this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2026
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If you are camping for a week a few solar panels can give you some useful range, perhaps enough to get a full charge (depending on sun, how many panels, and what else you do for power)
"Hey Jim, can you get started on dinner?"
"No, I'm busy setting up my 25 panel 5kw solar array so I can get home!"
That sounds ridicoulous, but it'd still take 14 hours of broad sunlight to charge the Rivian R1T with the 141kwh battery from 25 to 75%.
Unless all the camping you do is staying for a week in each location, or just stay in campgrounds near highways, an EV just doesn't work yet, as much as I want it to. Offroading is brutal on range in both gas and electric vehicles, and without a way to refuel quickly in rural areas, it just doesn't work. If there were as many fast chargers as there are gas stations, it probably would be viable, though you'd still run into the edge case where you want to go further between charges and can't simply bring a Jerry can with you.
I understood this as camping in one location, or parking in one remote location and hiking for a week. This is a fairly common way to camp. Over a week you can get a useful charge if you are not driving. Likely just 1kw would be enough to get a useful charge over a week. If you are driving to a new spot every day this doesn't work (unless the drive is really short).
I suppose I'm not the type to camp like that. I usually stay in each location two or three nights tops. Also, I don't think I'd feel comfortable relying on solar to get me home, even if I was in the same spot for a week. If the weather changes to rainy/overcast and I'm getting 100w instead of a kw, I wouldn't want to be stranded. I'm also not a fair-weather camper, and go out in all conditions, which could be considered unusual.