No camping in your car.

[kelpcar]

AGREED!! We gave up on camping, or even staying at relatives' houses. A motel is made for one-night stays, and you don't even have to make the bed in the morning, while often they even provide breakfast. And to say that "It's cheaper" is really cheap, especially when you drive a $50,000 to $100,000 car. If you add in the fun of trying to set up or take down in a rainstorm, it completes your trip. I'll take a motel any day.

even before covid, bedbugs were a reason some avoided motels.

 

[Physicslawyer]

Yeah and my wife wouldn’t be sold on pissing in the woods or by the car to save 30$ on a hotel room. Heck you can rent an air BNB house for 60. Locking my wife in the trunk is not my idea of adventure.

People spend 100k to a million on an RV and get 5 mpg. They can afford a hotel also. Some people like to camp. This is not about saving money, though for some it could be. It's not for me to judge and I hope they enjoy themselves in their RV, or in their Tesla, or hotel, or tent, or what have you.

At the festival, I play multiple instruments and much of the fun is jamming with the bands and other people staying on the grounds. That's what I miss most about not staying at the campground and staying in hotels for the past seven years.

 

[Colorado Y]

I planned on doing a lot of international travel in my retirement, but I got diagnosed with lymphoma right before Covid hit. Covid + lymphoma = Very Bad, so no planes for me for now. I figured my just-arrived MYLR would be my "mini RV" so I could scratch my travel itch with road trips & car camping, and I wouldn't even have to be around other people in a hotel. But I'm finding that most national parks have gone to reservation systems and are booked up weeks/months in advance -- so much for carefree "where should I go today" travel. I could stay at Walmarts & Cracker Barrels but it's not exactly the wilderness/hiking environment I was envisioning. And even if I get myself a campsite, it sounds like I might get harangued by Golfcart Guys.

So not quite the picture I had in mind, but I'm still gonna give it a try. I have several road trips planned, but I'll hold off on the Colorado -> Calgary -> Vancouver -> Hwy 1 down to SF -> home trip until I figure out my equipment & processes.

 

[NewbyMaybe]

I park sometimes at slow j1772 chargers and sleep really well, especially at the free ones.

 

[drtimhill]

We originally had an Airbnb reservation that was cancelled by the host at the last minute. We are a few hours away from home for a festival. They have tent pads with electric. I just bought a mattress for the car, so I thought this would be a perfect chance to camp in the Tesla.

So, we got here a few minutes ago. If you don't have a tent, you can't camp. No camping in your car. We might go to Walmart and buy a tent to set up next to the car so they don't bother us.

Has this happened to you, where you are not allowed to camp unless you set up a tent?

(I had the festival promoter tell us we should be okay, but the fairgrounds camping rep seemed pretty serious. I don't want a knock in the middle of the night asking us to leave. And, this is not a fancy place)

check the rules for what a "tent" is .. go to a toy store .. get a teeny tiny barbie one .. set it up

 

[NewbyMaybe]

1. I use magnets to close the gaps and make it air tight against the bugs.
2. Yes, we closed the trunk when we're sleeping in the car. You can even use the tent separately, the tailgate portion can zip up.
3. It's pretty easy. Takes me five mins or less to do it now. I take the magnets off, take off the front straps off, wheel straps off, unplug charger, and then zip up tailgate portion. And I usually bring duct tape with me to mark my wheel position so I can easily set it back up when we return to camp. The trick is to backup to the tent as close as you can and have the bottom black bumper push the tent in a little bit. You'll have less gaps when you put the tailgate portion over the car.

Here's a view of the inside of our tent from our recent trip to Redwood National Park-

I would make a big mess when I drove away with it attached.

check the rules for what a "tent" is .. go to a toy store .. get a teeny tiny barbie one .. set it up

 

[NewbyMaybe]

A hammock tent is a good lightweight compact decoy, if it gets stormed on all you have to do is wring the water out. Not all campgrounds have trees. Don't tie it the car, you might drive away....

Sometimes hammocks come in handy at slow chargers, zzz--zz-zzz...

 

[Physicslawyer]

check the rules for what a "tent" is .. go to a toy store .. get a teeny tiny barbie one .. set it up

I was going to get this one..appropriate SpaceX theme

 

[israndy]

Has this happened to you, where you are not allowed to camp unless you set up a tent?

I was at a rest area off the freeway the other day and you are not allowed to camp in a tent, has this happened to you?

Fortunately I LOVE spending the night in the car. I have a similar trifold mattress ($35 at Costco). I have been anywhere from 109° to 16°F overnight. It helps in both extremes to be plugged in overnight. I usually find a free charger at a dentists office, police station or bank and climb in the back. I have slept at shopping malls with my head in the trunk and feet where people can look in and they don't even register that I am sleeping in there, also helps with keeping the lights outta my face.

Most commonly I'll stop when I get tired at a rest area just before a charger with at least 30% remaining and spend the night (the Model 3 is well insulated against noise and running the AC overnight means there is always white noise going), in the morning I head to the charger. The BEST is when there IS a charger AT the rest area. Full facilities all night and in the morning I am fully charged.

Then I can hit up the National Park or whatever I have come to see during the day. The only time I've gotten hassled was when I tried to sleep next door to a Supercharger, the guy whose business it was that had the dark parking lot wanted me out and it was after midnight. Sheesh!


I read upthread that people feel they are only spending $30 to stay at a hotel, but I haven't seen any of these hotels since college. I don't believe I have seen one for under $100 except those Motel 6's with bedbugs, and they are $75+. That may not sound like a big difference, but there is also that hassle. I can just hit up the Planet Fitness in the morning, toss some clean clothes in my backpack, do a little workout, take a shower, and toss my dirty clothes in the frunk hamper, and back on the road to my next destination.

 

[NewbyMaybe]

Put your laundry in a big Tupperware with soap and water, rinse, repeat.

 

[avs007]

the actual need is a bit fuzzy here. Why does the RV need an approved tent?

Usually it's a space restriction, because many RV specific sites don't have the greenspace to fit larger tents. I've been to a few places where they limit tents at RV spaces to dome tents or 3 person tents or smaller, etc. I've also been to a few where they didn't allow tents at all... I've stayed at a few places that said "approved tents" as well, but when I looked into it for our friends that were traveling with us, they told me approved just meant that it was within certain size restrictions.

 

[e645824]

Put your laundry in a big Tupperware with soap and water, rinse, repeat.

Ah... my frunk is completely empty; and thanks to NewbyMaybe now we know what we can put there. A very compact top-load 12V washer with an agitator and clip-leads to the 12V battery. Then it spin-dries, then heat-dries or vac-dries. An RV-style combo unit will "almost" fit.

After a sweaty day of hiking, mountain biking, or motocrossing, come back to the Tesla, pop the dirty clothes in the washer, and voila. Sounds like a MasterCard commercial with "priceless" at the end.

Scott

--

MYLR | Red ext | White int | 19" | 5 seats | tow | no FSD | made/delivered Oct 2021

 

[Walter Jacob]

I am also planning a camping, looks like a tent is very necessary now

 

[Physicslawyer]

I am also planning a camping, looks like a tent is very necessary now

We are going to two other campgrounds and they said we don't need a tent. We are staying at Airbnbs, but I'm getting sites so we can plug in the car and possibly stay over (music festivals where the last band ends at midnight, I might be too tired to drive).

Call the campground and check with them before you go.

 

[MikeGracz]

even before covid, bedbugs were a reason some avoided motels.

Yeah, and camping is often the best option in some places. Not all motels are that great. Cost has nothing to do with why I choose to camp in the car sometimes!

 

[LavanyaLea]

I live in the UK, my experience from summer camping this year:
- “no sleeping in car”: some campsites have this rule. The first time I heard was when I phoned in to ask about charging my car on the electric hook ups. Ironically they said this was not a problem but they went bananas when they found out I was planning to sleep in the car. I checked their site policy, there are 99 things listed as not allowed, but sleeping in car was not one of them. As I searched for other sites, some have written this rule black and white on their policy.

My take is: they don’t want the riff raffs that will spoil the image of their site. Or prolonged stay and difficult to kick out. But they can’t say that. So they came up with health and safety reasons: no sleeping in car or unconverted vans due to lack of ventilation and danger of carbon monoxide.

Not sure if this also happens in the US, but a standard rule in almost all campsites I’ve seen is: no commercial vehicles, as in no work vans. Anything with stickers/labels/brands etc. It’s a problem with some families where their work vehicle is a van and when camping and wanting to take gears/bikes it makes more sense to use the work van to store everything. Again, the implied reason is to discourage certain communities/group of people, the official reason given will be somewhere along the line of “campsites are for recreation and should not be used for work/business trips”.

- Charging your car in a site: some sites have dedicated EV charging stations. Some sites have put a daily price for charging your car, I wonder if I pay this, and don’t need electricity for other things (fridge and charging phones etc can be done from the car) then I don’t have to pay the electrics charge on top of EV charge? No idea. But the amount they impose is quite a lot. There is a big group called C&CC (camping and caravanning club) which has specifically written that electric cars need to plug into their own caravans and the caravan can plug into the campsite (!!!). NB: C&CC also doesn’t allow sleeping in cars.

So I would choose a site that doesn’t say anything or say it’s fine. In the UK/Europe we have a blue 3-pin/commando charger at campsites. Most are 10A but I saw some old ones 6A. My Tesla has a commando connector but rather than plugging it directly to the campsite, I use an extension (most of the time the power source is some 10m away anyway) and plug my car to that. Each socket has its own fuse and if my car trips it will blow my own extension and not tripping the campsite! It never happened though.

I have a tear drop awning, so it’s like the SUV tent but without side walls (ie it’s an awning). I guess I can drop the poles and stick the awning down and claim I’ll be sleeping here if anybody checks.

People always resist change. Give it maybe another 10 years and everyone (hopefully) will be used to climate control/HVAC, people sleeping in their cars when camping, etc. I do not come to sites where I do not feel welcome, or I feel they have an outdated thinking mind.

 

[Jim R]

I was told that some states, such as PA, have laws on the books that prevent car camping that were enacted before there were EVs. Of course, you'd want to prevent people from camping in an ICE car and using AC, but PA, evidently, hasn't kept up with the times. I didn't have any issues in VA when we used a RV site in order to charge the car; however, in that case we also slept in a tent. At the KOA site in PA they challenged me when they saw that I only had a car for an RV site...

Maybe risk of carbon monoxide poisoning is a factor in the no camping in car rules.

 

[israndy]

Almost all cars have to run your engine to get heat or A/C, so it makes sense.

I have noticed that modern Van RVs have the engine connected to a great big alternator to charge the RV battery instead of adding a separate generator like most old RVs had. So if not connected to electricity even modern RVs will have the engine running at a campsite if it stays long enough.

 

[PNWLeccy]

I no longer call campsites to ask any questions because they either don't have the correct info, make up rules on the spot, or have preconceived notions about charging (fire risk, outlandish electricity costs, etc.) that just gets you into trouble.

For example, one time I called to check if a campsite had any sites with 14-50 outlets and they had no idea what I meant, so I clarified by telling them it was the plug usually used by RVs. They said they had one and asked what RV I had and said I didn't have one but was hoping to use the outlet to plug in my car. They were like "Ohhh that's gonna cost way more, let me check with the manager". Told me it would cost an extra $50/night or something insane like that. Learned my lesson to never call in again.

I try to just lay low, plug in after dark, and pack a decoy tent to set up if I'm getting attention for whatever reason.

 

[israndy]

I assume you mean you plug in AFTER paying for the site.

When I first rented an RV I didn't know what to do with the waste so I called a campsite who said just come in and dump, it was fine. So we did. But when we were driving away someone chased us like we should have paid or like we had been in the campsite overnight. They were on foot and didn't catch us, but I always felt guilty for whatever miscommunication there was.