Evacuating the Eaton Fire with my Mach-E — some notes and a suggestion to Ford

[quartzcity]

When I purchased my Mach-E a couple years ago, a question I was asked often was “what are you going to do if there’s a power failure or an emergency or both?” and now I suppose I can answer this.

My wife and I live in the city of Sierra Madre — our house sits a little over two and a half miles away southeast from the ignition point of Eaton Fire. The fire started at 6:30 and by 8pm it had worked its way around to the east enough that we could see full flames from our house. We’d known about the devastation in Pacific Palisades, didn't know what was happening in Altadena, but just instinctively knew that it was time to us to bug out.

We don’t have a go-bag per se, but we do have a go-list - nothing complex, just a shared note that’s organized by room and simplifies decision making: take this, not that. My wife and I both work from home and the Mach-E is our only car. We’re also both musicians and between us we have a lot of irreplaceable stuff: guitars, pedal boards, my Moog, a big record collection, mementos, all the computers and backup drives, the equipment for our streaming radio station, all our important paperwork, food and clothes for a couple of days. Remarkably, most of that fit in my Mach-E and we got the heck out just as our neighborhood became a mandatory evacuation zone.

Two things we did to the Mach-E before realizing that it would be an escape car:
- We put 2x4s under the back parcel shelf. We actually did this awhile ago as we like having the shelf in the upper position. It wasn’t until well after we left home that I realized “wow, good thing we did that before cramming hundreds of pounds of stuff back there.”
- Replaced the stock cabin air filter with a PureFlow model. I also did this awhile back as I live in Los Angeles and it’s just something you do.

Initially, we evacuated to relative's house in Hollywood. The power was preemptively shut off there early Wednesday morning so the Mach-E became home base for charging - until we had to evacuate there when the Sunset Fire started on Wednesday night. We finally returned home on Friday morning. Our house is fine and the neighborhood is untouched. The electricity and internet stayed on the whole time (we have remote cameras set up and I was habitually checking things). We charged once, at a Tesla supercharger site in Pasadena, but even with the extra demand from EV evacuees, we didn't have too wait long. I was surprised because public charging in the San Gabriel Valley can be, to be polite, a complete clusterfuck.

Even fully loaded, the Mach-E was a nimble lifeboat but after living out of it for a couple of days, I have a suggestion for Ford: Please somehow include a 120V AC outlet that's tapped into the main battery system. I don’t need ProPower, I don’t need to power anything in my house, but I would have loved being able to plug in a water boiler or a hot plate to make coffee and heat up some food. I’m not enough of an electrician to hack anything more than the 12V outlet in the back and I have a dim view of the asinine “if you want a power outlet, than get a truck” type of replies. I have a giant battery on wheels in my driveway - why can't it easily act as a temporary mobile power outlet? Our electrical power here in the foothills is spotty, even before the fires, and after dealing with everything for the past two weeks I’m far more passionate about having a 120V AC outlet than I am about CarPlay.

Anyway, I don't want to use a tragedy as an avenue for complaining about my car. Four friends of mine have lost everything.

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[User100723]

Glad alls well with you, sorry for your friends… yea can’t believe there’s not even one house outlet on these things. Several times I wished I could just plug my fridge with an extension in when power was cut during storms.

 

[Shayne]

When I purchased my Mach-E a couple years ago, a question I was asked often was “what are you going to do if there’s a power failure or an emergency or both?” and now I suppose I can answer this.

My wife and I live in the city of Sierra Madre — our house sits a little over two and a half miles away southeast from the ignition point of Eaton Fire. The fire started at 6:30 and by 8pm it had worked its way around to the east enough that we could see full flames from our house. We’d known about the devastation in Pacific Palisades, didn't know what was happening in Altadena, but just instinctively knew that it was time to us to bug out.

We don’t have a go-bag per se, but we do have a go-list - nothing complex, just a shared note that’s organized by room and simplifies decision making: take this, not that. My wife and I both work from home and the Mach-E is our only car. We’re also both musicians and between us we have a lot of irreplaceable stuff: guitars, pedal boards, my Moog, a big record collection, mementos, all the computers and backup drives, the equipment for our streaming radio station, all our important paperwork, food and clothes for a couple of days. Remarkably, most of that fit in my Mach-E and we got the heck out just as our neighborhood became a mandatory evacuation zone.

Two things we did to the Mach-E before realizing that it would be an escape car:
- We put 2x4s under the back parcel shelf. We actually did this awhile ago as we like having the shelf in the upper position. It wasn’t until well after we left home that I realized “wow, good thing we did that before cramming hundreds of pounds of stuff back there.”
- Replaced the stock cabin air filter with a PureFlow model. I also did this awhile back as I live in Los Angeles and it’s just something you do.

Initially, we evacuated to relative's house in Hollywood. The power was preemptively shut off there early Wednesday morning so the Mach-E became home base for charging - until we had to evacuate there when the Sunset Fire started on Wednesday night. We finally returned home on Friday morning. Our house is fine and the neighborhood is untouched. The electricity and internet stayed on the whole time (we have remote cameras set up and I was habitually checking things). We charged once, at a Tesla supercharger site in Pasadena, but even with the extra demand from EV evacuees, we didn't have too wait long. I was surprised because public charging in the San Gabriel Valley can be, to be polite, a complete clusterfuck.

Even fully loaded, the Mach-E was a nimble lifeboat but after living out of it for a couple of days, I have a suggestion for Ford: Please somehow include a 120V AC outlet that's tapped into the main battery system. I don’t need ProPower, I don’t need to power anything in my house, but I would have loved being able to plug in a water boiler or a hot plate to make coffee and heat up some food. I’m not enough of an electrician to hack anything more than the 12V outlet in the back and I have a dim view of the asinine “if you want a power outlet, than get a truck” type of replies. I have a giant battery on wheels in my driveway - why can't it easily act as a temporary mobile power outlet? Our electrical power here in the foothills is spotty, even before the fires, and after dealing with everything for the past two weeks I’m far more passionate about having a 120V AC outlet than I am about CarPlay.

Anyway, I don't want to use a tragedy as an avenue for complaining about my car. Four friends of mine have lost everything.

Good to hear all is well and intact at yours. Difficult times.

I dropped the shelf to the bottom a long time ago but I will think about 2x4's to help the plastic clips in the up position.

Being able to run an extension cord from the car to the house would be a bonus for power outages. That is becoming something on the EV to do list. Put it on your list for the next one.

 

[Mach T]

Not sure if this helps the situation, but I bought a dc/ac converter years ago that plugs into the powerpoint of any car into which you can plug 120 volt small draw items, like game consoles and stuff

 

[fleeps]

I’m not enough of an electrician to hack anything more than the 12V outlet in the back

Neither am I. I'm a "measure-twice, cut once, screw it up, try again, still get the wrong size" kind of handyman. After reading @dtbaker61's threads such as this, and the police modifier bulletin, I approached my local auto shop and asked whether anyone there wanted to take on a side project. A couple of them were intrigued by the while thing and agreed. I bought the supplied (inverter, AWG-2 cables with Andersen connectors, inline fuse) and then hooked it up using the connection points in Ford's bulletin. I use it camping, mostly to power an induction hot plate.

 

[dtbaker61]

Neither am I. I'm a "measure-twice, cut once, screw it up, try again, still get the wrong size" kind of handyman. After reading @dtbaker61's threads such as this, and the police modifier bulletin, I approached my local auto shop and asked whether anyone there wanted to take on a side project. A couple of them were intrigued by the while thing and agreed. I bought the supplied (inverter, AWG-2 cables with Andersen connectors, inline fuse) and then hooked it up using the connection points in Ford's bulletin. I use it camping, mostly to power an induction hot plate.

glad you found the thread helpful!

Our MME's can be a very inexpensive, powerful, clean, and quiet emergency generator with minimal cost Mod !

 

[rjuricich]

Good input. I like the 2X4 idea for the rear storage area.

My wife and I and her parents evacuated the Eaton fire for four days. Unfortunately, my MachE was in the shop during the whole calamity (and still is, but that's another story). Fortunately we have a friend who went out of his way to help us evacuate. We are back home now.

 

[jksu]

agree, something like the hyundai's have, an adapter which allows the mach-e to be used as a giant battery would be great. should be a standard feature or at minimum a dongle/adapter we can buy for that feature.

also used a tesla charger for the 1st time (using ford supplied adapter) during evacuation and it worked like a charm (plug & charge with ford pass). and although i haven't checked, nice of ford to reimburse the charge to support fire evacuees.

i love my mach-e, but not going to lie, i'm glad we had an ice minivan (honda odyssey) that was fully gassed up that we could load up the kids and extra items during the evacuation. makes me really think about a BEV + REV when we replace the odyssey.

 

[Wallie]

Not sure if this helps the situation, but I bought a dc/ac converter years ago that plugs into the powerpoint of any car into which you can plug 120 volt small draw items, like game consoles and stuff

The cigarette lighter plug? Might do 300 watts max.

 

[Chrisbriding]

So glad you are safe. Great post.

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