So, I've got probably in the range of 1000km (probably closer to 1500) of towing on the trailer now with the Volt.
- The earlier mentioned issue with the car not running the engine fast enough to keep up with demand (even in mountain mode) continued to be a mildly nagging issue. Only in high demand situations did it become an issue when the car would dump out into low propulsion mode.
- The solution I discovered? Hold mode. Given as how '11s and 12's didn't have hold mode by default, I have to use a software hold mode through the OBD adapter, but it works perfectly. I kind of expected it to behave similar to mountain mode where the car would still eat into the buffer without running the engine hard to maintain, keep up, or rebuild fast, but it behaves quite differently, indeed running the engine hard as necessary to maintain the battery state of charge, and if it does deplete it (IE, we're in the Blue Mountains right now and climbed some pretty solid grades), it runs it at it's governed maximum to rebuild it *fast* and then settles back into normal mode.
The latter was the missing puzzle piece on towing with the car. It's now a dream - this thing pulls like a freight train even up steep grades and with brisk headwinds - today even with the 50-60kph westerly winds today, headed straight into them and pulling up a steep grade it just sat happy as could be at 90kph on the cruise control.
I've got the last few kinks worked out now on the trailer (I had to completely re-do the holding tank, ugh, that's another story) and changed the toilet setup to a cartridge (so the grey and black are now separate tanks, much nicer) and we're now on the road for 2 weeks.
- The earlier mentioned issue with the car not running the engine fast enough to keep up with demand (even in mountain mode) continued to be a mildly nagging issue. Only in high demand situations did it become an issue when the car would dump out into low propulsion mode.
- The solution I discovered? Hold mode. Given as how '11s and 12's didn't have hold mode by default, I have to use a software hold mode through the OBD adapter, but it works perfectly. I kind of expected it to behave similar to mountain mode where the car would still eat into the buffer without running the engine hard to maintain, keep up, or rebuild fast, but it behaves quite differently, indeed running the engine hard as necessary to maintain the battery state of charge, and if it does deplete it (IE, we're in the Blue Mountains right now and climbed some pretty solid grades), it runs it at it's governed maximum to rebuild it *fast* and then settles back into normal mode.
The latter was the missing puzzle piece on towing with the car. It's now a dream - this thing pulls like a freight train even up steep grades and with brisk headwinds - today even with the 50-60kph westerly winds today, headed straight into them and pulling up a steep grade it just sat happy as could be at 90kph on the cruise control.
I've got the last few kinks worked out now on the trailer (I had to completely re-do the holding tank, ugh, that's another story) and changed the toilet setup to a cartridge (so the grey and black are now separate tanks, much nicer) and we're now on the road for 2 weeks.