As a Colorado resident and someone who is interested in an EV, I really appreciate this kind of test. Nice work guys!

I like how we've gone from "Will EVs work at all", to "can I do my commute in an EV", to "can I road trip an EV", and now finally to "can I tow with an EV". There's been so much progress since the EV-1!

Andrei has the best range anxiety of all TFL reviewers IMO. Great review.

Love the video. I am an ID.4 owner. I switched from Tesla Model 3 performance to ID.4. ID.4 is a much more comfortable car. I use it as my work car and it is easy for my customers to ride with me in it. Most of my customers are older men and women, they used to complain about how low the Tesla was and seats not being comfortable. I haven't taken a weekend camping trip in ID.4 yet but thanks to your video man, I am gonna try it. Keep producing great videos TFL team!!.

I think ID 4 performed very well I'm impressed 💯

Just for everyone's information 1.6mi/kWh is the equivalent of 54 miles per gallon. Goes to show just how efficient EVs are

I am impressed. The ID.4 AWD Pro is supposed to have the same range even with AWD and 100 more horsepower. EVs don’t lose power with the increased altitude.

I think that was a pretty decent result- you wouldn’t buy the ID4 if you were towing regularly but it’s nice to know that it can tow if you need it. We considered the ID4 as a family car to join our BMW i3 but we weren’t sold on the interior and infotainment system. Luckily in Scotland you can get a Skoda Enyaq or Audi Q4 E-tron based on the same platform/battery/motor. We’ve got a Q4 on order👍🏻🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Good video. I especially like that Andre charged at EA just long enough to get him where he was going. The ID.4 charged at full 125kW the whole charge session which is impressive.

Can’t wait to see the new ford lightning tackle this test !!!

This is an incredible car at a decent price. Best car in class when they launch the AWD version later this year.

Best TFL video ever! Great job, Andre.

Nice Job!!! I've done that drive in my ID 4 without a trailer, and it was fabulous. It was very interesting to see how it performs with one!

It had better towing efficiency than I expected 👍🏼

Andre does great real world tests and reviews with his likeable personality. I can only imagine how the commentary and facial expressions would be if the back up Ram wasn't following.

Nice video Andre. Keep up the good work!

Great test, Thank you TFL

Love these tests. Keep em coming!

Thanks for the look at pulling a sleeper with the ‘sleeper EV’. I just bought a 22 ID.4 and it’s nice to see that it can manage near 2m/kWh. Seemed like it was fairly warm, so that’s probably best case for the light trailer. The one thing I’ve learned from 1 weeks winter ownership of the ID.4 is that efficiency falls A LOT as it gets colder. Looking forward to summer, and maybe a 1 sleeper tiny trailer …. Thanks again Andre!!

Well done for not chickening out before reaching the top! :-) This is what we want to see. Great Test! Thank you.

What's really interesting is the same conditions that make it hard for a traditional vehicle to tow at high elevations (thin air) would presumably work in an EV's favor. EV's don't need to take in air to create propulsion, but the thinner air would actually put less drag on the overall vehicle and trailer. Definitely more EV towing tests!

Great video. Playing out all these scenarios that we will encounter in the future answers a lot of questions. Thanks for this peek into the future Andre.

Something to consider: the energy in one gallon of gasoline is 33.4 kWh. A 77 kWh battery contains the same energy as about 2.3 gallons of gas. Andre drove about 139 miles before arriving at the charger with 6% battery left. That would be 72.38 kWh consumed or about 2.165 gallons of gasoline energy equivalent. Doing the math on the mileage results in 64.2 MPGe. Very impressive.

Nice video! Though most don't have an Ike Gauntlet to navigate, it's nice to know that you could easily carry your mountain bikes and/or motorcycles with an ID4. Finding a charger that can accommodate a trailer is another story.

Great review. Every time you mention Golden, reminds me of Golden, British Columbia in the Canadian Rockies 😀

Great video guys!!

Thanks for that test, car is impressing!

Awesome video! I have a homemade teardrop trailer similar in shape and I'm either going to get an ID.4 or Ioniq 5. Mine doesn't have those big off road wheels though so maybe I could do even better in terms of efficiency.

I get it …Tike Ike because you’re towing a Little Tike on the trailer. Fine, have my “like” for this Tike Ike video.

First test I've seen with a trailer and nice to see as this is actual mountain pass involved and 142miles/227km range with that trailer. Arriving with 5% is perfect as well means you get max charge rate from the charger as your battery will also be nicely warmed up ready.

FINALLY, a video of the ID.4 towing! Thank you thank you thank you! It would be awesome to compare it to the AWD ID.4 when that comes out. Please let us know how the AWD works if you get your paws on one. (if its selective, only when wheels are slipping, etc)

Good job Andre love the sweat beading up on your forehead when it was 15% battery left.

An important thing with ev's is that driving slower greatly increases the range. Pulling a trailer and going 50 vs 60 makes a big differance.

I live in Dillon and I'm leaning toward buying an ID.4 to commute over the pass everyday. This was very helpful. Thank you for putting this up.

I used to think these tyke Ike videos were silly, but I saw two different teardrop/small campers being towed by little crossover SUV’s at the beach today. Didn’t realize it was such a trend.

Wow great test. Surprised me with this one.

I gotta give it a thumbs up just for the initial opening music :-). Suspense! Drama! Murder Mystery! Will the vehicle make it... will the battery blow up... Cliff-hanger episode, will the auxillary vehicle (the plastic toy car on the trailer) be able to save the day once again! What fate awaits our protagonist at the ends of the world! -Matt

Awesome, it reminds me of just how similar weight issues are to EVs just like with bush planes here. The more the weight the shorter the range.

Great test and video. How would the ID4 do on the same route without the trailer?

You typically camp with more than one person so you’d have to add more weight (people and supplies) for this to be even more realistic

Would really like to have an ID.4 for towing my 1700lb popup camper. A Bolt EV has done fine with it so far but the slower charging (and no official tow rating) is a drag. Cool to see more towing-rated and fast-charging EVs hitting the market!

I think you've just done a very very good test! Perhaps my preconceived suspicions about the US4 are misplaced after all! Many thanks for the review.

Excellent video glad I made my choice to buy one of those.

Was not expecting it to make it. Nice

Thanks Andre for the in the trenches review!

Mountainous terrain with plenty of ups and downs seems well suited for EV towing. I think areas that EVs will struggle would be rural long continuous grades combined with continuous headwinds (like the entire state of Nebraska when going Westbound on I-80). At least the mountainous terrain provides opportunity to Regen. In very rural areas I think you could struggle to make it between chargers on especially windy days.

It's an awesome car....i have driven ~5000 miles and genuinely impressed.

Excellent Review didn’t buy the ID.4 to tow but it’s nice to know it can handle it, using regen braking with the cruise does not give you anywhere near as much benefit, if you would have used it manually it would not have been even close to giving you range anxiety. Still I like the drama of the content. Thank you for answering the towing question for us. 👍🏻

Enjoyed this challenge, well done Andre. It also looks stressful to him, thinking about the range all the time.

Really cool test. Super practical and a harbinger of the future.

I'm impressed, much better than when you towed with the Tesla. Good Job Volkswagen.

Great vid guys! Can you please do a towing and off road video of the Volvo xc40 pure electric or the xc60 polestar phev?

I can't wait for my ID.4 to arrive.

I love your towing videos. However, I would like to see one important change with your tow tests in the future, as towing with an EV is something that I am considering as an option in the future. Namely, I see you towing a 1700lbs trailer, which is good... but, I see what appears to be a completely unloaded passenger compartment in the tow vehicle itself. We travel with 4 people and a pop up camper, and that means most everything we bring with us apart from light bedding and our food... goes in the tow vehicle. We put a lot of stuff in the back of our pickup truck when we camp with our pop up! A test with both an unladen tow vehicle and a laden one would be a nicer test to know just how much additional reduction in range you can expect with a heavier load in the passenger vehicle while pulling the trailer.

Good one Andre, this was a first to see the trailer and then trying to kill the car on the mountain route - the Id.4 came through as you said.

As a German/Swiss, I regularly watch TFL.... TOP videos!!! but Andre is very special and funny, I'm always very curious, when he does a test, it's always in a very natural way... keep it up... Andre..!!!TOP Also the rest of TFL is a top team!!! The tests are fair, and it happens with standard vehicles, and that's very important, what might be even more interesting is a good-looking woman on the team, but someone with an engineering background, like us Germans do here. .. greetings from peaceful Switzerland.........

Great EV towing video. But, since the ID4 is so big in back with the seats folded down, I would probably leave the trailer at home and sleep in the back of the ID4.

Can you tell me what app you are using to track your progress? Thanks.

With gas engines we learned very quickly about 100 years ago that you need drive through fueling because of trailers, am I the only one that thinks we are getting more and more stupid as we go.

Andre @tflcar you mentioned downhill ike testing you will standardize on using cruise control for EVs. Curious though if any of the EVs cannot regen brake enough to slow vehicle (especially with heavier loads) and start to use friction brakes will all the vehicles tell you they are using friction braking? Just wondering if you will have a hard time standardizing on the number of brake applications used, if it comes to be needed.

I'm glad to see all the real world test you guys do. I always watch all the videos especially about the EV's. I am more interested in seeing what the trucks can do on the challenge. Especially the Lightning and the Rivian. I still believe we have a very long way to go before we can actually say EV is the way to go vehicle wise. I use trucks all the time. And i still have alot of doubts about the EV trucks coming out but we will see. Keep up all the great work you guys do. And I'll keep watching.

Cannot wait for you guys to get a tow test with the rivian and the ford truck. Heavy real weights on the ike.

I live right in golden Colorado and used to own a 2013 Nissan Leaf. I’d regularly drive a short distance up i70 (about 6 miles, from the bottom of the mountain to the second exit) and it drained the battery by around 30%. That’s the leaf with a 100 mile range drained by 30% from 6 miles, granted its steep and I’d go 75 miles per hour, and on the way home I’d always gain a few miles.

Great video Andre. Does anyone know what GPS app is being used at 6:23?

Love these kind of reviews. Id.4 seems like a great all around car. Not just an EV.

The climate will not be saved by private EV use as roughly 4% of emissions come from private vehicles, I do look forward to the future when they can compete on price and actual real world use for the average person.

Well done!!!

Excellent test. Will you eventually let us know what it cost for the trip and how many gallons of regular gas/diesel and MPG one would have to achieve in another vehicle to equal? Now I am waiting till you can do a test on a electric pickup. What I would find interesting if you loaded one to what is equivalent to a logging crew heading out to work and do a run on a industrial road. Nice cold day in the winter would be great. Know most pickups today are used as a replacement for the 4 door sedan yet would be nice to see a test using one as it originally designed for.

A very good test. Well done. I think folks would benefit from a little more explanation of how the GOM (range estimator) does its calculations, based on a rolling "most-recently-driven" data sample. You can read on the EV forums, etc., how confused many people are about what the GOM tells them. I personally think it would be relatively easy programming to integrate the GOM with GPS, to more accurately forecast the remaining range based on upcoming terrain. Also, Andre was still citing the *average* mi/kWh while on the climb. This is fine for general, all-condition driving, but if he was worried about whether or not he could make it to the top, he should have directed attention to the *current* mi/kWh, since that is the figure that is relevant at that exact point in time -- e.g., on a long, continuous climb, where you know the your current rate of energy usage will be sustained for a while. I especially liked the explanation of how the Adaptive Cruise Control automatically optimizes the amount of regen while maintaining speed. For the record, I love the multiple levels of regen that the e-Golf provides, and I worry that the binary "D/B" provided by the id.4 will be a disappointment for me. I'll find out, once I get one. :-) All in all, a very fair and through test & review. EV isn't for everyone, but realistic & honest reviews such as this one will help dispel myths on limitations, and affirm capabilites of what EV can & cannot provide to the general population. BTW, even the 1.8~1.9 mi/kWh is quite a bit lower than I get in my e-Golf -- presumably due to the extra weight of CUV form-factor, the 82kWh battery pack, and the towing. I can't wait to get into an AWD id.4!!!

I see the trx as the camera vehicle. Did you take the f-150 powerboost also in case the need for a charge on the side of the road?

I am curious what abertterrouplanner calculated vs what you got

Excellent job! I am looking at ID.4 for towing a bass boat. The trailer doesn't have power breaking. The weight is close to the max of the ID.4. Any suggestions?

We own an ID4, try it again in D mode. The car will use regen first, only applying the actual brakes once maxed out. We found much lower consumption on freeway trips that way! In town, B mode all day.

The ID.4 is a really good looking SUV

How about the winters in Colorado?? How will that affect the battery?

I love watching the Ike Gauntlet videos and even drove out there from Texas to see how my car would do but all of the jump cuts between the actual test and other segments about the trailer and the vehicle are VERY confusing. I hate clicking through the video and I know It hurts watch time but it's necessary just to follow the storyline. If the shots were reorganized showing prep and equipment, followed by the ascent, descent and final thoughts or ordered similar to that, I think it would make the video more enjoyable to watch and more helpful to understand exactly what's going on throughout the test.

Makes you wonder why it’s taking so long to get serious hybrid big rigs. The regen braking alone would be amazing, cut down on idling, no more cooked brakes, better off the line performance.

I wish they make it more apparent in future videos that this is test to see how much range you get per charge rather than a worry about battery dying. There were many points to recharge during the that trip so no being stranded situations. Just would take longer because of having to charge more often because of using more wh/mi.

does the VW Id 4 come with trailer brakes and which size tow hitch coupler did you have? thanks

What’s that GPS app you’re using on the iPhone?

Good job. At least you guys did not plan it to fail like the video done with the Tesla pulling 5,000 pounds and no test run or DC fast chargers in route.

So I'm getting from this that I need to work at that school that everyone had to walk uphill both ways to but drive the other way so I go downhill both ways and then I'm set!

Where did you bought the light connector?

Like the car, never thought of it as a choice to tow a trailer. great video, thought it would get worst then 1.5 m/kw

Id4 AWD is the one I’m looking forward to

Gotta love the little Tykes car in the shot.

& Andrey y didn't u use the decibel meter for the Raptor Exhaust video? Just asking 🤔

As a suggestion, I think you should go on these EV Tike Ike tests with Andre's hybrid F-150 instead of the TRX. for when the battery of the vehicle disappoints. That would make for a good video for knowing all the how much kWh and how long it'd take to charge them and all...

The on-screen graphic at 3:52 reads “Will Andre make it?” but a previous video showed him at his desk with a sign that said Andrey. Wondering how his name is really spelled since I often include it when I leave a comment. Honest question.

I think the ID4 is a great alternative to a RAV4 or CR-V. It doesn’t compare to a Tesla though, but it wasn’t supposed to.

The toy car on the front of the trailer is a nice touch

2018 Pikes Peak Hill Climb Unlimited Class: VW ID-R Electric Prototype, Romain Dumas, 7m:57s. 2021 Pikes Peak Hill Climb Exhibition Class: Tesla Model S Plaid, Randy Pobst, 6m:57s.

I am wondering if the flickering lights (headlights) are a camera artifact of if you are actually driving around with flashing lights

Great video, another thing to remember, campsites have electrical hookups, with the right cables, you can charge the EV back up while you sleep, if you are camping for a few days, even a regular 110 outlet will work with the supplied charger that was in the trunk.

Andrey great video! My question is always about family traveling. Can you test car with 4 adult in car? Also show baggage space, how AC or Heating works with mileage. Thank you

This demonstration illustrates the issue with battery power and moving more mass. It’s not a question of if the electric motor has enough power but the storage of electrons. The more mass you’re moving the more electrons you need. Storing energy in a fuel that gets oxidized takes advantage of you not having to carry the oxygen around with you. A battery has to have both sides of the reaction and will likely be heavier per amount of energy stored.

28:07 and that's the major argument against EVs (for me). I like them, love driving them, but I don't want to be nervous "all" time when going for a road trip > 500 miles (which I often do). Don't know how it is in the States, but here in Europe you need for every Country different apps and cards, otherwise you cannot use the chargers (unless you own a Tesla). That's why I will not consider buying an EV in the next 10 years.

If you want to go camping whilst towing and have a thrilling ride there go with an EV 😅🙈 I have to say I really like the design of the ID4

Now try it in the cold and see how it does. (Having owned two EVs in Colorado)

Well there is your problem, your headquarters is in Boulder Colorado! It would also be interesting to see this test done across Nebraska or Kansas…