Why no more gas/electric refrigerators?

[offtohavasu]

If Furrion made or marketed an absorption fridge they would still use one but they don’t
Grand Design is deep in bed with Furrion imo is the only reason

That's why the use mostly Coleman A/C's instead of Furrion, or TCL TVs instead of Furrion, or Insignia ranges instead of Furrion, or Samsung refrigerator instead of Furrion. Come on man.

It's about features, availability and cost. GD has said one of the primary reasons was propane safety; so you don't have to have a burning flame while traveling to keep the refrigerator running.

DC Compressors cool much faster than absorption refrigerators.

One can read for days on this forum about all the complaints on absorption refrigerators and their performance. I for one am one of them. I can't maintain a decent temperature in the refrigerator while in Havasu unless I shove a decent sized fan in the bottom access panel. Next year, we're doing the JC Refrigeration DC compressor conversion and be done with the absorption hassles.

[BeerBrewer]

I'm with the op on the gas/electric issue. They are the best for my type of RV'ing. I do about 50/50 boondocking/shore power. To me having a 30lb tank of propane to keep the fridge going while boondocking is far better than increasing the battery bank, perhaps more expensive batteries, solar panels and decent charge controller. Then make sure you park in a field so you get sun.
As Hoopy said, RV'ers have all sorts of differing requirements. My requirements works best with gas/electric. Hope they don't go away.

Whether you go boondocking or not, it is still part of the mystique of owning an RV. Knowing that you can spend a night or two without "plugging in" is priceless. I honestly had not thought about all the potential cost savings for GD by shifting over to DC compressor style refrigerators, nor was I aware of corporate connections with Furion. So it seems that as far as GD is concerned, that gas/electric absorption refrigerators are now a thing of the past. I guess it all boils down to dollars and cents.

Having the capability to boondock for a few days is not something we are willing to give up. So we are now re-thinking our plans of upgrading our trailer.

[offtohavasu]

Whether you go boondocking or not, it is still part of the mystique of owning an RV. Knowing that you can spend a night or two without "plugging in" is priceless. I honestly had not thought about all the potential cost savings for GD by shifting over to DC compressor style refrigerators, nor was I aware of corporate connections with Furion. So it seems that as far as GD is concerned, that gas/electric absorption refrigerators are now a thing of the past. I guess it all boils down to dollars and cents.

Having the capability to boondock for a few days is not something we are willing to give up. So we are now re-thinking our plans of upgrading our trailer.

Again, it had nothing to do with the ties to Furrion, but making it safer and eliminating the use of propane while traveling. They're using Furrion, because a 5 minute research on Google shows they're the cheaper option.

[Hoopy Frood]

Not to be contentious, but if "Safety" were in the forefront of Grand Design decisions, they would put a decent suspension under these trailers, and build them so you don't run the constant risk of being over your GVWR? Nope, I think price point and marketing are the driving forces in moving away from gas/absorption fridges. JMO of course.

[JKellerJr]

None of us will ever know what the actual reason/reasons. Cost savings may be a part but I don't think it's the primary one. Unless you factor in the warranty costs or all the complaints. I've been rv'ing for 30+ years and number one problem/complaint has always been by far absorption refrigerators. How after all these years they still have the same issues is beyond me. They aren't all bad but the amount with issues is still fairly high.

My Dad was one of those never go away from absorption guys, to convenient to have the propane. Well after the original and the replacement never worked correctly in their current unit, He finally got tired of throwing away food and looked for an alternative. First the JC conversion route then replacing it with a residential. We added a kitchenAid SxS, a lithium battery and a monitor and never looked back.

Frankly rv's are not set up very well for boondocking from the factory anyway. It doesn't take that much more to plan for a 12v or residential. We went a little farther than we needed in that we added an inverter that will run the whole trailer and 400AH of lithium. Being able to watch tv, run the microwave or the electric griddle is nice.

We didn't mess with solar, we went with a geney. Still possible to use the air conditioning if needed. If we are real conservative we can go probably close to 2 days before a recharge. If we had an absorption that definitely would last quite a bit longer but even if we run through the full 400Ah, 4 1/2 hours of geney run time will fully top them off.

[xrated]

I am one of those that had a Norcold 2118 "Nevercold" gas/elect fridge in the trailer when I bought it new in early 2019. It has NEVER performed well and I started researching the 12V compressor fridges. For the money spent, my best option was the JC Refrigeration conversion to a 12VDC Twin Compressor mod. I did get rid of my 5 year old Trojan T105 batteries and built a 302AH LiFePO battery. We don't do much boondocking (only a couple of times) and the way I feel about it is that I am totally happy with having the JC mod and more than enough battery for 40+ hours of run time before having to recharge the LFP battery. And if I would ever boondock, the onboard generator could run long enough to recharge the battery for a couple more days.

This is what I've got now.....rear view of my Norcold 2118 with the mod done....

[Stealth13777]

@Stealth13777

You said "I used to have to carry a cooler for long drive days and swap everything in and out if we had any perishable food. And then wait 6 hours for the fridge to cool back down."

Why would you need to go through all of that? Just run it on propane while you travel and you'll be fine.... that's what it's designed for.

Two reasons. *Edit - hot topic and I don’t personally care if you leave your fridge on*. I don’t believe it is designed to be on while driving, nor do I like it from a safety/longevity standpoint. I have done it, and don’t fault anyone for doing it, but personally did not routinely do it, especially when driving mountain roads.

Second is many highways prohibit *in my area, specifically if they have tunnels (which my area has a lot of). I’m not stopping to turn the propane on and off 6x in a drive, even if it isn’t that difficult.

12v alleviated those issues for us

[Hoopy Frood]

I'll have to disagree with not using the propane while traveling. It works fine while traveling, that is one of the main attractions of a gas fridge, that's one of the reasons why the changeover from electric to gas happens automatically. Not being level doesn't matter since the movement of the trailer keeps the liquid from having issues. And few, not many, highways prohibit propane, in fact I've yet to ever see one.

[goducks14]

My Norcold went out after 1.5 years. .5 years after the warranty was up. The JC mod wasn't yet ready for my model yet so since I already had added 400W's of solar and 4 GC 6V batteries I figured going the 12V route was a no brainer. Don't get me wrong that it's far better than an absorption. Its just that it's bigger and cools faster but it does take more effort to boondock. Solars not always there when you need it so we have to run the gen. Again no biggie but it's another thing to be concerned about.
After having my 12V for 3 seasons I can say there's more times I like vs times I wish I still had my Norcold. The amount of money I saved over a new Norcold with my GE 9.8 12V more than covered my Solar panels and helped with the controller. So that was a wash. I also bought a 3 year extended warranty for $50. Can't get that with a new Norcold. If you never or rarely boondock a 12V or Residential are no brainers.

[KDutchover]

Why did GD shift away from using gas/electric refrigerators? All of the new Imagine trailers that we looked at had Furion 12V compressor style refrigerators. I read that this will increase the demand on the batteries by about 90 Amp hours per day. We also were told by the salesman that to account for the extra DC drain that GD added a 165 watt solar panel on the roof with a 25 amp solar controller. I found this configuration very strange also, since the max wattage on the controller was 300 watts. So can a second 165 panel be added? Won't this exceed the solar controllers capacity (165 +165 = 330)? I also noticed that buying a second the Furion 165W panel could be insanely expensive ($566). I did a quick check on Amazon and found that a 12V 100W panel costs around $100. So rather than buy another Furion 165W panel, it would be a lot cheaper to buy three 100W panels. I'm not saying I'd do that because we camp mainly on the east coast and are almost always in the shade, so I seriously doubt that we'd get any serious use out of any solar panel. I agree that the new compressor style refrigerators are a bit larger (8 vs 10 Cu ft) but now I need to carry an additional 100 amp-hr battery and these aren't cheap. Once I corrected the poor installation mistakes made with my Dometic gas/electric refrigerator we haven't had an issue keeping our food cool. So did GD fix something that wasn't broken? We were thinking of upgrading our trailer, but now I'm not so sure. Am I missing something?

We run the Furrion 10 cubic foot 12v refrigerator. We have the factory 165w solar panel and two 6v batteries. We are happy with the performance while dry camping. My voltage each morning has been 12.3v . By noon we are at 13.2v. I also have a heating pad on my Furrion thankless water heater that draws a minimal amount over night.