The future cost of RV stay

Grit dog wrote:
Mkirsch you hit it on the head.
Most don’t understand electricity and circuits. Some that do, don’t understand the cost of construction and infrastructure improvements. And most of us I’m guessing, don’t understand the cost of large scale electricity production, transmission and distribution.

What’s funny is when the died in the wool EV proponents (you know who you are...) spout off about how great it “would be” and how simple it “would be.”
Take, idk how many, 250,000 campgrounds RV parks and other camping places. And 50 sites per each and 50 amps (minimum for your grocery getter toad, make it 250A to charge the bus). How many campground owners public or private are going to go drop $1millon or more to upgrade their grid and distribution and electric services when they have trouble spending $10k to remodel the bath house?
Yes EVs will get more popular. Yes they will be even more popular in urban areas, but the “dreamers” here fail to see that electricity doesn’t grow on trees.
Maybe Liz, Bernie or Biden will figure it out for them....

I have no idea who those people are but my guess is the market will figure it out. I don’t think it will be necessary in the next couple decades for a campground to have more than a small percentage of sites equated for high charging rates. But facilities for lower charging rates would be popular in a couple decades. 3 to 6 KW rates. Ish.

Jmho.

mkirsch wrote:
Most people don't have any idea what it takes to charge a battery.

Battery capacity is measured in Amp-hours. A rough idea of how long it will take to charge a battery is to divide the Amp-hours capacity by the Amps you will be charging the battery at. 100 Amp-hour battery charging at 10 Amps will take 10 hours to charge fully.

That's just an OVERSIMPLIFIED, ROUGH idea of how long, but it is eye-opening to a lot of people who think that putting the charger on for 15 minutes or even an hour is going to charge their battery.

With something that mimics the performance and range of even a modest tow rig like a Silverado 1500 or Explorer, you're talking on the order of tens of thousands of Amp-hours. That means lots of hours or very high charging rates. You're not going to get much of a charge overnight if you want to go sight-seeing during the day on a 120V supply.

You need to move to kWh for an EV battery. Most are 60 to 100 kWh. 50 amp RV supply will put charge in an EV at up to 9.6 kW.

Overnight charging on 120v is good for maybe 50 miles per day in a smaller EV not towing.

Mkirsch you hit it on the head.
Most don’t understand electricity and circuits. Some that do, don’t understand the cost of construction and infrastructure improvements. And most of us I’m guessing, don’t understand the cost of large scale electricity production, transmission and distribution.

What’s funny is when the died in the wool EV proponents (you know who you are...) spout off about how great it “would be” and how simple it “would be.”
Take, idk how many, 250,000 campgrounds RV parks and other camping places. And 50 sites per each and 50 amps (minimum for your grocery getter toad, make it 250A to charge the bus). How many campground owners public or private are going to go drop $1millon or more to upgrade their grid and distribution and electric services when they have trouble spending $10k to remodel the bath house?
Yes EVs will get more popular. Yes they will be even more popular in urban areas, but the “dreamers” here fail to see that electricity doesn’t grow on trees.
Maybe Liz, Bernie or Biden will figure it out for them....

rjstractor wrote:

Super_Dave wrote:
My boat has an electric trolling motor on it and I charge it every night in my campsite after using it all day. When camping, I don't think that the electric car/truck would require the the 15 - 30 minute charging time. Whatever system was provided in a campground could easily be an over night type deal.

Comparing the charging requirements of an electric trolling motor to an EV is like comparing the fuel requirements of a lawn mower to a motorhome. Charging an EV on a standard 30A 120V RV site cannot be done overnight. A 50A 240V plug can do it, but as has been stated the electrical grid of most campgrounds can't handle it. If you are charging your EV, you will have nothing left to run your AC, microwave or anything else.

Agree on the first part of your statement but will clarify something on the second. Our Toad is an EV. Some EV’s have the ability to user control the charge rate. Ours does not. But we do have an EVSE that allows for a lower charge rate. Some EVSE’s are adjustable. Anywhere from 8 amps 120 volts to 40 amps 240 volts. When charging at a campground we use our 16 amp 240 volt EVSE. We plug it into the 50 amp plug and plug the Motorhome into the 30 amp plug with a 50 to 30 adapter. Our coach runs fine on 30 amps as we have an EMS that controls loads in the coach.

We always inform the campground operator what we are doing, explain to him how much additional power it will draw and ask him/her if he wants additional money. Having said that this has only happened a half dozen times. So far the campground operators have not asked for additional funds.

And having said all that a small EV toad doesn’t have anywhere near the capacity of a truck EV. I would suspect a campground will want compensation for filling a battery of that size.

Just a little real world info.

Most people don't have any idea what it takes to charge a battery.

Battery capacity is measured in Amp-hours. A rough idea of how long it will take to charge a battery is to divide the Amp-hours capacity by the Amps you will be charging the battery at. 100 Amp-hour battery charging at 10 Amps will take 10 hours to charge fully.

That's just an OVERSIMPLIFIED, ROUGH idea of how long, but it is eye-opening to a lot of people who think that putting the charger on for 15 minutes or even an hour is going to charge their battery.

With something that mimics the performance and range of even a modest tow rig like a Silverado 1500 or Explorer, you're talking on the order of tens of thousands of Amp-hours. That means lots of hours or very high charging rates. You're not going to get much of a charge overnight if you want to go sight-seeing during the day on a 120V supply.

Super_Dave wrote:
My boat has an electric trolling motor on it and I charge it every night in my campsite after using it all day. When camping, I don't think that the electric car/truck would require the the 15 - 30 minute charging time. Whatever system was provided in a campground could easily be an over night type deal.

Comparing the charging requirements of an electric trolling motor to an EV is like comparing the fuel requirements of a lawn mower to a motorhome. Charging an EV on a standard 30A 120V RV site cannot be done overnight. A 50A 240V plug can do it, but as has been stated the electrical grid of most campgrounds can't handle it. If you are charging your EV, you will have nothing left to run your AC, microwave or anything else.

My boat has an electric trolling motor on it and I charge it every night in my campsite after using it all day. When camping, I don't think that the electric car/truck would require the the 15 - 30 minute charging time. Whatever system was provided in a campground could easily be an over night type deal.

colliehauler wrote:

4x4ord wrote:
Well if we're talking future I'm going to say there will be a power transmission rail embedded somehow in the roadway so electric vehicles will recharge while driving. They won't need to plug in.

I don't understand why induction charging is not talked about for the future. Heck we can set our phones on a base and charge them. As our infrastructure needs replaced I would think this would be a option.

Induction charging is convenient but not as efficient as plug in charging. I agree that it would be great if a universal charger with automatic operation could be made and installed in parking lots but from what I can find out induction isn't quite ready for how power applications. Remember, inefficient means that it gets hot and the more power the hotter it gets.

Grit dog wrote:

Bird Freak wrote:
I don't believe it will be a problem for me in whats left of my camping time.

Hell, I hope it's not a problem for me either, and God willing I got another 30 years or so!

My time on this earth is limited and electric cars are in their infancy. I don't see having to replace my Diesel in my lifetime but know one knows what the future holds.

4x4ord wrote:
Well if we're talking future I'm going to say there will be a power transmission rail embedded somehow in the roadway so electric vehicles will recharge while driving. They won't need to plug in.

I don't understand why induction charging is not talked about for the future. Heck we can set our phones on a base and charge them. As our infrastructure needs replaced I would think this would be a option.