I'm finding this hard to believe. He had a car with 70 miles of range? Was it a 2011 leaf? That car had about 70mi of range but a payload capacity of almost 1000lb. Was your luggage just bricks?

Winter is more believable, cold weather does affect electric range and older EVs didn't have good (or any) thermal management on the battery. I would expect that a combination of fully loaded and cold weather to reduce range by 10-15% these days