In anticipation of my pending October install date I figured I’d get a thread going on what the early generation of camping in EVs entails.
If you have any questions/ interest* about the Rivian or my general experience as a EV overlander for the past two years (and many more to come!) just give me a shout.
(Pictures coming s00n)
*I know there are plenty who don’t have any desire to go EV.
That’s cool. To each their own! But, I won’t really engage in trying to defend/justify the merits of EVs vs ICE.
I’m just here to have a good time and share cool shit with cool people.
1 Like
Will the electric aspect of the vehicle allow you to use it in anyway for power in the camper as well? Perhaps being able to avoid having a secondary battery?
In theory yes!
For day trips/ quick over night trips / general errands I often just run everything plugged straight into the truck.
Cooking three square meals on my induction burner uses about 1-2 miles of range from the battery a day.
However If I am going out on multi-day I like to be a little more restrained and I fall back on running my system off a Bluetti Power station and just run the car inverter to top up the portable battery, as even under no load the inverter from HV to 120v wastes juice.
I have an early build, so there is some inefficiency and quirks in the solutions I use that have been/ are being addressed in the Rivian line up.
For instance my build has 2 12v batteries that power various systems and the vampire drain on the system can be around 1% a day just from the HV system power cycling to maintain the health of the 12v batteries. I have a solar trickle charger that eliminates that vampire drain almost entirely.
about 6 months after my build was delivered they removed the dual battery set up and within the past couple months they launched the gen 2 which removed over a mile of wiring and reduced the number of ECUs by a significant margin.
I know plenty of folks who run all their gear off the battery, but I’ve been broverlanding for a while and didn’t have the heart to throw away my old systems that still had years of life in them.
Here for the good time, with moments of range anxiety mixed in while you’re getting out and using it hopefully.
We are looking at making to switch to an EV or PHEV for our around town vehicle but I don’t think EVs will work for how we camp currently.
1 Like