Gravity-Car Camping Review

[raleighone]

In case others are looking to camp with the Lucid, I thought I'd share some photos from my week of camping at Skidaway Island in GA and Edisto Island in SC. Both campsites are really great and well kept. However, the ranger at Edisto came by on my final day and was a total jerk about me using the 50amp to charge the car. He said it's not allowed, though there was zero notice on the website or anywhere. Oh well...now I know.

Everything with the car is pretty incredible. It will be nice when we get Camp Mode, as it will help mitigate some of the annoyances w leveling, headlights coming on, power, etc. That said, using Creature Comfort worked great. It got down low 40's at night and the car kept this creature comfortable just fine. (I didn't pay attention to power usage since I was plugging in to charge as I slept.)

For power: I had the camp outlets to plug into for my tent (heater, monitors, air fryer, etc.) but in the car I had my Oupes Power Bank getting trickle charged by the 12v from the car. Then I plugged my fridge into the Oupes. So, on this trip, I didn't really need or use the car's AC outlets...but nice to have them just in case.

I had built a couple shelves for the back. Originally I built the back one for putting a monitor on when in car. But it worked out great when I had some editing to do at Skidaway...and had to go to the parking lot to get a good Starlink signal. I put Starlink on the roof...and the shelf was perfect height like a standing desk. lol. It was also great for making breakfast/coffee/etc. When I travel, I take it off and put it on the mattress and then load stuff on it...so helps protect the mattress, too. In the future,, Lucid should offer a shelf like this...I think people would find many uses for it.

So yeah...this Gravity is living up to what I had hoped for when it comes to these trips. In back, I can easily sit up (5'8) with plenty of headroom on my 4" mattress. (this was one reason I chose Gravity over Rivian R1S...headroom.) And by the way, I still have LOTS of room for other things. This car's space is ridiculous!

Let me know if any questions...happy to share thoughts. I'm heading back out to a forestry road to go off-grid style camping a couple nights tomorrow.

Thanks for reading the long post...;-)

 

[Hammerthyme]

I haven't done it, but I suspect if you talk to the campground owner about charging, you can finagle something. Tell her you need about 80 kwH and at home that usually costs you about ____ ($9.28 for me). Any 50amp outlet will do. You have your own charger. It's kind of like an oversized electric golf cart and they probably have a policy on charging those. One of the nice things about campgrounds is that 30 and 50 amp outlets are everywhere. Good luck!

 

[raleighone]

I haven't done it, but I suspect if you talk to the campground owner about charging, you can finagle something. Tell her you need about 80 kwH and at home that usually costs you about ____ ($9.28 for me). Any 50amp outlet will do. You have your own charger. It's kind of like an oversized electric golf cart and they probably have a policy on charging those. One of the nice things about campgrounds is that 30 and 50 amp outlets are everywhere. Good luck!

Nope. The Ranger was very clear that they were not set up for charging and would not allow it.

 

[Hammerthyme]

Yeah, park rangers are government employees. Not as much room to negotiate. If there's a rule, they're following it.

 

[DeaneG]

Maybe the camp's electrical feed just can't handle the continuous current demand if more than one or two people tried to charge at the same time. So they don't allow it.

 

[Smorgasbord]

Maybe the camp's electrical feed just can't handle the continuous current demand if more than one or two people tried to charge at the same time. So they don't allow it.

That and just the continuous high amperage is not what those circuits were originally designed in mind for.
It's why we still hear about EVs damaging NEMA 14-50 outlets over time - it's not just the plug-unplug.

 

[doubletwist]

I wonder if they'd be slightly more amenable if you set the charging rate limit to something much lower than 40A.

 

[Hammerthyme]

In the summer an RV with two rooftop A/C units will draw about 30 amps all afternoon, maybe more if other appliances are running. I don't know if there is an RV-rated NEMA 14-50 outlet that they are using, but they take a pretty similar load in the task they're designed for and can run at that rate for a few hours.

 

[raleighone]

I wonder if they'd be slightly more amenable if you set the charging rate limit to something much lower than 40A.

Nope. I tried explaining that but they just said "no charging."

 

[borski]

Nope. I tried explaining that but they just said "no charging."

Those shelves are gorgeous. More details! How are they held up?

 

[raleighone]

Those shelves are gorgeous. More details! How are they held up?

Thanks! They were fun to figure out. Pretty basic...then stained, sanded and poly'd them.

Side shelf: I bought 4 adjustable legs from Amazon...2 down in the well behind seat at nearly tallest length and 2 in back at shortest. I strapped the front of it to the middle hook on the rear seat that I leave up all the time. The back I strapped to their hooks...that I thought I'd never use. lol When I'm in the car at night, it's great to have the shelf for various items that quickly get lost in a car.

Back shelf: Had to put a couple pieces together to make the large d-rings so they loop into the side hooks of the car. I wish those were more rugged but they work.

 

[hwy17er]

nice DIY nightstand and movie screen platform!

 

[BrianBigNFun]

this is glamping not camping, please edit the title

 

[WeighingGravity]

Awesome, thanks for the review.

How did you deal with the "watermelon holder"/gap between the folded down seats?

 

[raleighone]

Mentioned this in other posts, but the Dometic water jugs I use fit perfectly on the driver's side to level my bed. My Exped Megamat mattress is 6" (accidentally said 4" earlier) and I don't feel the containers at all. I use one filled up as backup (last resort) so I leave it in there very tightly sealed. ;-)

On the passenger side, I use the gap for the legs of my shelf but it also fits my leveling blocks perfectly.

If they charge for the upcoming cover, which I hope they don't, I probably won't even buy it.

By the way, the sub trunk space is great for roll-y things...including watermelons. Probably not for your dog, though. lol

 

[WeighingGravity]

How did the interior and exterior lights work? Did you have to do anything tricky to get the car to “turn off” at night with the key inside?

 

[raleighone]

I had my own lights but those small little click lights in the back are super handy. It's great that they turn on by touch when you can't see where they are in the dark. lol

I put the car in Creature Comfort mode and then put my fob in a faraday case. Then I locked the car using my phone app.

I also pointed my car purposely away from other campers, because there were a lot of times coming and going that the car would sleep/wake/etc. Looking forward to Camp Mode to fix this.

 

[WeighingGravity]

I did a quick overnight car camping in my GDE Saturday night. Super fun! A couple of quick observations:

• I put the car in creature comfort mode overnight. It worked, and kept us pretty warm, but it was very, very loud. I think it was the same issue I've observed in normal operation where something about the valves that control the rear fans makes a very loud noise in the front dashboard. I didn't play around with the settings at all though. Maybe I could have tweaked it to work better - that said, it's not too obvious how to play with the settings once it's in CC mode. The pilot panel goes black, the rear controls don't turn on, and I didn't see anything obvious in the app. The car was set to 69, and it was very cold that night (in the 30s). The app seemed to think the car was 70+, so I wondered why it didn't automatically turn down the blower after a certain point, but it did not. I can also say that it didn't feel like 70+ in the back; I think it was actually in the mid-60s or lower, but take all of that with a grain of salt as my body has not been calibrated as a scientific instrument. That said, I was sleeping in sweat pants and a long sleeve shirt (ie more than normal), and I had my usual comforter from home, and I tend more towards being a hot sleeper, and I needed the covers all night. (I like my bedroom at 65 at night) So, I'd say overall that the AC worked, but didn't work perfectly for me. Perhaps a camp mode will be better. (And hopefully it will turn on the 3rd row vents, which I suspect were not on, which may have been a part of it not getting super warm in the back. Plus I think we had some pillows kind of blocking the 2nd row vents).
• I really need a solution for the "watermelon holder" slash big gap between the 2nd and 3rd row seating. I had an Exped Megamat Auto 4" mattress (perfect fit, btw) and when I first installed it I thought maybe I could get away without putting anything in the gap, but when I actually went to sleep in there, I was pretty sure I was going to end up with a back problem as the "hole" was right at my hips/lower back for me. Eventually, I removed the 3rd row seating cover and placed it kind of diagonally across the opening on my side (my 16 year old kid is tiny and she didn't have as many problems on her side) and that worked well enough in a pinch, although it did create an odd crown in the middle as the cover was slightly higher than my head and then created a bit of a downslope at our feet. I should have thought more ahead of time to put some ballast and maybe bunch some blankets in there; a thick mattress can take up some of the slack but I was not at optimal comfort.
• The outlets are awesome! I fired up a rice cooker and made rice in the field, what a luxury. I bet I could have even brought an induction hot plate and made a gourmet meal out of the frunk. Maybe a slow cooker, hot water kettle, espresso maker? Frunk is a great place to store a cooler and some food and still have a bit of room for appliances.
• Next time I'll attach some suction hooks to the glass ceiling to hold fairy lights. I strung a little strand using the 2nd row grab hooks but there is nothing to hold them up further back in the vehicle, which would have been nice.
• I used a lot of battery, but I kept the creature comfort on for about 3 more hours in the morning (sort of by accident) even though I was opening and closing the car a lot at that point. In total I think I used about 15% of the battery on climate control. It probably would have been in the single digits had I been more judicious about it. It got down below 40 that night.

 

[raleighone]

I just spent 3 nights at Cloudland Canyon in GA. You are right about HVAC...not bad but it still needs work. I found if the blowers were going too strong, I turned off CC and turned it back on, and they reset and were quieter. Not sure if it works every time.
Maybe my power bank and fridge heated it up, but my challenge was getting the car cool enough. (My privacy curtain doesn't help airflow) I had to set it to 65 to get feeling like 70ish.
Still loving it, though.

 

[niceInBoston]

I wonder if having one (or two, if needed) heated blankets plugged into the outlets would be better than turning on the heat for camping. At least, better in terms of less noise and probably less energy used. I haven't used a heated blanket since my parents owned one in the '80s, but I think they're still a thing.

I suppose that someone else in a tent could run an extension cord and also have a heated blanket.