Charging a 30kWh EV from a Vivaro-e while wild camping — is it actually viable?

Running a Vauxhall Vivaro-e as my daily/adventure van and I've been obsessing over whether I can meaningfully top up the traction battery from my leisure setup whilst off-grid. Current build: 400Ah of Fogstar Drift LiFePO4, 600W of Renogy panels on the roof, and a Victron Multiplus-II 3000VA inverter. On a decent summer day in the UK I'm pulling around 2.5–2.8kWh by early afternoon — enough to run the van comfortably but not exactly a fast charger.

The maths is the bit that hurts. The Vivaro-e's 75kWh (usable ~65kWh) pack is enormous relative to my leisure bank. Realistically I'm not trying to charge from 10% to 80% — I just want to recover maybe 8–12kWh overnight to extend range for the next day's drive. At 2.4kW continuous from the Multiplus into a Type 2 charge cable, that's roughly 4–5 hours, which is plausible if I'm disciplined about timing and solar has topped the leisure bank back up during the day.

The limiting factor I keep coming back to is Peukert losses and the stress on the Fogstar cells doing repeated deep cycles just to push amps into the traction battery. Has anyone actually stress-tested their leisure bank this way long-term? I'm also wondering whether a DC-DC approach (bypassing the inverter altogether) would be more efficient here, though I've not seen many people doing this on a Vivaro-e specifically.

Genuinely curious whether anyone on here has a similar dual-purpose setup or has crunched the cycle degradation numbers. Is this a brilliant idea or am I going to knacker a £1,400 battery bank inside two seasons?

@VivaroWanderer really curious where you're going with this — what's your current leisure battery capacity and inverter size? That'll massively affect whether it's even worth attempting.

I've been down a similar rabbit hole with my tiny house setup. The maths is pretty sobering — even with a decent 200Ah Fogstar Drift LiFePO4 bank you're looking at maybe 2kWh usable, which on a 30kWh traction battery is basically rounding error territory.

The more realistic question might be: are you trying to extend range slightly or actually rely on it? Because solar top-up via a proper Victron MPPT feeding the leisure bank, then trickle into the traction battery overnight, could give you 10-15 miles on a sunny day. Useful for wild camping anxiety, not a genuine range solution.

What inverter are you running — that's often the bottleneck before anything else?

Hey @VivaroWanderer, interesting challenge! The maths is pretty brutal if you're honest about it — 400Ah at 12V is nominally 4.8kWh, and realistically you'd only want to use 50% of that to protect your cells, so you're looking at maybe 2.4kWh usable. That's barely 8% of your traction battery on a good day.

Where it could make sense is topping up enough range for a short morning run to the nearest town or a DC rapid charger, rather than attempting a meaningful full charge. Think "emergency range extender" rather than primary charging solution.

What solar capacity are you running? If you've got decent panels you might harvest enough overnight deficit to make the daily sums work better over a multi-day stay. Would love to see the full build spec! 🏕️

Hey @VivaroWanderer, the maths @ForestWanderer mentions is exactly why I'd reframe the goal slightly. Rather than thinking "charge the EV," think "extend range by X miles for tomorrow's drive." Even dumping 3-4kWh into the traction battery overnight via a Type 2 EVSE running off a decent inverter could net you 15-20 miles — genuinely useful if you're repositioning between campsites rather than doing a big run. The Vivaro-e's onboard charger will throttle itself sensibly if supply is wobbly, so inverter quality matters massively here. What solar input are you running? With 400Ah leisure and decent panels you're not topping a 30kWh pack, but topping up is absolutely a different conversation. 👍

@VivaroWanderer @DanFisher89 makes a really good point about reframing the goal. One thing nobody's mentioned yet — have you looked at whether the Vivaro-e accepts a proper Type 2 AC charge from your inverter, or does it default to a trickle via the 13A socket? Some EVs are quite fussy about supply quality and will throttle right back or refuse to charge entirely from a modified sine wave inverter. Worth checking before you invest in anything beefier. A pure sine wave inverter is pretty much non-negotiable here either way. Also, if you're parked up for multiple days rather than just overnighting, the maths becomes considerably more forgiving — slow and steady accumulation from solar across 48-72 hours adds up meaningfully even with modest panels.

@VivaroWanderer curious what your actual daily mileage looks like when wild camping — are you driving to a spot and staying put for several days, or moving regularly?

That changes the equation massively. If you're covering 20-30 miles between spots, your consumption is relatively modest and even a small top-up from the leisure bank starts to feel more meaningful as a percentage of what you've actually used.

Also wondering whether the Vivaro-e has any DC charging capability at all via CCS — even at 7-11kW, pairing that with a brief stop at a Gridserve or Pod Point on route days could mean you're only asking your leisure setup to bridge genuine emergencies rather than doing heavy lifting.

What does your typical trip structure actually look like?

Great thread this. @VivaroWanderer one practical thing worth adding — the Vivaro-e's onboard charger is only 7.4kW AC, so even if you had the inverter grunt to feed it, you'd be throttled there anyway. But more usefully, have you looked at whether you can access the CHAdeMO or CCS port for DC charging directly? Some folk are experimenting with repurposed EV battery packs as intermediary storage to bridge exactly this kind of gap — charge the leisure bank slowly via solar, then dump faster into the traction battery. Bit involved but potentially elegant. Also worth checking if the Vivaro-e has any scheduled charging or current-limiting settings you can dial down — reducing the charge rate might make your existing inverter setup just about viable for a slow overnight top-up rather than trying to brute-force it.