Camping with the Focus Electric

[RebaRos99]

has anyone have the same model of car, I need to get a professional advice. Update: I need someone with the great experience in hvlp spray guns, mine got broken, dunno what to do with it. I've recently googled in order to find some other variants I can substitute my old broken one with a new thing. The best source I could find which has everything explained and fairly rated was Palmgear review. To tell you the truth, it was a complete nonsense for me as the only things I usually used to find were just paid ads and no fair ranking. Can you suggest any spray gun offered in this review? Thanks in advance.

 

[Xannal]

So cool!

 

[Jefsel]

Last weekend we went camping. The State Park was about 73 miles from home. That should've been no problem for range, but then Mother Nature decided to interfere. Thursday it was pouring rain & windy with the temp around 45. We had to keep switching the defroster on & off throughout the trip to keep the windshield clear. We would not have made it on one charge, so we stopped at a Goodwill about 40 miles from the campground to charge for a bit. We put in 2.4 kWh in about 25 minutes which allowed us to reach the campground with less than 5 miles remaining on the GOM.

Friday was then rainy with temps in the low 40s and Saturday and Sunday were cold & windy with lows near 32-35 and highs around 38-40. It ended up being a rather miserable camping trip with temperatures more than 25 degrees below average for the entire weekend.

Here are some pics of the Focus at the campground along with our friends' TDI. It's interesting how different the Ice Storm looks just by changing modes on our digital camera. It was also interesting how different modes highlight different lines in the body.




Charging at the campground with the Ford 120V EVSE.


Here is a pic of the outlets available. What are the plugs for the 240V outlets? If we're going to do a lot of camping I might look into a portable L2 charger that we could take for such occasions. Charging with L1 was miserable. We ended up having to drive the TDI all weekend because of how slow we charged on L1. The Focus never had enough range for anything we needed to do or it would not have been able to charge back to full in time to leave on Sunday if we drove it.


The trip home was rather miserable because the temp was in the upper 30s, but we couldn't use the heat or else we wouldn't have made it home. We had the heated seats on the entire drive and wore our winter coats. We got home with 7 miles showing on the GOM. I took a shorter route and kept my speed to 55 on the interstate instead of 60 or 65 like we did in the rain on Thursday.

Overall I was incredibly disappointed. I was looking forward to this trip as a chance to showcase our electric car to our friends. Instead, the EV was a dismal failure. If the temps had been average (highs in the upper 60s, lows in the upper 40s) the EV would have been a smashing success. But unfortunately it was cold and the EV was a failure. The whole trip turned into our friends asking us if we would have enough range to get home. This was worse than the bad weather for me because I wanted to use this trip to show just how capable EVs are and it instead ended up showing our friends all the limitations and drawbacks to an EV and almost none of the benefits. We could have taken the Energi, but we needed the cargo capacity of the Focus.

 

[Jefsel]

Hi y'all, Just wanted to say in regard to your camping trip. The box that you plugged your charge cord into also has a 240v 14-50 receptacle. Just picked up a Vevor brand charger L2 for $100, it's normally less than $180. Works great. 240v 32A for 7.2Kwh. So imagine how different your experience would have been by having one of these. I'm using a 32A, but a 40A is available and I'd avoid the 48A since a 14-50 receptacle has a 50A breaker, 48 would be pushing it. Might work fine or might not, depending on a few things at the source.

 

[Anti_Climax]

Hi y'all, Just wanted to say in regard to your camping trip. The box that you plugged your charge cord into also has a 240v 14-50 receptacle. Just picked up a Vevor brand charger L2 for $100, it's normally less than $180. Works great. 240v 32A for 7.2Kwh. So imagine how different your experience would have been by having one of these. I'm using a 32A, but a 40A is available and I'd avoid the 48A since a 14-50 receptacle has a 50A breaker, 48 would be pushing it. Might work fine or might not, depending on a few things at the source.

The FFE won't pull more than 29A anyway, so no loss there.

 

[moquiti]

Last weekend we went camping. The State Park was about 73 miles from home. That should've been no problem for range, but then Mother Nature decided to interfere. . . . Overall I was incredibly disappointed.

Considering you weren't stranded and didn't freeze </s> I think you did very well. You learned a ton about the car and driving in foul and cold weather; the experience led you to useful suggestions for a portable L2 charger; and finally, you received a lot of interest and input at the forum.

Congratulations!