Camping with the Focus Electric

[hybridbear]

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.

 

[hybridbear]

Here are some pics we took:

A pic of my wife and me along the St Croix River


Some bright red berries



More green than we expected, but our weather had been so mild up to Thursday when we left for camping so a lot of leaves were still green


Fall colors

 

[ElSupreme]

That is a NEMA 14-15 or the far left (50A 240VAC). And a TT-30 (30A 120VAC) in the middle. They are standard RV plugs. If you look that matches the breakers in the panel as well.

 

[jmueller065]

You need a Clipper Creek LCS-25P with a 50A Adapter for the campground (the far left plug in your picture of the plugs a NEMA 14-50).
This guy:
http://www.clippercreek.com/store/product/charging-station-lcs-25p-nema-l6-30-2/
with this adapter:
http://evseupgrade.com/?main_page=product_info&products_id=20

We've taken our FFE camping, last April:

http://jamiegeek.myevblog.com/2014/04/06/the-maiden-voyage/
I didn't have my adapter at the time so we also just used the Level 1 (you can see it sitting on the picnic table in the photo).

 

[sefs]

Jesla will allow you to use the 14-50 outlet and charge at the full 30 amps; as well as a ton of other outlets.



http://shop.quickchargepower.com/JESLA-is-THE-40-amp-J1772-portable-charging-solution-JESLA.htm

 

[jmueller065]

That's $400+ more than the Clipper Creek solution.

 

[sefs]

That's $400+ more than the Clipper Creek solution.

True, but you can't change the pilot signal on the clippercreek, and it's limited to 20A. The Jesla can be switched between 12A, 16A, 24A, and 40A just by swapping adapters.

 

[triangles]

JuiceBox is even cheaper if you're not afraid of a soldering Iron. I like that I can control the charge rate and with adapters use it on any 120V or 240V outlet. You just have to remember to adjust the max current appropriately to the outlet you are using. Someday if Ford ever decides to deliver my FFE, I will get to see how it works.

 

[jmueller065]

Triangles: Have you asked @FordService on twitter about your car's progress? (Send them a tweet asking about your cars progress and they'll dig up what is going on with it--worked great when I ordered mine.)

 

[twscrap]

with this adapter:
http://evseupgrade.com/?main_page=product_info&products_id=20

Cheaper to buy cord cuts here and build adapters yourself.
http://www.stayonline.com/cord-cuts.aspx

 

[hybridbear]

How much are all these products? ClipperCreek, JuiceBox, etc?

 

[NightHawk]

How much are all these products? ClipperCreek, JuiceBox, etc?

The ClipperCreek model is $549 plus adaptor cable cost.
Juicebox is lower, its configurable so price depends on the options you select and whether you want it assembled or as a kit.

 

[twscrap]

You might want to check out this post.

http://www.myfocuselectric.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1004

 

[EVA]

Great pictures Hybridbear. Are you old enough to drive? I feel really old all of a sudden.

Sorry your camping trip didn't go the way you planned. You got some great pictures.

Hey - WattsUp has a fantastic set of adapters he's built. You should just look at his thread. Sorry - I'm not very good at searching for that stuff. I had to build a funky weird plug to Nema 14-50 and he helped out with exactly the parts to order.

Now that you've seen those two plugs, start doing a little research on them - you'll learn a lot and it is useful to know.

And if you get yourself a portable 240V charger, you'll want those plugs. Personally, I would purchase something already made. 240 Volts at 20 to 40 amps is just more than I want to mess with. You can use that charger on your Fusion also - so it is a good investment. And if you are at a camp ground, the difference between 20 amps and 30 amps just doesn't really matter. The car will fully charge overnight with either setting.

 

[WattsUp]

Hey - WattsUp has a fantastic set of adapters he's built. You should just look at his thread. Sorry - I'm not very good at searching for that stuff. I had to build a funky weird plug to Nema 14-50 and he helped out with exactly the parts to order.

Thanks for the kind words EVA.

Here's a link to my thread:
Check out my mobile Level 2 charging kit!

I'm still very satisfied with my charging kit.

 

[studio460]

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 . . .

Wow! That's quite an adventure, HB! Pretty cool of you to show the downside of owning a 76-mile range EV. Usually forums such as these are full of self-puffery, and isn't-my-car-great-no-matter-what-anyone-says kinds of posts. Thanks for sharing your story! Plus, those gorgeous nature images, and pictures of your pretty wife!

 

[studio460]

I began talking about this here:

Then soon realized that I was getting way off-topic, so I moved my posts to a new thread, located in the batteries and charging section of the forum here: http://www.myfocuselectric.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2313&p=14807#p14807

 

[studio460]

[I moved this post also.]

 

[hybridbear]

Hey - WattsUp has a fantastic set of adapters he's built. You should just look at his thread. Sorry - I'm not very good at searching for that stuff. I had to build a funky weird plug to Nema 14-50 and he helped out with exactly the parts to order.

Now that you've seen those two plugs, start doing a little research on them - you'll learn a lot and it is useful to know.

And if you get yourself a portable 240V charger, you'll want those plugs. Personally, I would purchase something already made. 240 Volts at 20 to 40 amps is just more than I want to mess with. You can use that charger on your Fusion also - so it is a good investment. And if you are at a camp ground, the difference between 20 amps and 30 amps just doesn't really matter. The car will fully charge overnight with either setting.

I started reading about the set WattsUp built yesterday and will read it in more detail in the future.

Great pictures Hybridbear. Are you old enough to drive? I feel really old all of a sudden.

Sorry your camping trip didn't go the way you planned. You got some great pictures.

We did enjoy the scenery even with the cold weather, although the near constant clouds made it harder to take good pictures since the colors didn't pop like they do in the sunlight. And yes, we're old enough to drive, we're both in our mid to late 20s now

Hey - WattsUp has a fantastic set of adapters he's built. You should just look at his thread. Sorry - I'm not very good at searching for that stuff. I had to build a funky weird plug to Nema 14-50 and he helped out with exactly the parts to order.

Thanks for the kind words EVA.

Here's a link to my thread:
Check out my mobile Level 2 charging kit!

I'm still very satisfied with my charging kit.

Thanks for all your detailed pics & explanation.

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 . . .

Wow! That's quite an adventure, HB! Pretty cool of you to show the downside of owning a 76-mile range EV. Usually forums such as these are full of self-puffery, and isn't-my-car-great-no-matter-what-anyone-says kinds of posts. Thanks for sharing your story! Plus, those gorgeous nature images, and pictures of your pretty wife!

Thanks. I wasn't really planning to use this trip to show the downside of a limited range EV, I was hoping to use it more to show just how far you can go in an EV without issue and just how practical an EV is. When we were searching for a State Park to go to I wanted to keep it within range of the Focus. If we had been camping in summer I would have looked at one up to 90 miles away knowing that you can make that distance if you stick to side roads. I'm sure glad we didn't try to go any farther than we did with the awful weather we had.

 

[hybridbear]

That is a NEMA 14-15 or the far left (50A 240VAC). And a TT-30 (30A 120VAC) in the middle. They are standard RV plugs. If you look that matches the breakers in the panel as well.

I'm trying to find an adapter that would work for future trips like this. My parents' EVSE is the Leviton EVB22. It has a 6-20 plug. For a future camping trip they would allow us to borrow it for a few days and they could use their 120V charger for a few days. I've searched online but haven't found any adapters which would allow us to use this EVSE at a campground or other location with a 14-50 outlet. Can anyone point me to such an adapter? Thanks!