Ep. 12 || The Future of Camping: Will EVs Ruin Camping?
Episode Date: March 22, 2023
Summary | Key Topics & Timestamps | Links & Mentions | Full Episode Transcript
Take a look at camping of the future. Are we poised to have camping ruined by rapid electrification? Join Katie & Steve from All Electric Family as they explore what the future of RVing & camping may hold.
Episode Summary
Campgrounds may be more receptive than you think. We chat about our actual experience at campgrounds while towing our camper with an EV.
We ease the fear of having your vehicle damaged and discuss that EVs have built in chargers that monitor power and protect the vehicle from damage. Plugging your EV into “bad” power doesn’t have the same implications as plugging an RV in to “bad” power. Campgrounds may experience damage from an EV if they don’t have the appropriate (and required) breakers, etc. A change in camping fees is likely to occur due to increased power usage by bigger and more technologically advanced campers as well as electric vehicles.
We consider how camping may look different with an EV and talk about destinations and remote locations. Boondocking is possible with an EV and in the future may be even more convenient than boondocking with a gas vehicle.We also discuss how camping with EVs can provide their own set of benefits such as reduced noise and back up power.
Key Topics & Chapter Markers
0:00 Introduction 3:20 Campground Reactions 7:13 Damage to EVs and campgrounds 20:40 EVs & the cost of camping 29:00 State Parks Impacts 36:06 Boondocking 44:23 Benefits and considerations
Mentioned In this Episode
Show Notes | http://www.allelectricfamily.com/episode012
KOA EV Blog Post | https://koa.com/ev/
CanAm RV | https://www.canamrv.ca/
Charged Rally | http://www.allelectricfamily.com/chargedrally
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Episode full Transcript
KATIE: Are EVs going to ruin the future of camping? That is a question that we are going to talk about today on today's All Electric Conversations podcast.
INTRODUCTION: Welcome to All Electric Conversations where we talk with pioneers and traveling with electric vehicles. We're your hosts, Katie and Steve Krivolavek of the All Electric Family. From road trips and towing to daily life, we'll hear stories of wanderlust and progress to inspire your own adventures with All Electric Conversations.
KATIE: I am Katie.
STEVE: I'm Steve.
KATIE: And we are from the All Electric Family. And obviously this topic is of importance to us as we tow with our EV and have been since 2020. But this is the first full camping season where we actually have two production electric trucks as we're going into this year's summer season with camping and stuff. So we have the Rivian R1T and we have the Ford lighting, which were starting to be delivered at the beginning of camping season last year, but not many people had their hands on them yet. We were one of the lucky few that got our hands on, actually, both over the course of the last camping season. And so we wanted to talk about some of the impacts because we're seeing more and more of that conversation online in the forums, in Facebook groups and things like that on what impacts EVs are going to have when camping and RVing.
STEVE: Yeah. So as we get into 2023 here, we're going to see more and more of those at the campgrounds and what exactly that's going to look like? Is it going to overload? Is it going to upset a bunch of people? Like, what are all the things that are going to happen with that?
KATIE: Yeah. Is it going to increase the cost of camping? Are campgrounds going to shut down because they don't want to deal with it? There's a lot of what ifs out there. So we really want to dive in but we want to jump in real quick here early on and say that if you are interested in towing with an EV that you should go over to www.allelectricfamily.com/chargedrally and get signed up to come out and camp with us, whether you have an EV now or not, to come check out and talk to people that are already doing it. There's going to be giveaways, there's going to be seminars, we're going to be there with whatever two electric vehicles we have at the time. We'll see what we end up with. But it's a great way to come out and learn about towing with an EV, camping with an EV, because we have a bunch of people that are already doing it and people that have been researching it for years and a little bit of everything out there. So be sure to jump over there to, like I said, www.allelectricfamily.com/chargerally to get signed up to come, Amana, Iowa from October 4 through the 8th, 5th through the 8th. Why am I blanking out on the dates right now? But October, the first weekend in October, come on out and join us.
STEVE: Yeah, it's a great time. We'll have a bunch of people there talking about towing with an EV and camping and family and just all sorts of fun stuff. We would love to see you there.
KATIE: Yeah, so.
STEVE: Let's just start with that. So that is a campground that we will be going to. How were we received last year with all of our electric vehicles and our campers and all of that?
KATIE: They loved us there. They wanted us back. They were super excited because we're using the same campground as we used last year, and they wanted us to come back when we decided to go ahead and have the rally there again this year. They were super excited to have us and even us saying that it's going to be even bigger this year. And they were like, great, sounds good. And that is what we've typically seen when we're camping.
STEVE: Definitely what we've typically seen. But we don't want to gloss over the fact that we do know people that have been turned away from campgrounds towing with electric vehicle. That hasn't been the case for us, but that has happened. And so one of the things that we talk about quite often is your leaders in campgrounds and stuff like that, what are they going to do? Well, we've already unfortunately seen a glimpse of that with KOA and they've already talked about how they only have. Nine or something like that.
KATIE: Very small number yeah.
STEVE: Of campgrounds that are actually able to charge an EV. And there's a whole lot of stuff that we can talk about with this. From what I can tell, those campgrounds that they say are equipped for it, they do have a charging station, so a J-1772. That's what I've seen. I don't know if that's actually accurate or not, but when I did reach out to them one time and they did say to talk to your campground, but they did reiterate some of the stuff they did have on their website. And I think that that's what Katie is chomping at the bit to talk to you about. But I think that some of the information that they're saying on there, I do worry a little bit about how that may be perceived from other campground owners as being the gospels.
KATIE: Yeah. No, I mean, KOA is a big it's a big company. Right. Like, they have lots of campgrounds, and the campgrounds are individually run operated. Whatnot? But Koa is still giving them guidance on what to do. And so a little small, independently owned campground that's not associated with KOA may look to KOA to say, what should I do about this? How should I handle electric vehicles coming in? And so I think that it is not good that KOA came in and said that essentially, they said, you're going to ruin our electrical systems. You're going to ruin your car's electrical system. Don't charge at campgrounds. Campgrounds can't handle it. Like, it was a very period statement that they made when they made this article, which is interesting because if you go back in their other blog posts, they talk about welcoming EVs and coming in and camping with your EV. And so all of a sudden, this switch flipped where they were like, no, just kidding. Don't come here to charge your EV. And then with Steve reaching out to them and asking them and then them saying, well, just ask your local campground. Well, and that's what they should have said in that article. So that not to influence other campgrounds to just blindly go along with this. First and foremost, I think we need to address that is plugging into a campground that is not…so let's say that the campground is not capable of charging your EV, right? Because there are going to be electrical systems that are not capable of handling it. If you plug your EV into a campground that is not capable of charging an EV, is it going to ruin your car?
STEVE: I'm confused on that question, because what determines that a campground isn't capable?
KATIE: Well, we're going to set aside because every campground can charge a vehicle. But let's say so you plug in, it's 100 degree day, all of the RVs in the campground are running their two or three ACs, and then you plug your EV in and it shuts the campground down. We're just going to go worst case scenario right here from the top. Is that going to ruin your EV?
STEVE: The EV? No, because it has an onboard charger, so it's only going to put in the electricity that is good enough for it.
KATIE: Yeah. And they put it in bold letters on this KOA blog right. That it could ruin your EV if you plug into these campgrounds. And that's flat out wrong, because the EVs have, they're monitoring what's going on so that you don't get bad power. That's why if you plugged into your house and the grid went down, it's monitoring all of that stuff. Right. So we just need to take that off. KOA needs to take that off their website because it's just flat out wrong information. It's not going to ruin your EV. Now, yes…
STEVE: I think what they're doing is taking liability off of them with saying that.
KATIE: But it's creating a disbelief among people, that, It's just making it look bad, right? Like it's making EVs look bad. And that EV people are idiots and can't like they're even going to ruin their car by plugging into a campground. Yeah, and so I know they're trying to take the liability off of themselves, but they shouldn't state it in that way. They could state it and to avoid damage to your vehicle or something like that, but it says you can damage your vehicle and it's not going to happen.
STEVE: The other part of what they're talking about is damaging their electrical system. It's their prerogative, whatever they want to do and say on that front. We've plugged into plenty of pedestals and things like that. And there are safeguards built into these pedestals; breakers that will trip if it actually heats up too much. And all of this stuff that's going to actually prevent the pedestal from actually being ruined or their electrical systems. And on modern RVs, they're taking a ton of electricity anyways because you have everything in there. And so…There's a lot that goes into it so no, EVs aren't going to ruin their pedestal. I could argue that just modern RVs potentially could. There's a potential for any of it. So like how things are ran, you only have a certain you have a capacity of what your whole campground is rated for, and it's actually less than what, depend upon the infrastructure that's built in. But typically it's less than running at 100% capacity. So that's where, like, electrical engineers and people that are building these things out will say, well, if everybody is drawing that full 40 amps off of a 50 amp pedestal, it's going to crash the transformer or whatever it is. I don't know if it's called a transformer, but like the big power that's coming in. And so that's potential. We talked to a campground owner last year, and he had his go down, and he had to have the electrical company in and put in a bigger service for his. And this is out in the middle of nowhere. The only electric vehicle that's ever been hooked up to his campground is ours. And no, we weren't there when it crashed. A lot of these already have aging infrastructure that can't handle some of the modern RVs. And one of the statements he said is, these new RVs have two, sometimes three, air conditioners. He's like the refrigerators running off of it. They have ice makers that run off of it, microwaves, all this stuff.
KATIE: Air dryers, hair straighteners, I guess.
STEVE: So, like, he was, you know. Just saying that they're drawing a lot more power. So yeah, electric vehicles potentially are going to add to that. So I think that there needs to be more of an education side of it is what I see with it. What we personally do is not overload the pedestal all by monitoring our power usage, we'll jump down the amps of the vehicle, how much it's drawing. We have the capability of doing that into our camper as well. And so I know that's a very privileged thing to be able to do that as far as the jumping down your camper, but understanding that maybe you could only plug in your electric vehicle, not the camper too, or just running a few things in your camper while you're charging your EV. So there's a bunch of different stuff that can be done. It's more education than anything if you ask me.
KATIE: Well, I think people need to but people need to realize that these RVs are pulling thousands of watts at once, right? So if your one AC is running, it could be like around 1000 plus watts. So then you get multiple of those running and you're getting up to where you're probably running around 5000 watts worth of stuff. So, you’re getting to where you're getting to be almost equal to what an EV would be running to pull to charge just off of the ACs. And then there is so many things because you have to think about like if you're running a satellite like that's, pulling power in your camper, there's so many things that are pulling power now in campers. And I think one of the things so when we talk about monitoring and drawing down our amps and stuff, so we have a surge protector that is monitoring our power usage and stuff, so people having those that would be beneficial to help with issues. But I think the thing that it boils down to, and we talk about this a lot when we're talking about charging your home as well, is that when are EVs charging? They're not charging in the middle of the day when it's 100 degrees and everybody's running all of their ACS and everything's on, and all of their campers. EVs are charging overnight when there is less power usage in the camper itself. Right? Your AC is not running as much because the sun isn't up. You're not watching TV, you're not cooking, you're not, um, you know, you don't have your party lights on. You're not running your smoker. You know, like, EVs typically charge overnight when the grid is not at peak usage, whether that's the grid of the campground or the grid of your house. So I think that it comes to when those arguments come around. Well, again, most of the time, an EV is not going to be charging when the peak of the power is needed. You're using it at a time when there's less draw. So I think that there also needs to be education about that, right? So if you get to a campground and you don't have to plug in right away when everybody's cooking dinner and doing all of these things, then hold off, wait, don't charge your EV right away. Plug it in right before you go to bed. You still get a sufficient charge, and then you can go about your day. So there's just a whole lot of education, and I think that EVs get a bad rap, a bad name, just because of the unknown. People just don't know what they're going to do, so they just jump to that. Whatever it is, it's going to be bad.
STEVE: Yeah, so there are plenty of I'm not sure where to go from here.
KATIE: So how do we get the education out to campground owners? How do we teach that information to the campground owners? What do we need to do to say, ‘hey, I'm not going to come in and destroy your electrical system?’
STEVE: Yeah, but just like KOA getting rid of the liability on them, how do we know that somebody's not going to be an idiot when they're charging? All we can do personally is we love building this community, is just try to educate people just like we're trying to do here is educate not only our community of EV adventures, but also campground owners. I love business. I love talking numbers. I love doing all that. So I would love to talk to some of these campground owners that don't maybe understand it. That's exactly what we did back home. Them let's talk to that camp owner. I was just explaining to them, just figure out how much your electricity cost and then figure out how much an average EV is going to be charging. And if you just want to ask the person, most EV owners are going to talk to you about it, and then you come to an agreement. Whether that’s Ten extra bucks or just dependent upon how much they're going to be charging and traveling and stuff like that. Because the reality is the electricity to charge up your vehicle, depending upon what part of the country you're at, is going to be around ten to 20 extra bucks. If you're not using your camper during that time, I can argue the fact that you're not really consuming that much more energy, and so just talk to them about that. But I do want to say that we have had so many campground owners or developers reach out to us and want to host our event there because they see the future, they see what's coming down the pipe and they're building the infrastructure specifically to support that. And so I think it's just the transition is always going to be some people looking into the future. There's always some people that are going to be holding on to the past. The fact that some of these campgrounds still only have 30 amp service, that kind of tells you that, one, maybe they don't have the infrastructure in their area, which is possible. Or two, they're just kind of stuck with their old pedestals and infrastructure that they don't want to upgrade, they don't want to put extra money into it. But that won't even support some of these big campers either. We've tried running an our old camper off of 30 amp and it would trip the breaker It.
KATIE: Even running just one AC, because you don't power both when you're only on 30 amp, and we would just be running one AC, and it would trip the breaker. Yeah. Sorry. So the next question then becomes is it going to raise the cost of camping? Are EVs going to raise the cost of camping? Are we going to start seeing higher prices at campgrounds just because of EVs?
STEVE: Potentially, but I guess I'm okay with that. And a bunch of people are going to say, well yeah, that's because you're an EV owner. Well, that's not what I mean. Even if they want to segregate me or separate me out and make me pay a little extra, I'm fine with that. I don't think it's fair to pay an exorbitant amount, and I'll have that conversation with people about why I believe that. Or honestly, I don't even care if they put a bunch of J 1772s around there and charge you for what you actually use. That could be a great resource for that.
KATIE: Well, I think it comes back around to a little casita camper right there's. A little tiny thing or a teardrop camper or what have you, a pop up with no bathroom or anything like that is going to use significantly less power than a giant class A, a 40 foot Class A camper. So, you know, should you be paying the same if you're in a teardrop versus if you're in a Class A camper? And so I think that it’s. When a lot of these especially older campgrounds were built, the diversity of campers wasn't there. The yeah, the campers were an Airstream or whatever the case may be. So there wasn't such diversity in the types of campers that you were camping with. And so I think that it all starts to become a conversation of, are you going to just charge everybody, monitor the power that people are using, and just charge everybody specifically for what they're using? Or do you have different rates for different type of campers and then an additional rate for if they have an EV with them? But then again, for us, our camper has a pretty significant battery bank. So if it's nicer weather and we don't need to run the AC, we're probably not going to plug our camper in. If we do, it would be for a tiny period of time, like maybe we're cooking dinner or something just to not deplete the batteries down. So if somebody pulls in with an EV, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to use more power because they may not plug their RV in. I think the problem is people are pegging it all on EVs, but the truth of it is that the RV industry has changed and that we need to look at all of it as a whole and take a look at how things need to be priced, how campgrounds need to be set up. And I think that there are a lot of campground owners that are doing that, especially if they're building new campgrounds or upgrading their campgrounds. They've realized that there's a big change and that not only is it EVs, but the RVs have changed. And so they're they're making those changes. You know, it's expensive to upgrade electrical, though. So, you know, I get I get the hesitation of a particular campground to want to do those upgrades and stuff, but I don't think that the blame all falls specifically on EVs by any means.
STEVE: Yeah, and I don't know that that’s happening, we see it because we are in the EV/RV field. And so people are going to point their discouragement or their problems at us because we're out in the open, which is fine. And that way we can discuss this and try to see if there's a solution to the problem, if there's even a problem at all, to be honest. And then and then go from there. But yeah, there may be something that needs to change when you're talking about how to charge in a campground, maybe it's by length of the trailer or how many ACs you have or something like that. I don't know if ACs is the right way to go about it, but just something like that.
KATIE: So how can EVs then actually end up helping with this problem? Because there's one scenario that I can think of, right? So in areas where the electrical grid can't support DC Fast charging, people are coming up with these chargers that have battery storage within the charger itself so that a vehicle can come up and then DC Fast charge so the grid can't provide all of that power at once. So it juices up the battery, bank that's within this charger, and then the car comes up and it could deplete the battery storage rather than having to use power from the grid. So if a campground installs something like that, is there additional benefits for the campground if they do something like that?
STEVE: I would imagine. I don't know how specifically all that works, because I don't know if it will actually supplement once it goes over a certain usage before it would trip some sort of main breaker or whatever you would call that. And so I don't know the specifics on that. The thing I do know is it would help if the power went out, then it could sustain power. But in my eyes, it has to be a very large battery bank to support a significantly sized campground.
KATIE: But potentially could keep, for instance, like the the office, or whatever, up and running. Yeah. So that, you know, there is some power to the campground or whatnot. Or like a building. Like if they had an event building, they could continue to run power to the event building, so if it was a really hot day, potentially you could have air conditioning in that building or whatnot. I could see that be a benefit as well. And obviously that's going to be an additional cost. But there could potentially be partnerships between charging companies in these campgrounds and stuff. If a campground has a general store or whatnot there at the campground and you put in a charger, well, they could get additional revenue not only from the person coming in and charging, so paying for the energy of the charge, and so this would be someone not staying at the campground, right. So somebody that stops by to charge so they could come in, they could charge at the charger and then go into the general store and buy their snacks or use the restroom or whatever. And then they could get additional revenue off of that. So, I think my point being is that it doesn't necessarily all have to be negative things that are coming because of this. I think that there could be some beneficial things to campgrounds if they think outside the box and look at, ‘hey, what can we do to make this work? Because it is going to be the future.’ Everybody's coming out with an electric truck now at some point, so there's going to be a lot more. And instead of saying no, never, like saying, okay, here's how we can make it a positive for us.
STEVE: Yeah. I mean, let's go back to KOA. KOA, if they put in a charger, they could increase their profits, hopefully, with the charger eventually. But then also, they have a lot of play areas that have things to do. So as a family, that would be super nice. Yeah.
KATIE: Charge me $10, I will do it. To let my kids go play.
STEVE: Yeah, to go play on the playground. Or maybe even pay extra because you got those pedal boats or whatever. Because maybe we'll make that or a long stop.
KATIE: Yeah. And a lot of those campgrounds are already charging it because they have, like, an activity band that you go and you get that shows that you've paid to use the facilities. They already have that piece in place, a lot of those campgrounds, so that wouldn't even be difficult to figure out. You just like, oh, well, you can buy an activity pass, and you can go swimming if you want to while your car charges or whatever the case may be.
STEVE: Yeah, I think that it's, definitely. You know, a possibility there to actually help the campground increase exposure and maybe have revenue in times that they don't normally have revenue.
KATIE: Yeah, I guess another thing to think about is, like, state parks and stuff. How are the state parks going to be impacted by this? And is it going to ruin camping there, so to speak?
STEVE: State parks will be the least impacted. And what I mean by that is, at least around here, I guess I don't know how it is in other states. They keep up on their infrastructure. They're always changing out…what I see is their electrical.
KATIE: I think every campground we stay in has had an upgrade within the past three years.
STEVE: So they're staying on top of it. And I think that it probably goes back to they see the higher demands of the RVs and then also with your campgrounds that are state funded or federally funded, I don't know if federal has, anyways that are state or federally funded. They are funded by the state of the fed, so they don't have to worry as much. They will eventually have to worry about making their profits pay for everything, but they don't have to worry as much as KOA or your mom and pop. Like, KOA has to worry less. Your mom and pop has to worry more. And so I don't think it'll affect them at all unless if you have some sort of, I don't even know what they're called, the person that's ahead of the campground at the state level, unless if they have somebody that's just angry at EVs, I don't think they're even going to say anything, is my thought. Every campground we've been to, the people that are working there I'm not saying they're the head of the place, but has always come up and be like, oh, this awesome.
KATIE: Yeah. And we've had some people that it was obvious that the electrical had just been worked on. There were still trenches and stuff from the new electrical coming in. And the guys, I mean, they were like, doing trash over across the way, and then they walked over to us and were asking us questions about the truck and charging and all of that stuff. They saw how we were set up. They saw all of it, and we're just super excited about it. And I think that, per usual, the people who are unhappy about it are the loudest about it, and everybody else stays pretty quiet, right? They don't come out of the woodwork and shout out on the forms. Like, I love that EVs are coming to my campground because it's not the stuff that you go on there and talk about. But we have, like Steve said earlier, we have had campgrounds ask us to come out and stay with them. And it's one of those things, too. The people that say, hey, come stay at my campground are saying that from a campground page, right? The people that we have said, you can never come to my campground on our stuff online is someone that is not a campground page. So who knows if they even actually own a campground? But the people that are mad about it are going to be the loudest. And so I think that if you're new to this and if you're curious about towing with an EV and staying at a campground with an EV, but you're on, for instance, the Airstream Addicts Facebook page, and everybody talks about how terrible it all is, take that with a grain of salt and then go out and find pages, like if you come to the Charged Rally, we have a group for that. Talk to those people and see what their experiences have been versus people that do not own an EV. Do not camp with an EV, do not tow with an EV. And what they're saying. Talk to the people that have the personal experience with it. Are there people it's not going to be for? Yeah, there are people that it's not going to work for, and that potentially, you know, maybe you're the kind of person that gets to the campground. Although I still don't even know how this would work. Like, you get to the campground and you open a can of beer and you don't want to worry about anything for the rest of the entire camping trip, but even just plug in your EV before you start drinking your beer, you'll be fine. But it's hard for me to say how, as far as just the personal camping experience, towing experience is different, but the actual just like camping experience, that there's no difference to it.
STEVE: Yeah. So we're talking specifically about campgrounds.
KATIE: That’s true what about Boondocking.
STEVE: Boondocking and stuff like that. There's going to be some positives with it depending upon what electric vehicle you have. And there is potentially some downfalls too. And so it'd be interesting to go through that exercise and talk about that.
KATIE: Yeah, we can't speak to it too much just because. There's not, there are a few campgrounds, but they're pretty local and they don't have a whole lot going on at the campgrounds. Like to boondock. We do it this summer and see what the experience is like.
STEVE: A couple of different things just from our experiences anyways. If you had a Ford Lightning with pro power on board, as long as there was a charger nearby, you can have plenty of power for what we would use. Even running your air conditioner. That would be super beneficial. Sure, after three or four days, you might need to run into town and charge it up. But for us specifically, three or four days, we're going to be out of gray, out of black tank, out of all of that, out of water and everything. Anyways, just because we're a family of five. But we just use more resources and so we would have to go in anyways. And plus, on the side of boondocking, too, if you had to run your air conditioner, if you had that set up specifically, you wouldn't have to have a generator thing. But you also could have a generator and extend your stay a little bit.
KATIE: Extend your stay and charge your vehicle if you to.
STEVE: So there would be some positives to it where maybe you're only running the generator during the appropriate times, which it. We can another story. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I feel like you should run that at night and there are others during the day, but anyway, the noise, you could run that during the day, charge your vehicle or just run it off your camper to extend your stay a little bit. But there would be downfalls to it. If you don't have have a charger nearby that you can go charge your vehicle up to run your camper, then you wouldn't be able to, but you wouldn't be able to stay very long. Maybe two, three days. Well, really probably three days. With that being said, if you didn't have air conditioning, all that, and you had just even a decent sized battery bank in your camper, you're probably not going to really need to pull power off of it anyways. And even if you did, you would just pull very minimal power anyway, so you could stay there for a long time.
KATIE: Yeah.
STEVE: The thing that if you wanted to go explore while you're boondocking and stuff like that, you would definitely need to make sure that you had enough charge while you're out there to go explore and come back and still make it back to a charger. There would definitely be some more calculating in your head and figuring that out more than a gas vehicle, but a gas vehicle, when you go boondocking, you want to explore and you're not close to much. You want to make sure you have a full tank anyway. And so wouldn't be too much different with an electric vehicle other than there's just less places to do it. Yeah, that's what I would see with the boondocking. Do you have any other stuff positives or negatives.
KATIE: Well, as we look towards the future with things like the eStream and the Lightship RV, it's going to become easier to boondock. And the argument could be put into place that it would even potentially be easier to boondock with an EV than a gas vehicle because you're charging your vehicle off of your RV that has enough solar to sustain that. So as we look towards the future and people are innovating and creating new things, as we go down the line, it potentially could be even easier to boondock with an EV. As of right now, no, that's not the case. But I also think that we should say we have probably time constraints cause us not to. And this is not time constraints for charging. This is time constraints just in life to just go far away, right? Like just gas vehicle or not, places that we want to go, they're just too far away for us to go with all the stuff that we have to do in life. But we researched going to some pretty remote locations, like really remote locations, more remote than the average person is going to go. And the truth of it is that there are chargers there. You can find some form of charger no matter where you go. Because I think a lot of people, a lot of the arguments that I see is like, well, I can't get to my campground that's in this remote location or that remote location. And in a lot of instances on the main highway, like when you turn off that main highway. And when I say main highway, I mean a rural route highway. I don't mean the interstate. I mean like small town life. That there's a charger there somewhere. You may not know that it exists, you may not have seen it with your own eyes, but it is there when you research it and know where to look and stuff. So you can get to those remote locations. Sometimes the chargers aren't as fast as you would want them to be when we're talking about getting to Boondocking locations and stuff like that. But I think it is important to say that in our experience there has not yet been a place where we could not go and then camp at a campground or if we were going to Boondock, that there wouldn't be a charger in a town nearby or whatnot so that we couldn't go there. Can you remember a place that we've looked at we couldn't go to because of it?
STEVE: No, not that I can recall.
KATIE: Is there probably that place out there? Yes, but there's like one person going there.
STEVE: Yeah, maybe like but even in northern Canada. That they're even putting chargers up there. Once again, they're not as fast as you would like. It's very possible that there is a place, but it hasn't been where we have looked. And once again, this is a very small amount of people that are going to be going to these areas. That why they don't have infrastructure there, probably even for gasoline and, like, diesel and all that stuff, because barely anybody's going there doesn't make as much sense. Yeah, we've looked in a ton of different places.
KATIE: Let's just say there's portions of the trip to Alaska where I would be like, if you're going to drive to Alaska, that I would be less concerned about finding energy for my car than I would be for finding gas for my truck. Because, sure, it might be a slow charger, but I could still charge my car there. There's still going to be that electricity to charge the vehicle.
STEVE: Yeah. I haven't really researched the gas side of that, so I don't know.
KATIE: Yeah. You just hear everybody always bring their auxiliary gas tanks, blah, blah, blah. I feel like but how much is that true too one out of it? Probably.
STEVE: Yeah. And it's just guys want bigger more gasoline or diesel for my side of things. Bigger battery, like
KATIE: More solar.
STEVE: So I feel like that's
KATIE: How can make a deployable solar panning so that I can have more solar?
STEVE: I think that is part of it.
KATIE: It probably is.
STEVE: But yeah. I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't be afraid to make that trip. No. When we tell people that, they look at us cross eyed.
KATIE: They're like, say what?
STEVE: But what was it Andy said one time? He goes, he was talking to a customer, and she said,
KATIE: Of CanAm RV Canada?
STEVE: Yeah, he said the customer came in, and she's like, well, it's kind of interesting. The more I thought about it, there's electricity everywhere. We kind of like it. It's like yeah, exactly right. It is everywhere.
KATIE: The bottom bottom line is, I think that looking at this from. A perspective of ruining camping. People have already thought about it, right? They've already thought about how do we protect the car, how do we protect the grid, how do we monitor things, how do we make sure that we are not causing problems? And I think that, I feel as though everyone assumes, right, that EVs are being thrown in without any consideration for the grid or power or anything like that. But when you get down to it and it boils down to it, is that people have thought about it, they are thinking about it, they are coming up with the solutions that are needed. And I think that that also comes down into the campground experience, right? Even us, as EV owners that tow our camper with our EV, we put more batteries into our campers so that if we are in a situation where we can only plug one thing in or whatnot that we could plug in the car and the camper could run itself. I just think that, all of these people that say that RVs or EVs are going to ruin camping, they're just taking worst case scenario and saying that every time it's going to be that. So, that's my thought on it is that when you hear those things, it's worst case scenario and that most campgrounds and most people are willing to figure it out and make it work and not have it ruin it.
STEVE: Yeah, I mean, there's always going to be people that say something's going to ruin something else. I don't look into that too much. I look into the fact that there is a little bit of growing pains with this and we'll figure it out. And so just talking to each other and talking to campground owners, talking to non EV people that don't understand our community or what we like and what we want to accomplish and just talking to them and having a conversation because that's how I always get through things. It's like, okay, let's figure out what would make this okay. And so I would love to have specifically KOA on a podcast. I might not be able to answer their specifics on what they need to do to improve it. They got enough money, they can go and pay somebody to figure that out. But I would like to talk to them.
KATIE: But we can provide the data on what it actually takes to charge a vehicle.
STEVE: Yeah. So I would like to talk to them just to figure out where they're coming from, what they're worried about, and try to help with that solution.
KATIE: Yeah. So if anybody out there has a contact at Koa, let us know because we would love to talk to them about it. And we are talking to a few other campground owners that we are trying to get on the podcast as well to come talk to us about why they've made the choices that they have made for their campground and what their plan is for the future. Because I think that's important as well. I think that before one of the things that I really enjoy about camping with an EV and being in an RV park, especially those that are close together like jam packed in there, one of the things is. You know, one night, we had a kiddo that wasn't feeling too good, and so Steve, like, left to go get medicine, but left in the middle of the night for some reason. I'm I'm pretty sure it was to go get medicine. And we've had that experience before driving a diesel truck. And you start that diesel truck up, and you're like, oh, my God, we just woke the entire campground up. You're like, this is terrible. I'm so sorry, everybody. And then when we had the same experience at the EV, and Steve went out to the car and started the car and drove away, and I was like, no one has any idea that he just left. This is so nice to not have a massively loud vehicle that you're you know, because, of course, when those nights happen, you're parked at the very back of the campground and have to drive, like, all the way out of the campground up to the front. So that was one thing where I was like, man, this is so much nicer than having a loud truck that you have to drive through. And I know some people love loud trucks, and that's fine, but when you're driving through the campground in the middle of the night, it really does make a difference in the noise and stuff. So that was another benefit that I had thought about when we were thinking about talking about all of this was that the quietness of an EV is fantastic.
STEVE: Yeah, I would agree with that. That's one thing I really have come to enjoy. I don't mind loud vehicles. Like, inappropriate situations and appropriate times are kind of fun. Absolutely. But. Also in that situation, it's not fun. I don't think 99% of people that own a diesel or loud gas vehicle in that situation would think that was fun. Of course, there's small percentages of somebody out there that thinks, yeah, wake everybody up. Cool. But whatever. That's not very typical. No. Especially somebody with a family that cares about their family. I think that is a beautiful thing. And the potential of backup power is a beautiful thing. Even if the campground does go down,
KATIE: I'm going to still have a warm cup of coffee.
STEVE: So I think that that's a benefit. There are a lot of benefits. And when you can charge at the campground, it’s super nice. Because then you wake up with a full charge, just like we talk about with everyday life. You wake up and you can drive forever. You never have to go to a gas station.
KATIE: Yeah. The conveniences of having an EV at home. They just flip right over there to the conveniences at the campground. It's no different when we're camping.
STEVE: Yeah. So I do think that there is a lot of benefits, especially on the consumer side.
KATIE: To the owner of the EV, in our eyes it's the way to go. The tow vehicle, there's so many benefits to it. It's definitely the way to go. So I think that's another reason why campgrounds are just they're going to just have to figure out what works for them to make it work. Because more and more people are going to realize that an easy especially as a majority of people, they don't go that far to go camping. They go to their local state camp, the local state park that's down the road a half an hour or an hour away because most of us don't have time to go drive three, four, five, 6 hours, camp for the weekend and drive three, four, five, 6 hours back. We want to go get there quickly within an hour, set up camp and enjoy the weekend and then come home. So people that use that scenario for camping are really going to start to see the benefits of owning an EV for towing and camping and all of that stuff. So it's just going to be a has to happen thing. And so hopefully we can help be a positive impact in figuring that out and answer questions that people have. Answer questions that campgrounds have, whatever the case may be, but definitely don't think that it's going to ruin camping. I think there will be changes but it's not going to make camping unreachable. They're not going to start charging $100 a night at every campground everywhere just because people are driving EVs.
STEVE: We saw a campground down florida is beautiful, Margaritaville. Yeah. But it is close, like $200 a night.
KATIE: That is not for… that's because you have a casita, you have a. Yeah, but beautiful again.
STEVE: If you want to have me Margaritaville, I will come.
KATIE: Let us come test your infrastructure for you. Let's make sure that this works for the future. But anyway, we've been rambling on now for long enough. But be sure to follow us. Subscribe to the podcast for us. We'd love to see be people on all platforms, whether that be YouTube or Spotify or iTunes or wherever you're getting your podcast. Be sure to follow us. Leave us some comments. We are now on this will be Podcast episode twelve. So been at it for a decent amount of time now. Not really all that long, but we enjoy doing these. We enjoy talking to other people. So we would love to have you guys follow along. So any other closing arguments, any other closing pieces that we need to have? No argument.
STEVE: No arguments, it's just if you know somebody that owns a campground or anything along that lines that wants to come on the podcast and discuss things, make sure to reach out to us on any sort of.
KATIE: Whether they are pro or Anti-EV, we would love to have conversations with either side. Yeah. All right, guys. Well, I guess we'll catch you next time.
STEVE: See you guys.
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