Article content For all the long-distance road tripping I’ve done across Canada, I really did wonder whether I’d gone too far by planning three weeks in B.C. driving an EV while towing a trailer.
The idea didn’t come out of nowhere. When my daughter and I spent a month on the east coast last summer, we saw plenty of EVs pulling trailers and boats. Those people are doing it, I thought.
Why can’t we? Of course, most people who travel with trailers don’t road trip the way we do. They pick a campground, stay there for a few days, and head home. Our trip was far more ambitious: a week touring British Columbia’s mountain national parks, a week cruising through the Okanagan Valley and the Lower Mainland along the province’s new Rainforest to Rockies route, and a week on Vancouver Island.
I knew I’d need a rock-solid plan, as well as a backup plan or two. But after plenty of research, I was convinced it could be done. There was a lot that could go wrong, but the rewards would be great if it went right.
Our goal was to explore British Columbia without creating a single ounce of vehicle emissions. Little did I know as we headed off into the Kootenays how important that goal would become. The car: 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 Preferred RWD For this trip to be successful, selecting the right vehicle and trailer combination would be essential.
On the vehicle side, enter the 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 in its Preferred RWD (rear-wheel drive) trim. Before EV rebates are applied, which vary from $5,000 to $12,500 across the country, this version of the Ioniq 5 is priced at $57,677, delivery and fees in. Truth be told, while I knew the Ioniq 5 would technically meet our needs, it wasn’t my first choice.
As many North Americans do, I assumed I’d need a truck or larger SUV to feel comfortable while towing a trailer. But after approaching several automakers with the idea and getting multiple declines — none explicitly said they weren’t confident in the plan, but only some offered an alternate reason for saying no — it was in Hyundai Canada where we found a willing participant with an untraditional vehicle. And this was with the full understanding that I’d be reporting honestly on my experiences, good or bad.
Hyundai deserves a hat tip for that. The Hyundai team tracked down an Ioniq 5 in Preferred RWD trim. This was clearly the best choice here for its range of 488 kilometres, as opposed to the 414 km in the all-wheel drive (AWD) model.
For this purpose, we needed range far more than extra power or features. To that point, though, I was entirely wrong about needing a truck. The RWD’s 225 hp was consistently enough power — yes, even in B.
C.’s mountain passes. And while I wouldn’t have declined a power tailgate or a rear wiper, the Preferred RWD is otherwise a mostly well-equipped base trim vehicle for the price.
(The rear wiper is coming with the 2025 refresh, so consider holding off for that important update.) Though it has no towing aids to speak of, the Ioniq 5 is rated for 2,000 pounds with a braked trailer and 1,650 pounds unbraked, which is far more than we needed..
. The trailer: Squaredrop from Northern Teardrop Trailers ..
.because when you’re towing with an EV, every ounce counts toward preserving range. Fortunately, we found a trailer that weighs less than 1,000 pounds.
And it’s made in Canada! This is the Squaredrop trailer from Northern Teardrop Trailers, a small independent manufacturer based in B.C.’s Kootenay Rockies.
Each trailer is custom-built, and production maxes out at roughly 25 units per year. But owner Dale Olynik had better brace for higher demand as EV owners learn how great these ultralight trailers are for electric towing! Among the highlights: with a 148.5 by 202-centimetre (58.
5 by 79.5-inch) interior floor and a 114.3-centimetre (45-inch) ceiling, this trailer sleeps or sits two adult-sized occupants very comfortably.
Thoughtful details like the powerful extractor fan, lock-open windows, and interior lights and USB ports make it easy to live in. The limited storage is shared between the interior cabinets and the rear kitchen area, but since the trailer’s tongue is long and the Ioniq 5’s tailgate could open easily, we kept our belongings in the car and had more than enough space. On the driving side, because the Squaredrop only weighs 970 pounds dry, we never needed trailer brakes.
The Ioniq 5 had no issues managing its weight, even on long mountain descents where it showed zero hint of brake fade. And since the trailer has a short rear overhang, it’s easy to maneuver in traffic. The most challenging thing about this trailer is backing it up.
(Smaller trailers are much trickier to reverse than larger ones.) But the Squaredrop is so light that after a while I stopped backing it into campsites entirely and preferred to just disconnect it and roll it into place, which I could almost always handle myself. This is a fantastic little trailer, and at its starting price of $18,995 before add-ons, I’d buy one in a heartbeat.
How to plan a road trip when towing with an EV While the technology around electric driving has come a long way, it’s still not at the point where we can just jump into the car and wing it. This goes doubly so in this situation, where I didn’t know exactly how much range I was working with while towing until I got out on the road. I therefore had to make my best guesses and come up with as watertight plan as I could.
This is the framework I used: Note: I planned this trip in British Columbia. Here, the charging network is well-distributed and consistently reliable. There aren’t a lot of places across Canada where this type of travel would be comfortable today, but B.
C. is ahead of the curve. I’m sure there are people who have read this far hoping this tale ends in disaster.
That would certainly be better for clicks: stories about EV travel going badly sure do get a lot of confirmation-bias attention. But here’s the truth: It went fine. Better than fine, in fact.
Over 3,000 kilometres of driving, I’d say 95% of the trip went exactly to plan, and the remaining 5% fell to the backup plan with zero significant issues. On reflection, our biggest hiccups had nothing to do with charging. For example, I had a charging plan for our three nights at unserviced campsites in Gulf Islands National Park Reserve on Vancouver Island.
However, I missed the part where those campgrounds don’t have showers. We are not no-showers-for-three-days people. (Fortunately, there’s a fantastic public pool in Victoria — and it has Level 3 chargers right outside.
We got cleaned up, went for a swim, and returned to a fully charged Ioniq 5. Talk about an accidental win!) The few snags we encountered along these lines were minor in the grand scheme of things. If you’re flexible and take everything as it comes, a little quick problem-solving on the fly goes a long way.
Some things about towing with an EV went better than expected On an even more positive note, a few things didn’t go exactly to plan but ended up helping us out. For example, I requested a Level 2 charger with a 30-amp plug since that’s the most common connection at campsites. Instead, I received a 40-amp charger with a 50-amp plug.
This, it turns out, was accidentally of huge benefit. The car charged faster, and Tsawaak RV Resort — a brand new and beautiful Indigenous-owned campground in Tofino — only has 50-amp plugs, so we could charge there overnight and get around the area’s lack of fast-charging options. It did mean we had to rely on fast chargers in a couple of spots where we didn’t have 50-amp service, such as Redstreak Campground in Kootenay National Park.
That cost us an unplanned hour after discovering the issue, yet we still made it to the Radium Hot Springs in time for a soak that evening. To my mind, that’s a fair trade. I also didn’t need to disconnect the trailer to charge the Ioniq 5 nearly as often as I expected.
B.C. has been impressively forward-thinking as it’s built up its infrastructure.
Many stations along major routes are either designed for pulling through or are spacious enough that you can pull up to them sideways without being in anyone’s way. In total, I only had to disconnect the trailer twice on this entire trip to charge the Ioniq 5. And with the Northern Teardrop trailer, the process is so easy that it cost me maybe five minutes in total each time.
In short: charging an EV while towing a trailer was far less of a hassle than I thought it would be. Frequently asked questions (FAQs) about towing with an EV Our EV and trailer combo piqued a lot of interest while we were out on the road. We chatted with a lot of folks who all had similar questions about how our journey was going.
Since you likely have many of the same questions, let’s address them here. Based on reports from others who have towed with EVs, I planned to lose roughly half of the Ioniq 5’s range. Our real-life figure was much better.
Once the car adjusted its range estimates for the trailer’s 970-pound weight, it was showing 340 kilometres on average. I treated this as roughly 250 kilometres of useful range before I’d need to be at a charging station, which is more than I thought I’d have to work with at the outset. There is a clear drain on range when climbing a mountain pass with an EV towing a trailer, but an EV’s regenerative braking recovers much of that loss on the way back down.
Overall, there isn’t much appreciable difference between gas and EV performance in mountain passes. I had one moment where I blew past a charging station in Christina Lake with 130 kilometres on the battery, assuming I had enough range to get the 80 km to the next charger in Castlegar. What I naively didn’t realize is that the 1,535-metre Blueberry-Paulson Summit was in between.
On the way up, I was sweating as I lost roughly double the expected range. But then on the downhill, the regenerative braking collected so much energy that I had more range at the bottom of the mountain than at the top. In the end, I got to Castlegar with almost exactly the range left I initially accounted for, no harm done.
With the 970-pound trailer used in our testing, the Ioniq 5 felt surprisingly comfortable while towing. The car handled the weight well in almost every situation, and towing aids such as trailer brakes or extended blind spot monitoring truly weren’t needed. The Ioniq 5 Preferred RWD had enough power to get going without a struggle.
In fact, after a while I often forgot the trailer was even there. The only time it made its presence known was at around 50 km/h in city driving where it produced a recoil sensation, but you get that in most towing situations. This combination of an Ioniq 5 and an ultralight Northern Teardrop trailer is hands-down the best towing experience I’ve had to date.
There will no doubt be trolls in the comments suggesting otherwise, so let’s hit this point head-on. The only entity that is paying me to say any of what I’ve written here is Driving.ca.
Hyundai Canada and Northern Teardrop Trailers provided their products for evaluation at no cost, and Destination British Columbia and Parks Canada made the trip possible by assisting with campsite bookings and a portion of the travel expenses. But each of these organizations contributed with the explicit understanding that I would report on my experiences with full transparency. My only obligation is to you, the reader, and it’s important to me that I never steer you sideways.
If things hadn’t gone well, I’d say so. Here’s why I’d happily plan an EV towing trip again When I first set out to do this, it was mostly to see if it could be done. But then two things happened along the way that dramatically changed my perspective.
The first was driving past a wildfire for the first time in my life. We were northbound on Highway 95 from Radium Hot Springs to Golden on the morning of July 24. Thick smoke was pouring off the hilltops and tumbling into the valley.
It seemed distant, but the sight was jarring. We couldn’t have driven to Golden if we’d left a day later. The fire reached the highway and jumped it, which forced a closure and destroyed many of the structures we’d gone past just a few hours before.
The second incident was even more shocking. Later that same day, at 5:45 PM, we arrived at Emerald Lake in Yoho National Park. My daughter was catching a nap, so I waited in the car for her to wake up before heading out to sightsee.
I noticed the sky was red and realized something was falling. It wasn’t rain or snow, or a mountain mist. It was particles of ash from the fire ripping through Jasper National Park, 250 kilometres away.
Minutes later, the fire reached Jasper townsite and destroyed 30% of the town. If this trip didn’t have purpose before, it did in that moment. This year, the world reached the grim milestone of being 1.
5 degrees Celsius warmer on average than in pre-industrial times. We’re seeing the effects first-hand. In eastern Canada, it’s through more frequent tornadoes and historic flooding.
In the west, it’s more destructive wildfires being fueled by intense storms, more frequent lightning strikes, and hotter and drier conditions. In other words, B.C.
and Alberta are becoming a full-time tinder box, and climate change is demonstrably to blame. Travel in B.C.
’s wildfire season demonstrates a need for change As Jasper’s ashes settled on my eyelashes and burned in my lungs, the occasional mild inconveniences of EV travel felt insignificant. My daughter and I will never go back to the same Jasper we visited in 2018. So many people’s memories went up in smoke that day: engagements, weddings, treasured family vacations with loved ones departed.
If we want to protect more of Canada’s beautiful places — like Yoho, Mount Revelstoke, the Okanagan Valley, Tofino, and others in B.C. and elsewhere — we need to find ways to make driving and travel more sustainable.
We can no longer hide our heads in the sand and pretend climate change isn’t happening. The consequences of our inaction are bearing down on us like a wildfire cresting the hilltops. Are EVs the perfect solution? No, they’re not.
The battery life cycle comes with its own set of problems, and EVs aren’t truly clean if they run on dirty power. (B.C.
and Quebec both lean heavily on water-based power generation, which is part of why EVs work so well in those provinces.) Plus, transportation is just one cog in a huge wheel of carbon-related issues. But amid these stark realities, this trip’s success shows more is possible with EVs than we might think.
People aren’t likely to change their habits by driving less, but some might be convinced to reduce vehicle emissions in other ways when given accurate information. Switching to electric driving — or hybrid/plug-in hybrid driving if an EV truly isn’t compatible with your lifestyle — is something you and I can do today that will make an impact. Change seems small on a scale of one, but a lot of ones can add up to a big difference.
Give it some thought. There are already people out there doing this. Why can’t we? Sign up for our newsletter Blind-Spot Monitor and follow our social channels on X , Tiktok and LinkedIn to stay up to date on the latest automotive news, reviews, car culture, and vehicle shopping advice.
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