Forum Discussion
ford truck guy wrote:
Quote -
" Under the right conditions we would certainly pay a surcharge."
Who decides these conditions? and would you ASSUME you could just hook up and charge for free??
Asking for a friend ! :-)
The right conditions for me. In other words, do I need to charge and what is the campground offering for a rate.
Assume??? No. We ask. So far no one has had a problem with it on a 30 amp site. We also only plug in one thing at a time. EV or RV. Not both. Hasn’t been a problem for us so far and we camp and travel a lot. Over 12000 kilometres this year so far.
Ultimately it’s up to the campground. So far none have had an issue with it. Like I said though, we generally only rent 30 amp sites so it’s not like I can suck up more than 25 or 30 kilowatts over night. If we are staying in the area for awhile like we did in Quebec we tended to suck up 10 to 15 kWh per day just from travelling around. Again though, the trailer wasn’t plugged in during those times.
It hasn’t been an issue for us. Can’t speak for others though.
Cheers.Reisender wrote:
Who knows. All above my pay grade as I haven’t looked into any of the EV trucks.
There are thousands of EV RVers out there though and we have talked to many. Generally speaking I would say that most are happy to pay a charging surcharge at a campground as long as it has value for convenience. It really hasn’t come up for us yet. We have only hit one campground where they had a 10 dollar charging surcharge and only if we rented a 50 amp site. That night we were around half on the battery so it didn’t make sense. The owner was fine with us charging on a 30 amp site for 10 or 12 hours overnight. Under the right conditions we would certainly pay a surcharge.
I wouldn't want to pay a "surcharge" to camp, I suspect very few of those you have talked to fully understand what is and will happen.
Unless the campgrounds install a metered charger at each and every campsite what WILL happen is the campgrounds will simply tack on an additional increase to the cost of the campsite FOR EVERYONE.
EVERYONE will have to "share" the cost for the abusers and that is not fair or right to those who do not abuse the system. Campgrounds at one time used to charge lower rates for those who didn't have or use A/C.. People could (and most likely did) lie and tell campground that they will not use their A/C.. Campgrounds smartened up and raised the rates for ALL campers (including tent only) and no longer offer lower rates for those who will not use A/C.
Some campgrounds I have been at recently cost have exceeded $100 per night. I would not wish to see that bump up any more just to support the EV free loaders. Because of the increased costs I am changing plans next yr to camp out of season to get some reprieve from the cost.. The one campground when I first started camping was $30 per night total in the early 2000's, this yr $100 plus state and local taxes..
Many campers are not made of money, they are real families trying to take their families out on an adventure, tacking on additional nuisance fees to cover free loading EV campers should not be a part of the cost to those folks but it will be eventually.
You act like electricity is free, it isn't, it has a cost associated with it and that cost to produce, distribute and maintain goes up dramatically when you abuse it.
Campgrounds absorb the cost of electric for all sites, that cost is then averaged by the quantity of the sites. The result of that is figured into your campsite cost. As cost goes up to the campground and folks abuse the electricity the campgrounds adjust their prices for next yr accordingly. They are in the business to earn a profit, enough profit to pay for operations, taxes, infrastructure, pay employees and yes, pay the owners some sort of livable wage.
My electric rates were increased 20% this spring adding another $25 to my monthly electric bill.. I count myself lucky, as my rate went from $.10 per Kwhr to $.12 per Kwhr, others not so lucky. Was reading another website where someone from California was paying something like $.50 per Kwhr at peak hrs.. Those price increases are just the beginning of a lot of rate hikes that are coming to all in the near future.- Funny, nobody addressed what I thought was really odd about the article on this prototype. Supposedly this thing will "help" the tow vehicle to gain range.
Either the trailer would have to have a large battery and a means of providing power TO the tow vehicle, which currently the EV's are not set up to accept.
Or, it would have it's own drive motors to assist in propulsion.
If it provides propulsion via its own wheels, that will get interesting for how quickly it senses what is needed, and actually how the tow vehicle could end up reacting to the "push" from the trailer. And a flat tire on the trailer would do??????
Also, how heavy will this battery pack have to be? What starts out as a small light trailer will get heavy in a hurry. - Quote -
" Under the right conditions we would certainly pay a surcharge."
Who decides these conditions? and would you ASSUME you could just hook up and charge for free??
Asking for a friend ! :-) Gdetrailer wrote:
Reisender wrote:
Yah for sure. I was referring more to the nice to have verses need to have campground charging. It’s handy for sure and we do when we can.
Cheer.
The problem is scale.
Small scale like your setup it can be made to work somewhat.
Scale it up 3x or 4x and now it doesn't. Larger loads require larger amounts of energy, larger amounts of energy means shorter distance and/or larger storage batteries.
Larger storage batteries means more weight which reduces range and takes considerably more time to recharge.
At the end of the day, you will find that most RV'rs will plan to fully recharge their EV trucks at the campground overnight for free instead of seeking out a charging station that they will have to pay for and wait an hr for the charge.
EV boondockers would most likely have to drag around a much bigger gen plus fuel just to be able to extract themselves from a deep outback camping trip than what a Honda 2000i could provide..
Who knows. All above my pay grade as I haven’t looked into any of the EV trucks.
There are thousands of EV RVers out there though and we have talked to many. Generally speaking I would say that most are happy to pay a charging surcharge at a campground as long as it has value for convenience. It really hasn’t come up for us yet. We have only hit one campground where they had a 10 dollar charging surcharge and only if we rented a 50 amp site. That night we were around half on the battery so it didn’t make sense. The owner was fine with us charging on a 30 amp site for 10 or 12 hours overnight. Under the right conditions we would certainly pay a surcharge.Reisender wrote:
Yah for sure. I was referring more to the nice to have verses need to have campground charging. It’s handy for sure and we do when we can.
Cheer.
The problem is scale.
Small scale like your setup it can be made to work somewhat.
Scale it up 3x or 4x and now it doesn't. Larger loads require larger amounts of energy, larger amounts of energy means shorter distance and/or larger storage batteries.
Larger storage batteries means more weight which reduces range and takes considerably more time to recharge.
At the end of the day, you will find that most RV'rs will plan to fully recharge their EV trucks at the campground overnight for free instead of seeking out a charging station that they will have to pay for and wait an hr for the charge.
EV boondockers would most likely have to drag around a much bigger gen plus fuel just to be able to extract themselves from a deep outback camping trip than what a Honda 2000i could provide..QCMan wrote:
Charging both is simple as long as there is enough time.
This begs the question of how you charge both at one campsite. Granted, you may now be able to go 150 miles between charges instead of 90 miles with just the tow vehicle but now you need to rent two campsites to charge them. Electric vehicles are in the future but current technology is being forced to do something it is not advanced enough to do.
The only issue is arriving depleted and expecting an overnight charge to roll out the next morning. In this case the user would know in advance that a public L3 charging spot will be needed soon once out on the road.
Staying several days? No issue.- Noooo, not again!
Dinos vs Electrons is finally not topping the charts anymore. And the sequel is out already? Gdetrailer wrote:
Reisender wrote:
QCMan wrote:
This begs the question of how you charge both at one campsite. Granted, you may now be able to go 150 miles between charges instead of 90 miles with just the tow vehicle but now you need to rent two campsites to charge them. Electric vehicles are in the future but current technology is being forced to do something it is not advanced enough to do.
Charging at the campsite is nice but not necessary. Lots of DC fast charging out there and more all the time. We top up when we can at sites but rarely suck up more than 25 to 30 kwh overnight as we are always on 30 amp sites. I suppose one could rent a 50 amp site and charge more. I suppose it also depends on the campgrounds charging policy. Surcharges etc.
Should be interesting though. I wonder if future pull thru sites at DC fast charging will be able to charge two vehicles at a time. It would make for a quick charging session essentially doubling the charge rate.
Once again, you are comparing "apples to oranges". What you get from your small scale EV/trailer combination is vastly different than the reality of what happens when the vehicle and trailer are scaled up to real world sizes and usage.
I would recommend that you take a look at one of the first real world tests of a Ford F150 lightning with a 6K trailer in tow..
HERE
The video is a good real world comparison but does have several shameless plugs for their youtube channel sponsors you can forward through.
Cliffs notes version of the video..
F150 lightning (EV) towing vs GMC Sierra (Gas) towing
Setup-
Both towing exact same towing 6K lb trailer at the same time on same route, speeds and conditions.
Both battery and fuel tank are filled to 100%
GMC has 24 gallon tank
Lightning 282 miles non towing range with full charge, display estimated 160 miles towing the trailer selected with full charge.
Ultimately had to cut trip severely short due to less range than originally estimated and no charging stations close enough on their route that they could make it to and had to turn around and backtrack to the nearest charger they could find. Vehicle power (acceleration performance) dropped to 90% at 9% battery left. Drove only 85.9 miles from 100% to 9% battery. Took 45 minutes to recharge from 9% to 75% or so battery charge (but hey, they guy did get to eat a takeout “chicken dinner”..
GMC drove 155.8 mile 65 miles remaining using $5.39 Premium fuel per gallon took 17.371 gallons at $93.79, total fill up took only a few minutes. 8.9 MPG and was able to complete the full trip without needing to refill (wow, that thing is a fuel hog for a ½ ton, I just averaged 10.1 MPG overall on a 1600 mile round trip towing a TT loaded to 6500 lbs with my 2020 F250 with 6.2 engine).
Lightning charge cost $27 for the first charge, had to stop on the way back to recharge again since they did not wait for a 100% charge. They did not disclose total electric cost at the end of the video, but since they had to stop and recharge on the way back one can assume they spent close to another $27 for a total trip cost of $72.90 and spent a whopping 1.5 hrs sitting around waiting for the battery to charge.
As far as recharge cost being slightly lower, remember, there is no road fuel taxes on electricity, for now, so as reality sinks in, using a heavy EV truck towing realworld 6K trailer isn't going to save you money.
At 85.9 mile range I couldn't even get to any of the borders of my state without the need to recharge at least once and the whole way across my state would require at least three recharges :E
The same guys that did this video are currently attempting an adventure to northern Alaska with a super light weight pop up camping shell plus they will have a "support" hybrid F150 to charge the Lightning just in case (I suspect they WILL need it)..
Does it mean EV is wrong?
No.
But with current technology it is not scaling up to what the average user will want or need (full sized vehicles with real full size loads)..
Yah for sure. I was referring more to the nice to have verses need to have campground charging. It’s handy for sure and we do when we can.
Cheer.Reisender wrote:
QCMan wrote:
This begs the question of how you charge both at one campsite. Granted, you may now be able to go 150 miles between charges instead of 90 miles with just the tow vehicle but now you need to rent two campsites to charge them. Electric vehicles are in the future but current technology is being forced to do something it is not advanced enough to do.
Charging at the campsite is nice but not necessary. Lots of DC fast charging out there and more all the time. We top up when we can at sites but rarely suck up more than 25 to 30 kwh overnight as we are always on 30 amp sites. I suppose one could rent a 50 amp site and charge more. I suppose it also depends on the campgrounds charging policy. Surcharges etc.
Should be interesting though. I wonder if future pull thru sites at DC fast charging will be able to charge two vehicles at a time. It would make for a quick charging session essentially doubling the charge rate.
Once again, you are comparing "apples to oranges". What you get from your small scale EV/trailer combination is vastly different than the reality of what happens when the vehicle and trailer are scaled up to real world sizes and usage.
I would recommend that you take a look at one of the first real world tests of a Ford F150 lightning with a 6K trailer in tow..
HERE
The video is a good real world comparison but does have several shameless plugs for their youtube channel sponsors you can forward through.
Cliffs notes version of the video..
F150 lightning (EV) towing vs GMC Sierra (Gas) towing
Setup-
Both towing exact same towing 6K lb trailer at the same time on same route, speeds and conditions.
Both battery and fuel tank are filled to 100%
GMC has 24 gallon tank
Lightning 282 miles non towing range with full charge, display estimated 160 miles towing the trailer selected with full charge.
Ultimately had to cut trip severely short due to less range than originally estimated and no charging stations close enough on their route that they could make it to and had to turn around and backtrack to the nearest charger they could find. Vehicle power (acceleration performance) dropped to 90% at 9% battery left. Drove only 85.9 miles from 100% to 9% battery. Took 45 minutes to recharge from 9% to 75% or so battery charge (but hey, they guy did get to eat a takeout “chicken dinner”..
GMC drove 155.8 mile 65 miles remaining using $5.39 Premium fuel per gallon took 17.371 gallons at $93.79, total fill up took only a few minutes. 8.9 MPG and was able to complete the full trip without needing to refill (wow, that thing is a fuel hog for a ½ ton, I just averaged 10.1 MPG overall on a 1600 mile round trip towing a TT loaded to 6500 lbs with my 2020 F250 with 6.2 engine).
Lightning charge cost $27 for the first charge, had to stop on the way back to recharge again since they did not wait for a 100% charge. They did not disclose total electric cost at the end of the video, but since they had to stop and recharge on the way back one can assume they spent close to another $27 for a total trip cost of $72.90 and spent a whopping 1.5 hrs sitting around waiting for the battery to charge.
As far as recharge cost being slightly lower, remember, there is no road fuel taxes on electricity, for now, so as reality sinks in, using a heavy EV truck towing realworld 6K trailer isn't going to save you money.
At 85.9 mile range I couldn't even get to any of the borders of my state without the need to recharge at least once and the whole way across my state would require at least three recharges :E
The same guys that did this video are currently attempting an adventure to northern Alaska with a super light weight pop up camping shell plus they will have a "support" hybrid F150 to charge the Lightning just in case (I suspect they WILL need it)..
Does it mean EV is wrong?
No.
But with current technology it is not scaling up to what the average user will want or need (full sized vehicles with real full size loads)..
