30K pounds tow-off: R1T vs Lightning (by Edmunds)

Looks like extra motors didn’t make a huge difference. I wonder if tires made a bigger difference than power.

I really want to know how they would have done with bigger/better tires. Traction is everything. Pretty awesome for stock configurations however.

Pretty sure tire traction is gonna be the limiting factor for almost any EV truck when it comes to pulling power, especially in dirt/mud. I thought I saw an EV truck tug of war video where it turned into a contest to see which truck ended up spinning its wheels first.

Even performance EVs like the Tesla S Plaid (and some hypercar ICE models) are running into 0-60 time limitations of around ~ 2 seconds due to tire technology and how high of a friction coefficient you can get out of a street legal tire.

GarageMahal said:

I really want to know how they would have done with bigger/better tires. Traction is everything. Pretty awesome for stock configurations however.

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I thought the same thing. At a minimum I would have expected them to run the same tires on both trucks to eliminate an obviously important variable.

asudan said:

I thought the same thing. At a minimum I would have expected them to run the same tires on both trucks to eliminate an obviously important variable.

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Especially since Pirelli is now also making the Scorpion AT sized for the Lightning with the same ratings as their Rivian version. They had the Scorpion ATs on the R1T, but the stock AS tires on the Lightning. But they probably should have got the Lightning configured with the stock AT offering (General Grabbers, I think?). That would have helped a bunch. The quad motors are delivering a lot more composite torque here but being composite in that each wheel only accounts for a maximum of 25% of the total applied torque, the Rivian "struggled" when the front wheels would lift. I actually think the Ford dual motor (and Rivian's upcoming dual motor) are better suited to a tractor pull situation. Lightning could win with better tires and perhaps if Ford would be willing, or if some adventurous person were willing to do some hacking and uncork the motors a bit. We don't know if the Lightning here had the Max Tow hardware onboard, although I don't think it would make a difference in this situation with the time of the pull being so short.

For two stock trucks, they did great. I think the electric pickup tractor pull is going to become the new version of the EV quarter mile. In this initial showing these trucks were pulling right with a lot of the beefed up competition trucks.

There was another Rivian tractor pull video posted the other day. I believe it was a 27Klb sled and the R1T pulled it off the end of the track. It may have been the same R1T with these same guys at a different event.

Couple of observations - the Rivian squats like no tomorrow with that weight hooked to it. The Lightning did much better in the rear end. Rivian likely shows some software advantages in traction control. No surprise there, Ford is bad in this category.

Both did quite well overall. Would be interesting to see the battery and motor temp gauges, although we already know they don't seem to show true temps.