Charging at RV Parks

[SeattleSally]

Hey all! Just got lucky enough to find a Mach e available across the country. We’re driving from Wisconsin to Seattle and are relying on camping at rv parks to get us through South Dakota and Montana. Can anyone vouch for this method, and using the ford mobile charger to connect to the 50 amp pedestal? Any other road trip tips?

Thank you!

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[hybrid2bev]

Could you do it, yes. If you only want to go 200-250 miles per day. It’ll take 8-10 hours of charging to fully recharge at each stop.

I would use A Better Route Planner and go through Denver. That’ll be SOOOO much faster.

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/

 

[RickMachE]

I have used campground. A 14-50 outlet should be 50 amps. Yes, it will take overnight to fully charge. On a trip, it will make it very unpleasant. Go south young man, go south.

 

[DR.J56]

It can be done. I’m not one for living out of my car but if you think that sounds like fun have at it. When we travel in our RV we make reservations well in advance, especially on holiday weekends. You will get some attention while at the park for sure.

 

[SeattleSally]

Could you do it, yes. If you only want to go 200-250 miles per day. It’ll take 8-10 hours of charging to fully recharge at each stop.

I would use A Better Route Planner and go through Denver. That’ll be SOOOO much faster.

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/

Thanks for the link! It is currently routing me through Canada so that is interesting…the route we currently have planned does have 2-3 fast chargers per day, just need to charge overnight at the park to make it across 2 long stretches.

 

[JamieGeek]

Search is your friend (yes I wrote this thread):
https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/campground-charging-as-a-last-resort.1403/

(Yeah its an old one but go through all the pages in search LOL)

In fact, look at my photo at left--at a campground.

 

[SeattleSally]

Search is your friend (yes I wrote this thread):
https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/campground-charging-as-a-last-resort.1403/

(Yeah its an old one but go through all the pages in search LOL)

In fact, look at my photo at left--at a campground.

I’ve read your post several times- super helpful! It threw me off to call charging at parks a “last resort”. Do you have a reason we shouldn’t use RV charging as plan A?

 

[TruWrecks]

If speed of travel is important drive through Denver on I-70 to Salt Lake then go north to I-84. You can get to I-90 from I-84 at Umatilla/Walla Walla. There are plenty of chargers on that route the MME can reach.

 

[JamieGeek]

I’ve read your post several times- super helpful! It threw me off to call charging at parks a “last resort”. Do you have a reason we shouldn’t use RV charging as plan A?

Yup: Simply speed. It will take you 6-10 hours to charge back up at an RV park vs ~40 minutes at a DCFC. That is it.

You can use RV parks as an overnight stop but I wouldn't rely on them during the day when there are much faster options available.

Use A better Route Planner (https://abetterrouteplanner.com/), Plugshare (https://www.plugshare.com/) and the in-car navigation to find DCFC's to stop at.

Then if you're really determined to overnight at an RV park use something like Campground Reviews (https://campgrounds.rvlife.com/) to find one then call ahead to see what is available and ask them about using a 50 amp site to charge.

 

[Accord07]

I would echo the suggestion of relying on campground charging only as a last resort (if you plan to stay there). After getting my MME I tested the included portable EVSE at a local mall to make sure it worked. This weekend is the first time I am actually using it at a campground. The site we were assigned has a flaky 50A circuit breaker that looks very worn, it would charge for ~30 minutes and then trip once it got slightly warm (to the touch); after that it would trip a few minutes after being reset. Fortunately the folks at the next site decided to leave one day early, so I moved our car over and it has been charging successfully for hours. This will allow us to visit Electrify America only once rather than twice on the return trip.

 

[SeattleSally]

For anyone curious, we made it home and the RV sites worked like a dream! Driving from Madison to Seattle (1,900 miles) took 3 days of driving and we couldn’t have done it without overnight charging bridging 2 long gaps without any level 3 chargers (one stop in Presho, SD and one in Big Timber, MT). Very happy to have the car safely docked in the garage, though!

 

[JohnFoxeSheets]

For anyone curious, we made it home and the RV sites worked like a dream! Driving from Madison to Seattle (1,900 miles) took 3 days of driving and we couldn’t have done it without overnight charging bridging 2 long gaps without any level 3 chargers (one stop in Presho, SD and one in Big Timber, MT). Very happy to have the car safely docked in the garage, though!

Congratulations! Would love to see a photo of your new baby.

I just noticed your occupation. You should have no trouble whatsoever handling the crowd on this forum! ?

 

[emersonsdad]

Make sure it’s allowed… ??‍

https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/pismo-coast-village-??‍♂️.16605/

 

[awiginton]

I would echo the suggestion of relying on campground charging only as a last resort (if you plan to stay there). After getting my MME I tested the included portable EVSE at a local mall to make sure it worked. This weekend is the first time I am actually using it at a campground. The site we were assigned has a flaky 50A circuit breaker that looks very worn, it would charge for ~30 minutes and then trip once it got slightly warm (to the touch); after that it would trip a few minutes after being reset. Fortunately the folks at the next site decided to leave one day early, so I moved our car over and it has been charging successfully for hours. This will allow us to visit Electrify America only once rather than twice on the return trip.

So, you used the Ford charger that came with the car at the RV spot, as long as it was a 50amp, correct? That's good to know. Might as well charge it overnight and avoid one less stop.

 

[TheVirtualTim]

I set PlugShare to filter chargers to those capable of 120kW or faster. This is what I get:

While over-lighting at a campground would work (if you want to rough-it) -- you could also tell PlugShare to filter for hotels that have EV-charging.

Using campgrounds that have high-amperage sites (some campgrounds only have 120v/30amp sites) that only takes care of over-night charging. Those will be NEMA 14-50 outlets that can supply up to 50 amps but the car will only pull around 30 amps (technically it is rated for 32 amps but it probably wont quite pull 32). You'll need a few charging stops during the day ... and for that you'll want DC Fast Charging because Level 2 chargers will take hours to charge the car.

Based on this, you can see the big charging desert starting in the western half of Minnesota, North Dakota. South Dakota has only two locations.

Taking I-80 west through Nebraska & Colorado and then heading northwest would give you much better coverage.

I didn't center or zoom on Canada well-enough for it to fill in all the locations, but that's the other route (there are a few more stops there than this chart shows.)

A Better Route Planner is great for estimating the locations of charging stops (the in-car nav system is actually better because it's based on the car's actual state of charge rather than a prediction determined before you started driving.) Apple iOS maps with CarPlay has EV integration now (you have to set it up) and will also predict state of charge and do route planning with EV charging stops.

But ABRP isn't the best at finding hotels with charging. For that I use PlugShare and just ask it to filter on locations with lodging. The other nice thing about PlugShare is that people leave comments about the charging experience ... this is REALLY useful when trying to determine if a station is actually working.

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