Gravity-Car Camping Review

[WeighingGravity]

That's a pretty interesting idea. I like it!

 

[Hammerthyme]

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.

My wife has several around the house and even one in our camper. They are definitely still a thing.

 

[raleighone]

I just got back from 3 nights at Cloudland Canyon in GA. I actually bought an electric blanket for this trip, not for the car, but for the 6-9 hours when it's dark and I hang in the tent. (Too early to get in the car for the night. I'm looking forward to daylight until 9pm soon.) Anyways, I had previously brought a little space heater. This time, an electric blanket worked much better and I'm guessing uses less power anyways. It was a good addition for chilly nights before I settled into the car later in the evening. Won't need it soon...;-)

Cloudland Canyon is beautiful and has a great state park. Highly recommended. It was an RV/Tent site so I had electric hookup but ended up just using it for my tent stuff (TV, cooking, etc) and didn't try charging the car this time. I brought a 30amp converter cable so I could use this for 110v items as well as the normal 110v outlet. I plugged my Starlink into that one and then my extension cable to the tent into the other. Worked great.

The car performed flawlessly again and I'm loving how much space is in there! I don't feel cramped at all and love I can sit up and/or kneel on my bed and still not hit the ceiling. ;-) This time, when onsite, I turned off the auto lock/unlock so I didn't need to keep fob in faraday constantly and/or have the car turning on/off all the time as I was near it.

Still hoping we get camp mode soon, though. Power mgmt during CC, lights off and leveling will be awesome upgrades.

 

[TahoeMichael]

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.

An electric blanket generates heat less efficiently than the car's heat pump. The heat pump will produce 3 to 4 times as much heat per unit of electricity than the electric blanket. But if you sleep with an electric blanket on top of you, and another blanket on top of that, the heat is delivered to you more efficiently than heating the air of the cabin. And a blanket over the electric blanket helps reduce how much heat is lost to the environment. Sensible use of an electric blanket is probably a modest efficiency gain. I believe that Lucid thinks the heated seats and steering wheel are also modestly more efficiency than the HVAC system.

 

[borski]

I believe that Lucid thinks the heated seats and steering wheel are also modestly more efficiency than the HVAC system.

In older Airs with a compressor rather than a heat pump, significantly more efficient. Still more efficient than the heat pump but not by as much.

 

[ke2]

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.

You know in thinking about this I think most (all?) electric dryers for homes are really 30A units as when I had my dryer delivered it came with both a 50A and 30A tail (and thus couldn't use more than 24A continuous). The only difference was the electrical cord from the dryer to the wall. So I suspect the 50A outlets are really rated for something like 30A continuous because a dryer never uses anywhere near 40A.