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Road trip learnings and *EMERGENCY* charge solution

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Mikeaze1

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All, I’m 3/4 way through a 2K mile road trip (my first) and ran into charging emergency with a faulty Lucid CCS/J1772 to NACS adapter. Below are the details for the charging challenges BUT one solution got us out of a serious pickle. We had 149 dynamic miles and 185 miles to nearest confirmed Tesla charging spot. Stuck in Bandon, OR we didn’t know what to do until I stumbled upon a RV park. I rented an RV space, plugged into the 40a service and was able to put a charge on the car to get us going again. KEEP that in mind, for $80-100 you can get a full charge overnight with your car, or even just sit there for a few hours at 9kWh to get you back on track.

Our issues with the chargers and Tesla superchargers taught us some important lesson:
1-use the Tesla app, go to “Charge your other EV” and look for Tesla charging. If it’s not on that map, the car didn’t work at all Supercharger. We tried a dozen stations that Google or GhatGPT found but none that weren’t on the app would work
2-check your adapter BEFORE your trip. We had not used the adapter before so didn’t know of any issues. We tried a dozen J1772 connections using the adapter and they all failed. We aren’t home yet so I dont know if it’s a bad adapter or just not supported. I received guidance from Lucid it should work, it didn’t. My plan when I get home is to get another adapter from J1772 to NACS and test it.
3-The first time I tried a CCS connection with the adapter it didn’t work (EVCS), but the next stop (EVCS in Brookings, OR) it did…so if at first you dont succeed, try another.
4-serious wind will impact range! We had been driving with a 3.3 efficiency for 1,300 miles but the leg from Bandon to Brookings in a big headwind reduced our efficiency by 20% and the buffer we had to get us to Arcata disappeared 40% into the drive, which prompted us to stop in Brookings and try a CCS adapter or rent another RV spot. Note the wind conditions before you attempt a drive that’s going to get your there with less than 25% buffer

Otherwise the experience was great, what a great driving car. hotels with Tesla hookups worked great, Superchargers (that were listed) worked great.
 
Mikeaze1 said:
All, I’m 3/4 way through a 2K mile road trip (my first) and ran into charging emergency with a faulty Lucid CCS/J1772 to NACS adapter. Below are the details for the charging challenges BUT one solution got us out of a serious pickle. We had 149 dynamic miles and 185 miles to nearest confirmed Tesla charging spot. Stuck in Bandon, OR we didn’t know what to do until I stumbled upon a RV park. I rented an RV space, plugged into the 40a service and was able to put a charge on the car to get us going again. KEEP that in mind, for $80-100 you can get a full charge overnight with your car, or even just sit there for a few hours at 9kWh to get you back on track.

Our issues with the chargers and Tesla superchargers taught us some important lesson:
1-use the Tesla app, go to “Charge your other EV” and look for Tesla charging. If it’s not on that map, the car didn’t work at all Supercharger. We tried a dozen stations that Google or GhatGPT found but none that weren’t on the app would work
2-check your adapter BEFORE your trip. We had not used the adapter before so didn’t know of any issues. We tried a dozen J1772 connections using the adapter and they all failed. We aren’t home yet so I dont know if it’s a bad adapter or just not supported. I received guidance from Lucid it should work, it didn’t. My plan when I get home is to get another adapter from J1772 to NACS and test it.
3-The first time I tried a CCS connection with the adapter it didn’t work (EVCS), but the next stop (EVCS in Brookings, OR) it did…so if at first you dont succeed, try another.
4-serious wind will impact range! We had been driving with a 3.3 efficiency for 1,300 miles but the leg from Bandon to Brookings in a big headwind reduced our efficiency by 20% and the buffer we had to get us to Arcata disappeared 40% into the drive, which prompted us to stop in Brookings and try a CCS adapter or rent another RV spot. Note the wind conditions before you attempt a drive that’s going to get your there with less than 25% buffer

Otherwise the experience was great, what a great driving car. hotels with Tesla hookups worked great, Superchargers (that were listed) worked great.
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All excellent reporting and advice.

I kept a RV adapter in my Tesla for emergencies in case I ever needed it (did not) but also a tiny 110V plugin. I had visions of shouldering aside a Coke machine in a dire situation at some run down desert location and waiting for hours for the trickle charge to get me mobile again.
 
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Good tip and I'll add to it: I just did a cross country trip and I mostly stayed at RV Parks with 50 amp hookups. Most of these places cost $60ish/night but if you're saving $40 on a charge, it works out well.

However, not all RV Parks are open to car camping & charging. I had a couple that would not allow me to charge and I had made a reservation at one place and I called to double-check and they said "no cars" and cancelled. So keep that in mind if going RV Park as a travel-strategy.
 
Mikeaze1 said:
All, I’m 3/4 way through a 2K mile road trip (my first) and ran into charging emergency with a faulty Lucid CCS/J1772 to NACS adapter.
Click to expand...
There is no such thing as a CCS/J1772 to NACS adapter. The big adapter is CCS to NACS and the small adapter is J1772 to NACS. You can put J1772 into the big adapter but it won't do anything as there are missing pins at N and L1 for safety reasons.

IMG_2153.webp
 
bicycleguy said:
There is no such thing as a CCS/J1772 to NACS adapter. The big adapter is CCS to NACS and the small adapter is J1772 to NACS. You can put J1772 into the big adapter but it won't do anything as there are missing pins at N and L1 for safety reasons.

View attachment 39237
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Yeah, figured that out now. Lucid support told me it *should* work, I asked him to verify and he came back and said it did. Now I know…
 
raleighone said:
Good tip and I'll add to it: I just did a cross country trip and I mostly stayed at RV Parks with 50 amp hookups. Most of these places cost $60ish/night but if you're saving $40 on a charge, it works out well.

However, not all RV Parks are open to car camping & charging. I had a couple that would not allow me to charge and I had made a reservation at one place and I called to double-check and they said "no cars" and cancelled. So keep that in mind if going RV Park as a travel-strategy.
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Frustrating when your "car camping" is nicer than 1/2 the actual RV rigs there.
 
ha...yeah, but I get it. I'm guessing they get a lot of car campers who aren't in Lucids or well kept vehicles.
 
I just finished an "around Lake Michigan" 1400 mile trip. Especially in the Upper Peninsula, there is limited charging infrastructure. But the infrastructure is still there. I made use of the Plug Share app, usually making a plan before heading out, that gave me information (location, type of chargers supported, charging rate, cost, most recent successful use, etc.) that I needed to decide where to plug in - including highlighting a few hotels that offered free overnight charging. In all, it was about $100 in charging costs not including my initial home charge and free charging at a hotel. It was probably only a couple hours over the entire week that we walked around a nice town or once through a Meijer while charging.
 
Good feedback about PlugShare!
 
Good thinking with the RV park! The scenario reminds me a bit of the Top Gear (maybe it was GT?) where they were bumbling around England begging for outlets.

Not entirely unrelated, I have a spare NACS RangeXchange adapter that could be handy in situations like this. DM me if anyone's interested.
 
Some RV camps don't allow EV charging because their hookups can't hold up to the max amp use for hours and hours.

Not really any different than trying to use an old circuit with an old outlet at home. It'd be fine for the short bursts they were designed for but a fire risk for charging EVs.
 
erigion said:
Some RV camps don't allow EV charging because their hookups can't hold up to the max amp use for hours and hours.

Not really any different than trying to use an old circuit with an old outlet at home. It'd be fine for the short bursts they were designed for but a fire risk for charging EVs.
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Yeah, the electrical systems at a lot of RV parks are really bad, sometimes to the point of being scary. Experience has taught me to be extremely cautious about how I touch RV charging posts, and it's a good idea to have some kind of electrical protection between your RV and the park's electrical system. That said, RV parks also have a lot of arbitrarily applied and discriminatory rules intended to keep "the wrong type of people" out. For example, many RV parks have rules against RVs that are older than a certain age, but will happily let you stay with an ancient but still very expensive Airstream.
 
ABRP a better route planner
Plugshare
Blink
Electrify America
EVGo
Tesla Red-E
And of course Lucid

These are always on my phone and I haven’t found a single app that can show ALL available chargers
 
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