A phantom power drain nearly left us stranded. Here's what we did about it—and why it's no longer an issue.
People buy EVs for all sorts of reasons—fuel costs being top of mind recently—but at least a few buy them to be friendlier to the environment. Without getting into whether mining or oil drilling is more destructive, the simple fact is, electric motors operate more efficiently than internal combustion engines and don't produce exhaust fumes everywhere you go.
Just to be safe, we didn't plan to do much if any driving once we arrived. The campground was right outside town, so we could walk in if we needed anything small. The only real concern was overnight temperatures. Even in late May, when L.A. is already steaming hot, Big Bear still drops into the low 30s overnight, and we'd be there four nights.It started off well enough.
That was of little help in Big Bear, though, where it was time to start looking up public charging stations, of which the area had exactly zero. There was a Level 2 public charger at a cafe 17 miles away in Running Springs, or I could pay the local tow company $150 an hour for the privilege of using their Level 2 charger. A real estate office had a Tesla Wall Connector, but I didn't have an adapter that would allow me to use it .Then I spotted a glimmer of hope.
As expected, range fell again on night four. Checking the Rivian app when I awoke, I was greeted with 34 miles of range and just 12 percent battery left. By the time we got in the truck, it was down to 32 miles and 11 percent.We decided to make for Running Springs, and if all went well, we could skip the stop and coast down the hill to the faster charger at the bottom. We knew we could get to the cafe; it was only 17 miles away.
If only I could get it to work. First, the charger refused to authorize my credit card. After entering my card data into the EVGo app, it fired up, only for the truck to shut it down over a software glitch. A half hour of messing with both netted us 4 miles of range and a 1 percent increase in battery charge.
With light traffic, it was an easy drive home, and we arrived with 46 miles of range and 30 percent battery left.Not only did we make it with only one unplanned charging stop, but my goal of using zero fossil fuels also remained intact. The fast charger had a sign announcing it was powered entirely by renewable energy, in this case from the enormous wind farm in the nearby San Gorgonio pass that utilizes near-constant winds to provide all of the electricity to this part of the county.
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