Field card · for a LightShip AE.1 owner
Six measurements that would replace the biggest guesses in the Camping Reserve Simulator with real numbers. Most take a minute. None need equipment beyond your truck's display, the LightShip app and a phone camera.
Before anything else: nothing here is worth doing while you are driving. Every reading is taken by a passenger, or with the rig stopped. If you are alone, pull over. A missing data point costs nothing; a phone in the driver's hand costs a great deal.
Here is the honest position. The Camping Reserve Simulator has one tow vehicle behind it that has actually been measured: an F-150 PowerBoost, over 3,719 instrumented miles in July 2026 with an OBD logger at a 2-second cadence, and a second instrumented campaign in September 2026 at 1 Hz. Everything it says about that truck — 15.35 mpg pure-tow at 61.9 mph (both baseline legs ran light tailwinds, so that figure is slightly flattered), 7.70 kWh AC per gallon at the outlet, the 27.8% TrekDrive load transfer — rests on recorded data, collected on the Specifications page.
Every other tow vehicle on that page is a convention, not a measurement. Their towing figures come from published EPA range put through a blanket 45% towing loss. Nobody has measured a Silverado EV, a Cybertruck, a Lightning, a Rivian or a Sierra pulling an AE.1 — not us, not the manufacturers, not anyone who has published it.
And the convention does not hold together. Backing towing consumption out of those published figures gives roughly 687, 744, 854 and 907 watt-hours per mile for four trucks pulling the same 8,200 lb trailer. That is a 32% spread, and no physics produces it — it is the same convention applied at different times against different EPA numbers. One owner running Test 1 below collapses that for their truck.
If you only do one thing, do Test 0. It costs two minutes per trip and turns drives you were taking anyway into data. If you can do one more, do Test 1 — it is the one that fixes the number above.
Answers: what your rig actually uses, and how much of it the trailer paid for. Every trip you already take is a usable data point if you write down six things at each end of it.
Read Atlas stopped, at both ends, settled. The state-of-charge display is a coarse endpoint instrument — useful for the difference between two settled readings, not for watching a rate. A number read in motion is not usable, and a number read the moment you stop is not settled.
Which truck is not optional. A Wh/mi or mpg figure with no vehicle attached cannot be used for anything, because every truck starts from a different place. Pack size matters too on an EV — a Silverado EV comes in three.
This is the one that matters most, and it is the direct counterpart of the test we ask Pebble owners for. It answers what an AE.1 actually costs your truck — the number the simulator currently invents from a blanket convention for every vehicle except the PowerBoost.
The solo legs are what make it usable. A towing figure on its own cannot be compared with anyone else's, because every truck starts somewhere different. The same truck hitched and unhitched, same road, same speed, same day, gives a ratio — and a ratio is comparable across owners, trucks and model years. That ratio is precisely the quantity the simulator is currently guessing at.
Out and back matters: it cancels road slope and any steady wind, neither of which a one-way run can separate from the trailer.
Canopy down. Road mode requires it, and a canopy-up towing figure is not comparable to anything on the page — that configuration was retired as a test point. If you are not certain, say so.
Answers: the real delivered power from your tow vehicle's 240 V outlet into the trailer. The simulator models this as a chain — outlet rating, a continuous-duty fraction, your EVSE, the trailer's import limit — and only the PowerBoost end of it has been measured. The trailer's own import ceiling is an assumption.
On a PowerBoost the measured delivering band is 5.69–6.06 kW across seven legs in July 2026, with a 5.85 kW mean on the September 2026 campaign. A truck with a 30 A / 240 V outlet should land near that; a Cybertruck's 40 A outlet may be clipped by a 32 A cordset or by the trailer's own limit, which is exactly the chain we would like confirmed.
Answers: how much propulsion energy TrekDrive actually takes off your truck. The 27.8% figure the simulator uses was measured behind a PowerBoost. Whether it holds behind an electric truck with different gearing and a different power split has never been tested.
Both halves of the answer matter. What the truck saved is only half of it; what the trailer spent is the other half, and it is the half almost every published assist comparison leaves out. A saving on the truck bought with more energy from the trailer is not a saving, it is a transfer — which is why the SOC readings are as important as the trip meter.
Answers: how much energy actually crosses from truck to trailer over a real stay, against a model that assumes a 48-hour window and a steady operating power. Nobody has reported this end to end.
This one is forgiving — approximate hours are fine. Two settled endpoint readings across two days are worth far more than a precise instantaneous number, because the quantity that matters is total energy moved, not the rate it moved at.
Answers: how long an unhitch-and-rehitch charging stop really takes. The simulator prices this at a user-set 30 minutes per stop, and that single figure moves whole travel days on an electric rig — but it is a guess, and it varies enormously with the site.
A site where a towed rig can pull through removes the whole hitch cycle, and on a multi-stop day that can be the difference between arriving and stopping for the night. Naming the site is as valuable as the timing — the simulator already knows where the chargers are, but not which of them a trailer can actually use.
Post results here: the Turbo Edition thread on RVForums.com.
That is also the place for questions and corrections about the Camping Reserve Simulator these measurements feed. Posting in the open is deliberate — anyone can check the reading, and the next owner can find it.
Photographs of a display are worth more than typed numbers — they can be re-read later if a question comes up, and they carry context we did not know to ask for. Conditions matter as much as readings: a figure without a tow vehicle, a speed and an outside temperature is very hard to use.
Something that looks wrong is usually the most valuable thing in the batch. Please send it as it came out rather than tidying it up or leaving it out. Every reading is credited and dated, and any figure it replaces changes from assumed to measured on the page, with the revision note saying whose reading moved it.
LightShip AE.1 — tow-vehicle data notes Date / where: Test number: Tow vehicle (year, model, engine or battery, pack size): Readings: truck trip meter ____ Wh/mi or mpg LightShip SOC start ____ % end ____ % truck charge/fuel start ____ end ____ miles ____ Conditions: cruise speed ____ terrain flat / rolling / mountain ____ TrekDrive off / duty ____ umbilical delivering? ____ canopy down and latched? ____ outside temp ____ wind ____ For Test 1 only: TOWING out ____ back ____ SOLO out ____ back ____ Anything odd: