ve got to look at all those factors.

“I see people just going out and buying an electric vehicle, not looking at anything or planning, nothing. Then they’re disappointed, and they end up hating it; they’ve got range anxiety and all that,” he added. “You’ve got to do your homework, you’ve got to look at where you go. It’s not for everybody.”

He has occasionally tried to charge away from home, but like most trailer drivers, found the options poor. He recently went on a trail ride that was at the very edge of his truck’s range, so decided to try to find a charger on the way there.

“I found this charger in a parking lot with a bunch of stores. So I tried to get there earlier, before the stores opened up,” he said. “I was able to get on the opposite side of the chargers with the trailer, and I probably blocked about seven or eight spots, but it was still early. So I was able to just top off; I only had to charge for about 10 minutes just to kind of add a little safety margin.”

“You’ve got to do your homework, you’ve got to look at where you go. It’s not for everybody.”

Tony Ruggiero, electric truck owner

Electric trucks are new enough that people are often surprised to see them, especially in parts of the country where they’re less common. Ruggiero said he’s gotten lots of comments from people he sees at trail rides.

“At first, they’re amused by it. And then in some cases, they start with the condescending thing; you know, ‘It’s always gonna break down,’ ‘You’re risking your horses’ lives,’ all that kind of stuff,” he said. “I kind of just smile and just shrug it off and just say, ‘OK, well, you have a good time at that gas pump!’ “

Those naysayers might be swayed if they saw the setup Ruggiero has in his “frunk” (the front-trunk that uses the space a gas engine would occupy): a coffee-maker and a mini fridge. “If I get somewhere, and I have time, yeah, I’ll get out the coffee pot and go ahead and make some coffee or something, and there’s always cold drinks in the refrigerator. In that regard, [the truck] really makes some things a lot easier and more comfortable,” he said.

He said he recommends always taking a portable and adjustable charging cable along with you, as well as any adapters you might need. If high-speed charging isn’t available, many campgrounds can accommodate an electric truck with a trailer for a charging stop, but you might need to adjust the amperage the charger draws so as not to overload the circuit.

Do You Like Cold Drinks And At-Home Charging?

Wesley Hanna of Irvine, Kentucky, also has a Lightning. He uses the truck to haul out for trail or ranch rides, and also to get his animals to the veterinarian or farrier. “We kind of live out in the middle of nowhere in eastern Kentucky. With just one or two animals, the farriers don’t necessarily want to come to you,” he said.

For him, various tax incentives convinced him to make the switch to an electric truck when he needed to replace his gas F-150. (Although he still has the gas truck to use for longer drives.)

Another part of the appeal was how similar the Lightning is to a gasoline F-150. “The cab is the same. The interior is largely the same. And then some things fit the same. I have an extra set of wheels, or like a tonneau cover or things like that, you can just buy it and put it on a Lightning,” he said. “The fact that there’s a half a million, roughly, F-150s sold a year, and so there are a lot of accessories you can buy and they also fit the Lightning, whereas the options, especially at least initially, for like a Cybertruck or Rivian or something like that, are more limited and also more expensive.”

He also finds the frunk on the Lightning to be a big selling point. “It’s a great place to put muddy boots, or if you have chaps that got dirty or coveralls, and then just stuff that you don’t necessarily want in the bed of your truck but but don’t necessarily want in the cab. So it’s a great place to have,” he said. “The frunk’s pretty big in the Lightning; it’s one of the biggest frunks you can buy.

“Then if you get past the range issue, I’d say the towing performance as far as like acceleration and secureness of the vehicle is very similar to towing with a diesel heavy-duty truck,” he added. “It’s much better than your average half-ton truck, assuming you’re within the comfortable range of the vehicle.”

Like most EV drivers, Hanna charges his vehicle at home.

“It’s a very under-appreciated benefit to just wake up to a full vehicle every morning that you plugged in at home,” he said. “I have my charger set up so it is pull-through; I can have a trailer attached to the Lightning and still pull around my driveway and charge it. So if I know I’m going somewhere in the morning, I’ll hook up the truck and trailer the night before and then leave it plugged in. It’ll be 100% full in the morning, and I never have to stop for gas.”

It’s also a very capable work or farm truck, Hanna said.

“I’ll load hay and feed into the bed, as much as will fit in a 5-foot bed, and it does that very well. And I’ll go on farm trails with it; it does pretty well off-road because it’s full-time all-wheel drive,” he said. “It does make a good farm truck, especially with the outlets built into it. It has enough capability to run a welder or a plug-in grinder or something, if you’re you’re cutting more than you would want to do with a battery-powered tool.

“It’s also very handy for fencing projects, like if you want to carry wood in it and use the bed as a work platform for working on wood fencing,” he continued. He keeps an extra set of tool batteries charging in the truck, and swaps them out as needed. “You could work on fencing for a week with one charge of the Lightning and charge your tool batteries every single day without worrying about it. It’s great for projects.”