Thank you for your extensive real-world data collecting. My family has been closely following your adventures and it has made us lustful after the X / Alto combo for ourselves. It helped to convince us to take the plunge and order our Model X now (you should see an extra referral), partly because our current car can't tow the Alto, and we need to upgrade from our T@B since our family grew. Does Safari Condo take referrals? We haven't ordered yet but we probably need to put down the deposit soon because there's a year+ wait right now!
I was wondering if you got the built-in camper mover, which I think would make super-charging logistics easier in case you need to unhitch to charge. And it seems we'll need a lot more SC stops while towing. Are there any other options that you think are must-haves?
We'd love to make it to one of your meetups when you come East, but if we can't make it we'll be following you vicariously.
Jessica in Boston
Hi Jessica
Thanks for using our referral code and congratulations for taking the leap to the MX. Yes, Safari Condo takes referrals. We will ask them for details. We will visit the factory next months. Any questions you want us to ask? I know that they have quite a back log. It will take about 1 year to build your Alto.
We did not get the mover. Extra weight in the front and extra cost. The camper is fairly light. If you have to move the camper on soft surface, then it helps to have one person stand on the aft bumper to reduce to load on the hitch wheel to nearly zero. I also put a swicth on the battery box, connected to the electrical brake cable inside the camper. With that I can apply the electric brakes, so the camper can not run away on me.
For charging the MX, we just look for a large enough parking space nearby, and drop the camper off. It takes about one minute. I do not use weight distribution bars. Not required if you do not load the front too heavy. I made a wooden pedestal and removed the wheel from the hitch lift mechanism. The bare hitch lift post then drops into a shallow hole in the wood block. That way the camper sits safely on a nearly flat surface in a parking lot, without to having to put blocks under the wheels. Also, you do not have to crank the handle that long for lifting and lowering the hitch. I made the wood block such that when the trailer is attached to the MX, and the hitch lift pole is in the up position, there is about a 3" gap to the top of the wood.
I also made these simple wooden wheel chocks. You may have seen similar ones on airports to planes from moving. The string is great to yank the chock away from the wheel if there is some pressure on it.
We would love to meet with you. Depending on timing we will go down to the New England states for indian summer.
We are looking forward to get some data with SuperChargers. Until now we charged 80% of the time in campgrounds. Some days we do a little top-up charge around lunch with 40-70A at 200-240V. But that means charging at 1/3 of the speed of using it. Going slower, definitely makes you arrive earlier if you need to top up, unless you have a Supercharger or CHAdeMO.
We will try to exchange our 2-way (propane/AC) fridge for a 12V compressor fridge. Currently we still run the fridge on Propane while on the road. I tried running the fridge off the inverter at 120V, but it is really wasteful on energy in AC mode. With this change we would be almost completly carbon-free. We used the propane heater on two nights so far. We also have the heat-pump air-con/heater, but the fan of that is very loud. The propane heater fan can be set to low and you can barely hear that.
So long
Rolf, Silke and Kye
