Tom from Out of Spec BITS gathered four fellow EV enthusiasts on a group call to talk through their camping and towing setups ahead of a planned cross-country road trip. The group covers a lot of ground: a Lightning Flash pulling a 32-foot, roughly 8,000 lb loaded trailer; a Rivian R1T tri-motor towing a 25-foot Airstream; a Tesla Model Y turned into a proper sleeping space with a plywood platform and bolt-on tent; and a converted Mercedes eSprinter cargo van with bunk beds and a portable power station.
Tom runs an F-150 Lightning with a small Keystone Coleman 13R trailer, and he uses the truck's Pro Power on board to run the camper entirely off the battery. At Daytona Speedway, he drove over, topped up to nearly full at a nearby charger, then powered the camper for six days straight including high AC use, microwave, and refrigerator. He used about 40% of the battery. Neighboring campers kept asking where the generator was. The answer was the cable running out of the truck bed.
Allan logged around 4,000 towing miles with his Lightning Flash over the previous year, including a 2,100-mile run from Ohio to Bar Harbor, Maine, then down to New York City and back, with a crew of five. He mentioned hitting some thermal charging limits on that trip but noted Ford has since pushed a software update that raises the threshold, which should help this summer.
Eric tows a 25-foot Airstream with a 2025 Rivian R1T tri-motor and gets around 180 miles per charge in eco mode. He and his wife typically leave home with a full battery, stop for a sit-down lunch at about the 180-mile mark while the truck charges, then try to land at a campground with overnight charging available. He pointed out that diesel towers often spend 30 to 45 minutes at fuel stops anyway once you factor in everything, so the time difference in practice is smaller than people assume. The Airstream's shape also gives a real aerodynamic advantage: Eric gets noticeably better efficiency than setups with the same trailer weight but boxier profiles.
Austin car-camps out of a Model Y without towing anything. He built a level sleeping platform from plywood and 2x4s sitting on the trunk floor, added a $200 Amazon air mattress, and uses a $500 bolt-on tent that connects to the tailgate to create an enclosed space for changing and storage. At 6'2, he fits comfortably stretched out with the rear and front seats folded. Camp mode handles overnight temperature control, and plugging into a NEMA 14-50 outlet when available keeps it fully practical. Total cost for the sleeping setup: well under a thousand dollars.
Skye's eSprinter started life as a blank cargo van. She and her husband removed the divider, installed bunk beds with IKEA slats and memory foam mattresses, added a microwave, induction stove, and coffee maker, and built the whole system around an EcoFlow setup with 8 kWh of stored power and 4 kW of output. The van gets around 240 miles of real-world range in mild weather at lower speeds, though that drops sharply in winter. It charged at 115 kW consistently regardless of state of charge, which made stops predictable. The main downsides: it is speed-limited, 9.5 feet tall and susceptible to crosswinds, has no camp mode equivalent, and they had to put water bottles on the seat to fool the weight sensor into thinking the driver was present. They have put about 15,000 miles on it and are already eyeing something smaller.
The group agreed that aerodynamics matter far more than trailer weight when it comes to EV towing efficiency. Tom's small, boxy trailer gets similar efficiency numbers to Allan's much larger but more streamlined setup. Eric's Airstream shape is the standout. The session wraps with plans for a full meetup camping trip in a couple of months, which will hopefully get its own video.