The question comes up at the desk almost every time an electric truck is on the table, and it is always the same question. What happens when I hook a trailer to it in February. It is the right question to ask, because the two things that hurt an electric truck's range most are cold and a trailer, and out here you get both at once for about five months a year. If you are shopping trucks and trying to work out whether an electric one can actually do your job, start with our new Ram 1500 inventory to see what is on the ground, then read the rest of this, because the math is not complicated and nobody seems to want to put it in writing.

We are going to give you real numbers from real world data instead of a brochure claim, explain why the two penalties stack rather than cancel out, and then tell you what Ram actually decided to do about it. The short version is that Ram looked at the same math and concluded a bigger battery was the wrong answer.

Key Takeaways

• Cold alone costs roughly a fifth to a third of your range. Recurrent's analysis of more than 30,000 vehicles found EVs average 78 percent of their range at 0 degrees, and 70 percent at about minus 7. The best performer held 88 percent at 0 degrees, the worst 69 percent.
• Towing alone is the bigger penalty. Manufacturers generally rate towing range at about half of the unloaded range. Consumer Reports found that towing 10,000 pounds pushed a Rivian and an F-150 Lightning closer to one third of their rated range.
• The two penalties multiply, they do not average. Take a hit for cold, then take a towing hit on what is left. A truck rated at 400 km can land near 130 to 150 km with a real trailer on a real January day.
• Charging with a trailer attached is the part nobody warns you about. Most public fast charge stalls are pull in, not pull through, so a truck plus a 24 foot trailer has to be unhooked to charge in a lot of places.
• Ram cancelled the battery electric 1500 and put its money on a range extender instead. As of September 2025 the fully electric Ram 1500 BEV is dead. The truck now called the Ram 1500 REV carries a 92 kWh battery plus a 3.6L Pentastar V6 turning an on board generator, for a targeted total range of up to 1,110 km and up to 14,000 lb of towing.
• Manitoba honest read: if your truck's whole job is a trailer between November and March, a series hybrid like the REV solves the winter towing problem in a way a bigger battery does not.

Why Cold Costs You Range

An electric truck loses range in the cold for three separate reasons, and they all land at the same time.

The battery chemistry itself slows down. Lithium ion cells move energy less freely when they are cold, so the pack cannot deliver or accept charge as readily until it warms up. Then there is cabin heat. A gas truck heats you for free with waste heat off the engine, and an electric truck has no waste heat to spare, so every degree of cabin warmth comes straight out of driving range. Third, everything gets stiffer. Cold tires, cold gear oil, cold shocks and packed snow all raise rolling resistance before you have gone a kilometre.

The best public number on how much this costs comes from Recurrent, which looked at real telematics from more than 30,000 vehicles rather than a single lab test. Their finding: EVs average 78 percent of their range at 0 degrees Celsius, and 70 percent at roughly minus 7. Spread across models it ranged from 88 percent at the best to 69 percent at the worst. Heat pump equipped vehicles held about 10 percent more range at 0 degrees, but that advantage shrinks as the temperature falls toward minus 18, where a heat pump ends up performing much like a plain resistive heater.

Note what those temperatures are. Minus 7 is a mild Manitoba day. We spend real weeks below minus 25, which is well past where any of that published data stops.

Why Towing Costs You More Than Cold Does

Towing is the bigger of the two penalties, and it is mostly about air.

A trailer roughly doubles the frontal area you are pushing through the wind, and aerodynamic drag climbs with the square of speed. At 100 km/h on an open prairie highway with nothing to break the wind, that is the dominant cost. Add the weight itself, add the extra rolling resistance of trailer tires, and you get a number that surprises people the first time.

Manufacturers generally rate an electric truck's towing range at about half of its unloaded range, and that is the optimistic version. Consumer Reports tested a Rivian and an F-150 Lightning pulling 10,000 pounds and found real world range came in closer to one third of the rated figure. Edmunds measured a lighter load and found towing added about 27 percent to energy use. The spread between those results is the honest answer: it depends entirely on how heavy, how tall, and how fast.

The tall part matters more than most people expect. A 7,000 lb enclosed cargo trailer will cost you far more range than a 7,000 lb flat deck with a tractor on it, because the enclosed box is a wall. If you pull a big enclosed trailer, plan on the pessimistic end of every number in this article.

Stacking Them: The Number That Actually Matters

Here is where people go wrong. They see "25 percent for cold" and "50 percent for towing" and mentally add them to 75 percent. That is not how it works. You apply one, then apply the other to what is left.

Work it with a truck rated at 400 km unloaded in mild weather. Take Recurrent's 70 percent figure for a cold day and you are at 280 km before you hook up to anything. Now apply a towing penalty to that 280. At the generous half, you are near 140 km. At the Consumer Reports one third, you are near 95 km. Neither of those is the number on the window sticker, and neither is a number you can plan a day around.

Put that against real prairie distances. Portage la Prairie to Winnipeg is about 85 km one way. Portage to Brandon is about 135 km. On a good day, unloaded, in July, an electric truck does not think twice about either. On a minus 28 morning with a stock trailer behind you, that Brandon run is suddenly the entire battery with nothing left for the trip home and no guarantee of a working fast charger at the other end. That is the honest gap between the brochure and the driveway, and it is the same gap we walked through in our post on Ram REV cold weather range.

The Charging Problem Nobody Mentions

Range is only half of it. The other half is what happens when you need to plug in with a trailer still attached.

Most public fast charge sites are laid out as pull in stalls in a parking lot, sized for a car. Back a truck in with a 24 foot trailer behind it and you either block three stalls or you unhook. Unhooking a loaded trailer in a Winnipeg parking lot in a January wind, then hooking it back up 40 minutes later, is a genuinely miserable way to spend an afternoon, and it is the part that turns people off electric trucks faster than any range figure.

Then there is the density problem. Head west or north out of Portage and the fast charge network gets thin quickly. On a summer road trip that is an inconvenience. Hauling in winter, when your real range is a third of the sticker and the margin for a detour is gone, it is a planning problem you have to solve before you leave, not after.

Home charging fixes most of the daily version of this, which is why we wrote a separate guide on charging an electric Ram at home in Manitoba. Leave with a full battery every morning and the commute and the in town work are easy. It is the long haul with a trailer that stays hard.

What Ram Actually Decided to Do About It

This is the part that makes the whole conversation different from where it was two years ago.

Ram had a fully electric half ton in development, originally called the Ram 1500 REV. In September 2025 Stellantis cancelled it outright, citing demand for battery electric pickups that never materialized. The name then moved: the truck now sold as the Ram 1500 REV is the range extended one, the truck previously shown as the Ramcharger.

The engineering answer it represents is the interesting part. The REV is a series hybrid. The wheels are always driven by electric motors, and a 3.6L Pentastar V6 never turns the wheels at all. It exists purely to spin a 130 kW generator and feed the battery when the battery runs low. Ram Canada lists a 92 kWh battery, a targeted total driving range of up to 690 miles (1,110 km), maximum towing of 14,000 lb (6,350 kg), and DC fast charging alongside Level 1 and Level 2. Stellantis lists fast charging at up to 175 kW.

Read that against everything above and you can see the logic. The cold and towing penalties do not go away. Physics does not care what is in the engine bay, and a REV pulling a trailer at minus 28 will burn through its electric range fast. The difference is what happens next. When the battery gets low, the generator starts, and the truck keeps going as long as there is fuel in it. You are not stranded doing mental arithmetic about whether the charger in Brandon is working. You stop for five minutes at a pump like you always did.

That is the honest case for a range extender in a place like this. It is not that it beats a battery electric truck on efficiency, because it does not. It is that it removes the one failure mode that actually stops people from buying, which is being 60 km from home with a loaded trailer and not enough battery.

How to Plan a Winter Tow in an Electric Truck

If you already own one, or you are about to, this is the practical list.

Precondition while you are still plugged in. Warming a cold truck costs far more energy than keeping a warm one warm. Heat the cabin and the battery off the wall before you unplug, not off the battery after. This single habit is worth more than any other trick on this list.

Plan on a third, not a half. Build your day around the pessimistic number. If you land better than that, you had a good day. If you built the day around the optimistic number and the wind came up out of the northwest, you are calling someone.

Watch the wind, not just the temperature. Out here a 40 km/h headwind across open field costs you more than another 10 degrees of cold does. Prairie crosswinds on a tall trailer are a real energy line item.

Charge to 100 percent before a tow day. The usual advice to stop at 80 percent for battery health is fine for daily driving. It is the wrong advice the morning you are hauling.

Know where you will plug in with the trailer on. Find out before you leave whether the stall is pull through. If it is not, plan where you will drop the trailer.

Run proper winter tires. Everything about towing in the cold gets worse on hard compound tires, and the traction you need to start a loaded trailer on packed snow is the traction winter tires give you. Our post on towing in winter in Manitoba goes deeper on the trailer side of this.

Is an Electric Truck Right for a Manitoba Trailer Job

The straight answer is that it depends on which half of your driving is the trailer.

If you tow occasionally, a few times a year, and the rest of your driving is town, commute and errands, an electric truck works fine and you will love it eleven months out of twelve. If your truck's entire reason to exist is a trailer between November and March, a pure battery electric half ton is not the tool yet, and no amount of enthusiasm changes the arithmetic above. That is precisely the gap the range extender fills, and it is why Ram bet on it.

We are not going to tell you an electric truck is the answer for everyone, because it plainly is not. What we will do is sit down with your actual numbers, the trailer you actually pull and the distances you actually drive, and tell you honestly which of the three answers fits: a gas Ram, a REV, or waiting. Take a look at the new Ram 1500 inventory and the used inventory, and if you want to know what your current truck is worth before you decide anything, our instant cash offer gives you a number in a few minutes. We also went through the broader ownership case in our post on whether an electric truck is worth it in Manitoba.

FAQs

How much range does an electric truck lose towing in winter?

Both penalties apply in sequence, not in parallel. Recurrent's data on more than 30,000 vehicles puts cold weather range at about 78 percent of normal at 0 degrees and 70 percent at roughly minus 7. Towing then costs roughly half again, and Consumer Reports measured closer to two thirds lost when pulling 10,000 pounds. Stack those and a truck rated at 400 km can realistically deliver 95 to 150 km with a trailer on a cold day.

Does a heat pump fix cold weather range loss?

It helps, but not as much in our climate as in a milder one. Recurrent found heat pump equipped vehicles held about 10 percent more range at 0 degrees, with the advantage fading as temperatures fall toward minus 18. In a Manitoba cold snap a heat pump ends up performing much like a resistive heater.

Is the Ram 1500 REV a plug in hybrid or an electric truck?

Neither label fits perfectly. It is a series hybrid, sometimes called a range extended electric vehicle. The wheels are driven only by electric motors. The 3.6L Pentastar V6 never drives the wheels and exists only to spin a 130 kW generator that recharges the 92 kWh battery on the move. You plug it in like an EV and you fuel it like a gas truck.

What happened to the fully electric Ram 1500?

Stellantis cancelled the battery electric Ram 1500 in September 2025, pointing to weak demand for battery electric pickups. At the same time the range extended truck previously shown as the Ramcharger took over the Ram 1500 REV name. If you have been reading about a Ramcharger, that is the truck now called the REV.

How much can the Ram 1500 REV tow?

Ram Canada lists maximum towing of 14,000 lb (6,350 kg) for the 1500 REV, with a targeted total driving range of up to 690 miles (1,110 km) combining the 92 kWh battery and the on board generator. As with any truck, your real capability depends on cab, box, axle and equipment, so ask us to confirm the rating on the exact build before you commit to a trailer.

When can I get a Ram 1500 REV in Manitoba?

Ram has the 1500 REV listed for Canada, and availability is still ramping. We are not going to print an arrival date or a price we cannot stand behind, so call us and we will tell you exactly where allocation and Canadian pricing sit that week.

The Bottom Line

Cold costs you range. A trailer costs you more. Together they cost you far more than either number suggests on its own, and the honest planning figure for a winter tow is about a third of the sticker, not half. That is not an argument against electric trucks. It is an argument for knowing the real number before you buy, instead of finding it out on Highway 1 in February.

It is also exactly why Ram killed its battery electric half ton and built a series hybrid instead. Come talk to us about what you actually haul and how far, and we will tell you straight which truck fits. Every new Ram we sell carries the Eh+ value stack with zero dealer fees, and when it is time to get one ready for winter you can book service with us right here in Portage la Prairie.

Tyler Dunn, Dunn Ram Trucks, Portage la Prairie