It was time to ditch our marvellous collection of gas dependent camping implements (including the indestructible Primus stove my parents bought in 1956) and test the limits of V2L all electric camping, available on the BYD – but not the Tesla we regularly use for long distance trips.
We chose an unpowered tent site at Green Head, 250km north of Perth, soon to be the site of arguably Tesla’s most scenic Australian supercharger, overlooking the beautiful Dynamite Bay. (The name is a nod to a method of fishing, no longer approved).
Despite its tiny size and remote location, Green Head is part of the SWIS – the main grid in Western Australia – with a relatively good power supply according to Western Power coverage maps, so Tesla have done the right thing by choosing a more scenic location over the larger and more commercial nearby Jurien Bay.
The Dolphin’s boot is cavernous with seats down but our gear filled it to the roof, mainly because of a bulky but extremely comfortable self inflating mattress and our 50 year old Engel fridge which appears to have plans to outlast us. A spare tyre would have been a struggle.
Despite the bulk we were under the car’s 410kg limit and there was absolutely no effect on performance or handling. The Indian Ocean Drive north is notoriously dangerous, so extremely well marked with edge and centre lines.
The car’s lane assist function/adaptive cruise control worked well last year on this road as a form of auto steering mode, but on this trip it was outright unsafe, randomly unable to steer on gentle bends without hitting the rumble strip or veering way too close to the central white lines.
I reverted to manual driving and planned to book a service for recalibration of the system on return.
We were nearly there when the airbag warning light came on (and stayed on) and the rear traffic sensor started to come on at random with no other cars nearby.
These faults in the essential safety systems of the car are unacceptable, especially as the airbag light issue appears to be relatively common. The car is in warranty and it will be interesting to see how well BYD manage the service.
On arrival we noticed that the fridge stopped when the car was turned off – the 12 volt outlet only has power when the car is turned on, without the option Tesla offers of maintaining power to the outlet with the car turned off.
In contrast, the V2L works with the car turned off and provides up to 2.2kW supplying two 10A GPOs. We had left the fridge’s 240V mains cable at home so opted to leave the car powered up to run the fridge.
This meant that the car’s running lights stayed on, attracting multiple old codgers to come over and warn us about flat batteries. Not one twigged that the car was an EV.
This part of the coast is extremely popular with wind and kite surfers for a reason. The 30 knot southerly howling through our camp certainly blew the flies away but would have made cooking with gas challenging.
The double burner induction cooker was so much better in every way, oblivious to wind, fast and easily adjusted while drawing well under our 2.2kW limit. We will never go back to gas!
The other plug served to charge our devices and light up our camp like a mine site (we have a few in WA). No more squinting at our books under a flickering yellow flame.
The downside of leaving the car powered up was that we appeared to have used about 6kWh overnight, far more than expected from brief cooking and LED lights.
The fan and air conditioning were off, so the car’s systems have a significant draw. We turned the car off the next night and ran the fridge from an auxiliary battery which dropped the draw on the EV battery to under 2kWh.
The car is easily able to provide enough power for our limit of about 4 days camping off grid. It’s worth checking whether your EV provides power to the 12 volt outlet and V2L when turned off then plan accordingly.
I’m now on the hook to find an electric toaster compact enough to fit in the last available nook for next time.
