Few thousand? You basically have to buy most of an entire car as your hitch, including the most expensive parts like the engine or the motor and battery. This will be a few tens of thousands of dollars.
Nah! I had the local U-Haul place put a hitch on my 2002 Spyder (Mitsubishi Eclipse) for $175, including wiring. Towed my boat around a bit, but not advisable!
Still, I can hook my trailers to it and tow stuff all over. Just have a look at the tow capacity for your vehicle and don’t go nuts.
This hitchless system would require the boat trailer to also have an entire motor and drivetrain. Effectively, a whole second vehicle, removing the main benefit of a trailer.
That benefit being that it doesn’t have a motor and drivetrain!
I could probably think of something dumber, but it would hurt my brain to do so
I mean, it has a valid use case - you have a car with no towing capacity, like a sports car, and you have a caravan that you use a couple times a year for vacation or whatever. Normally you’d need to own a truck as well, or instead of the sports car daily a truck for the few times you actually need it. With this thing, you could “haul” your caravan with anything, and then when you get to your camp site or whatever you’d have your normal car to drive around at the location with. Shit, you could ride a motorcycle to your campsite with your caravan following you, that would be cool as hell.
But you have the obvious safety and security issues and potential for technical malfunctions, all of which would be super dangerous with no second layer of protection. You have the issue of leaving your caravan behind at the site while you drive your car to the shop and your shit getting stolen. You have a second power train to worry about and a second vehicle to maintain and fuel (or in this case charge, which might take a minute, especially if you are also driving an EV with it, then you’ve got 2 EV’s to charge at each stop).
But the obvious man…if the software tether fails, or freezes, or locks up, or has any kind of issue, somebody is gonna die. It will never, ever get approved.
We’ve (US folks) been told for so long that anything other than a truck can’t haul something for so long that it’s just ingrained at this point. I don’t know how we’d go about undoing that.
A hitch is a few hundred dollars and a few hours of work. This is going to be a few thousand dollars. Who would use this?
Few thousand? You basically have to buy most of an entire car as your hitch, including the most expensive parts like the engine or the motor and battery. This will be a few tens of thousands of dollars.
Yeah, the additional cost to get that towing ability is nothing to sniff at, and it narrows down your vehicle choices a lot.
Nah! I had the local U-Haul place put a hitch on my 2002 Spyder (Mitsubishi Eclipse) for $175, including wiring. Towed my boat around a bit, but not advisable!
Still, I can hook my trailers to it and tow stuff all over. Just have a look at the tow capacity for your vehicle and don’t go nuts.
Yes, that’s a regular hitch you’re describing.
This hitchless system would require the boat trailer to also have an entire motor and drivetrain. Effectively, a whole second vehicle, removing the main benefit of a trailer.
That benefit being that it doesn’t have a motor and drivetrain!
I could probably think of something dumber, but it would hurt my brain to do so
I mean, it has a valid use case - you have a car with no towing capacity, like a sports car, and you have a caravan that you use a couple times a year for vacation or whatever. Normally you’d need to own a truck as well, or instead of the sports car daily a truck for the few times you actually need it. With this thing, you could “haul” your caravan with anything, and then when you get to your camp site or whatever you’d have your normal car to drive around at the location with. Shit, you could ride a motorcycle to your campsite with your caravan following you, that would be cool as hell.
But you have the obvious safety and security issues and potential for technical malfunctions, all of which would be super dangerous with no second layer of protection. You have the issue of leaving your caravan behind at the site while you drive your car to the shop and your shit getting stolen. You have a second power train to worry about and a second vehicle to maintain and fuel (or in this case charge, which might take a minute, especially if you are also driving an EV with it, then you’ve got 2 EV’s to charge at each stop).
But the obvious man…if the software tether fails, or freezes, or locks up, or has any kind of issue, somebody is gonna die. It will never, ever get approved.
You don’t NEED a truck. Here in Germany, VW Golfs or Škoda Octavians tow camping trailers all the time.
We’ve (US folks) been told for so long that anything other than a truck can’t haul something for so long that it’s just ingrained at this point. I don’t know how we’d go about undoing that.
People who own cars with a low tow rating, or poor range.
You…do understand a truck is a normal part of that equation too, right?
How? You can use the sedan or compact car you (presumably) already own and use to get to and fro.
…you need a truck normally to tow other large objects.
https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=golf with a caravan&_sp=81c1801e-3fc2-4cd3-9bb3-e51a5a6a0c71&addon=opensearch
And this system now requires two trucks.
No, it requires zero trucks if it’s a virtual hitch.