Charging the EV from solar while living in the motorhome — anyone actually making this work?

Been sitting at a French aire for the past three weeks running the motorhome entirely off a 600W roof array and a pair of Fogstar Drift 100Ah lithiums, which has been brilliant. But I've got the Leaf parked alongside and it's just sitting there draining from the grid back home via a timer plug on the house — feels daft when I'm generating surplus most afternoons.

I had a go at running a cheap 230V inverter off the leisure bank into a 3-pin granny cable into the Leaf. Technically worked, but the charge rate was embarrassingly slow — we're talking maybe 1.5kW peak before the Victron SmartShunt started throwing a fit about the battery drop. Realistically the solar just isn't keeping up with that kind of sustained draw, even in full Spanish sun.

Wondering if anyone's gone further with this — dedicated EV charging MPPT setup, a bigger inverter, or even just accepted it's only ever going to be a "top-up while stationary" situation. Is there a sensible middle ground, or does properly charging an EV off solar in a motorhome context require a bank size that just isn't realistic to carry?

Lefty92 | 847 posts

@VanDerek Nice setup with the Fogstars! The honest answer is: yes, but you need realistic expectations. I've been doing exactly this with a Zoe parked alongside the van. The key thing most people miss is that you're essentially asking your solar to do double duty, so you need to be ruthlessly selective about when you charge the Leaf — peak sun hours only, and ideally with a proper MPPT-controlled output rather than just a clumsy inverter-to-EVSE setup.

A portable EVSE like the Blink or Juice Booster set to minimum amperage (6A) makes a massive difference — you're trickling rather than gulping. At 600W you're looking at maybe 25-30 miles of range added on a decent sunny day in France. Perfectly workable if you're not covering huge distances. What's your current inverter situation?

TransitDream | 1,203 posts

@VanDerek The maths is brutal when you actually work it out — 600W peak might realistically give you 2-3kWh on a decent French summer day, whereas the Leaf wants roughly 6kWh just to add 20 miles of range. So you're looking at every drop of solar going exclusively to the car on a good day, with nothing left for the van itself.

What's worked for me is treating the Leaf as a "weekly top-up" rather than daily charging — let the van batteries fully recover first, then divert surplus over several days before you need to move. Also worth checking if the aire has EDF hookups nearby for a proper session every few days. France is brilliant for cheap topped-up charges at supermarkets too. Lidl and Leclerc often have free or very cheap points.

What's your typical daily driving distance? That changes the answer quite a bit.

MarineCallum | 412 posts

@VanDerek What's your typical daily driving distance on the Leaf? That's really the crux of it. I've seen folks make this work by treating the EV as a "weekly top-up" situation rather than trying to keep it fully charged — park up for 4-5 sunny days, let the panels gradually feed into the Leaf overnight via a small inverter/charger setup, then do a modest run.

Worth looking at whether your Leaf accepts a 6A charge rate — some do and it massively helps when your input is limited. Also consider timing: midday surplus straight into the car rather than cycling through the lithiums first, you'll lose less to conversion inefficiency.

France in summer you've got the solar resource for it, but as @Lefty92 implies, managing expectations is everything. What inverter are you running currently?

SomersetCamper | 634 posts

@VanDerek We did exactly this touring the Dordogne last summer — Leaf plus a 760W array on the Transit. The game-changer for us was using a proper EVSE that lets you throttle the charge rate right down. We ran ours at 6A through a basic Type 2 setup, which meant the solar was actually keeping pace on bright afternoons rather than just topping up marginally.

Also worth looking at when you charge — we'd set the Leaf to start at 11am and cut off at 3pm, catching the solar peak. Combined with @MarineCallum's point about keeping mileage modest, it's genuinely workable if you're not flogging it between sites daily.

The Fogstars will struggle if you're trying to buffer significant EV charging overnight though — they're not really sized for that duty.

MandyMorris | 47 posts

Not doing this myself yet but it's exactly what I'm researching for emergency backup purposes — specifically whether a decent solar array could keep an EV topped up enough to get somewhere if grid power went down for an extended period.

@SomersetCamper did you find cloudy days in the Dordogne caused significant problems, or did you just accept slower charging and plan around it?

Also curious whether anyone's using a Victron MPPT to manage the handoff between motorhome battery bank and EV charging, or are people just running direct from a dedicated inverter? Feels like there must be a smarter way to prioritise loads rather than manually juggling everything.