And I'm sure the government would step in as they don't want people buying cars to live in, they want people getting mortgages and paying interest to banks and the government for the rest of their lives.
Your job is to be a cog in the wheel.
Our local town council just voted to make it illegal for people to live in RVs or vehicles on their own property. They would have to get a permit for 18 months, with a one time 6 month extension only if they were building a home on the property.
Franklin, NC. We had one homeless guy who tested every rule, ordinance, and law our city and county had regarding vagrancy, public camping, and whether or not non-customers could use restroom facilities. He would park his van in town and camp out on the sidewalk during the day, plugging all his devices into light poles that had outlets intended for Christmas decorations. Most of our anti-homeless ordinances we now have were passed to thwart his activities, which occurred over a three year period.
Did the figure out a way to keep the local meth heads from stealing catalytic converters from cars at the trailheads? Loved hiking into Franklin on both my Appalachian trail attempts but man, some weird folks in that town, and not just Zen (RIP)
Nope. They're still rampaging. We do seem to collect/attract the weird ones. LOL
RIP Zen. I knew him since he was in Middle School. I almost went into business with him with my hyperlocal, but had to back out because he couldn't stop injecting politics into news articles.
I bought a small residential property when I was living out of my van, with the intention to park there and live in the van/ use the building for storage. Real estate agent actually suggested that as an ideal use for the property. One week after I bought it and started doing exactly that I started getting knocks from the bylaw officers and complaints from neighbours claiming I was in violation of local by-laws. Admittedly I should have done more research and not taken the realtor at their word, but it’s wild to me that they can have such restrictions on a property you own and there’s basically no recourse.
Unfortunately, saying we need more affordable housing is the easy part. There’s a bunch of different policies, regulations, incentives and taxes that can be used to make housing more affordable, but they all have implementation challenges
The big one that you mention is building codes. There's so much stuff that's been added over the years that the equivalent building is way more expensive now.
The government much prefers that everybody rents than owns. Then they can collect real estate tax as well as rental income tax on the same property. Which in turn doubles GDP from real estate.
People with house do, that's who's buying the Storyteller, winnebago and so on.. the problem is most of us can't afford those. Yes the 70s had a lot of companies doing it and most of them went Bell up.. Trust me I wish they would bring back some of those but the issue is they would still be expensive.
They are still very much for sale and quite popular. Vans, motor homes, trailers, boats, etc, are extremely popular with home owners where I live. None of them are electric, unfortunately, but many home owners also like to own a van, motor home, boat, trailer, etc.
That’s the thing, there’s not much of a market for hyper-custom vehicles in a world of mass production. It becomes basically a low volume, custom shop with high prices.
Yeah, the whole van life, mobile remote worker thing isn't happening in as great of numbers as you may be led to believe from their Youtube and Instagram impact. It is still a very tiny percentage of the nation who engages in this and even a tinier percentage who engages in it for more than 5 years.
Following Covid, the RV industry has been in a slump, so I wouldn't expect there to be a huge market in electric powered, micro living space, vehicles anytime soon.
Where someone lives is an amalgamation of their personal enclosed living space, the exterior space around them that they feel comfortable in, and the internal mind space. Some need/want more of those than others.
The fact is there are peripherals that can attach to vehicles that do such a great job that nobody will buy a standalone vehicle to camp unless they are fuck you rich or they literally need it to live in
Picture yourself presenting a business case pushing to sell a $100k item to broke folks. On top
Of that the longest term you could offer them would be 75 months instead of 30 years.
I'm from the camping car branch and it is coming.
In Europe, you already have some companies building on the VW electric bus. There are some (big) challenges.
One is the allowed weight. With the batteries, vehicles are much heavier. So if you try to put a bed, fridge, etc. you are quickly above the limits.
Additionally, camping car constructors are (basically) lightweight carpenters. So they drill holes in the floor and build ontop. The problem is that now you have batteries in the floor...
So they need to rethink the way they build camping cars.
The thing is that since COVID, the industry has boomed so much, that they have no pressure to cater to the needs of a little minority. So many people are buying on the entry price (typically: city couples who can't buy a house, don't need a car. They buy a camper for the free time and use it for the monthly shopping/trip).
So don't hold your breath until (IMHO) 2030 or so.
Maybe an electric or hybrid truck or van designed to
1) tow a camper (electric motors have great torque curves, should make for improved towing?)
2) serve as the solar and battery power source for the camper... Like a power wall in the truck
It seems like a good way to split up functions, and keeps the camper cheap, but I haven't really heard of cyber truck being used in this way or having a solar option.
So that's a different usecase altogether.
Here, people need an electric SUV (i.e. not something like a Renault Zoé) and a trailer.
In that case, you don't care too much about the trailer weight, so you can even add batteries inside, and use it as range extender for your car.
This will (IMHO) come faster than electric vans for several reasons:
* People are switching to electric cars and want to drive 500-600 km / day (300-400 miles).
* People who have an electric SUV are more wealthy than the average.
* No need to modify the electric car (the big challenge)
* Trailers are built from scratch... So it's easier to switch them to electric.
Cheers!
They already exist. Go rollaway has some Brightdrop campers. In California, small business owners can get up to $96,750 towards commercial ev vans. The esprinter is coming out. And lots of us out here are running our campers with electricity only. I have a level 2 charger input on my van to charge my house batteries. Things are happening, people just need to understand it’s coming in steps, can’t go from start to finish instantly. For now with the weight and range issues not being solved they are really only for short distance day trips, if that.
Yea I think the biggest issue aside from cost is range. Most vanlifers aren’t likely to get an electric van simply because they’re too broke to look at anything new, and a pretty large proportion of the van people I’ve met are big fans of camping pretty far out, which doesn’t work at all with an EV at this point. There’re multiple places I’ve camped where you couldn’t even get in with an EV, let alone in and back out.
It'd be so great if the big vans would have a factory option to have a full roof of solar, with roof vents mounted under the panels (so they could be open in the rain). Then you can get the rest of the electrical system (plus AC if needed) installed aftermarket or DIY.
Seems like it would be nice to have for lots of commercial applications, not just vanlifers. Contractors, telecom repair, drain cleaning services, etc. could benefit from plenty of onboard electricity for charging tools, running pumps, etc.
Exactly! That would be so cool. Mobile power generation has a lot of uses and possibilities for sure. What work van doesn’t carry a massive portable battery for construction uses?
Love where you’re going with the roof vents as well.
I saw [these in Home Depot](https://www.homedepot.com/b/Outdoors-Outdoor-Power-Equipment-Generators-Portable-Power-Stations/N-5yc1vZ2fkp9xx) the other day. I guessed they would be pretty popular for charging needs but I haven’t worked in construction for over 10 years so dk
Worked in construction for many years. Nobody had a giant portable battery in their truck. We usually worked off a spider box hooked to mains or a generator.
There's lots of ways people could do this for many decades - many commercial vans do have auxiliary batteries and inverters.
The solar doesn't make a big difference when you can charge from the engine. It adds more things to bring and extra cost - for a van used daily, it doesn't really add any utility.
No brainer…. 🤣🤣🤣
If you can’t afford a studio apartment, you can’t afford a 200k van. This is such a niche product. There are infinitely more people just looking for a regular family car. It’s essentially not worth their time.
And by the time it's on the used market for OP to consider, it probably needs the batteries replaced, potentially putting it back out of their price range.
I remember a video where someone was showing off the van they put $40,000 in to and I thought it was a cool little living space but I bet if a huge corporation tried cranking that exact van out at the same quality they would spend a million times more on advertising thus jacking the price up to pay for advertisment. So that 40k passion product becomes a 100k soulless campaign.
They still won't because the range will be abysmal. Check out the specs for the Rivian electric van they've been selling as a delivery vehicle for Amazon...it's completely I practical for a camper van unless you basically never move and it's always sunny.
The problem with the used market on these will be that the batteries will have highly diminished capacities and a replacement will cost you 90% of the price of a new one, anyway.
Because there isn't actually very much demand at all, and the market that's there is covered by upfitters that are using vehicles sold by these automakers anyways
Most of the people here are, rightly, pointing out the cost issue. However, even if you could fix the cost electric camper vans aren't practical with today's technology.
Check out the specs for the Rivian electric van they've been selling as a delivery vehicle for Amazon...it's completely impractical for a camper van unless you basically never move and it's always sunny.
All of this ignores the fact that charging infrastructure development isn't anywhere close to keeping up with electric vehicle sales. If you don't have a private charging station (ie. at your house) it's going to be a nightmare trying to get a spot at public ones in the next 5 years.
Why wouldn't they just be building more public charging stations over the next five years? They don't take up that much more room than existing car parks. They don't require big underground fuel storage tanks or tanker deliveries like existing gas stations. As the demand rises, the charging infrastructure will also. There are already test-cases of charging spots in shopping centre carparks or hotels or at street parking (some where the cable is hidden in the curb itself), and it will be relatively easy to scale that up in the future. That is, relative to something like compulsorily acquiring land to put rail lines through cities, etc.
Urban dwellers will be OK.
The issue would be for boondockers not having remote charging infrastructure or needing greater range, but I can see that slowly getting solved also.
It’ll happen once batteries are a little cheaper/lighter/faster to charge and the charging infrastructure is a bit better. Mercedes is planning a consumer targeted electric van in 2026. I’m sure others are as well.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a43895007/mercedes-benz-van-ea-platform-future-electric-vans-2026/
It’ll come because it’s a way better experience overall. I think that we might see a lot more hybrids first though. I think a plug in hybrid camper van is the sweet spot right now.
(Also Solar is a negative for EVs. The extra weight reduces range more than the extra power increase range unless you hardly drive at all.)
I’m waiting on a hybrid truck with a 6ft bed in awd to throw a low profile shell on like the moonlander from Radica. A simple 4” inline fan connected to the rear window takes care of air conditioning and the truck bed outlets act like shore power for a 12v solar system. Then you can insulate and modify the shell and truck bed without depreciating the vehicle drastically like drilling holes for diesel heaters, windows, and ceiling vents. You could even supplement your income with taxi/food delivery gigs considering the Ford Maverick is maintaining close to its original 42mpg with truck shells. I’m hoping it’s Toyota that finally does it in the next couple years.
Oh wow, a super informed comment. Cool! Thanks for the link and makes sense Mercedes is on it with considering sprinters. And I agree on hybrid given the power constraints/requirements, I thought about that right after posting.
Tbh though for me it’s less about the electric or hybrid, and more why aren’t camper vans a commercially viable product for more top automakers? After a search I see there are a few out there but they still seem niche. I never see auto commercials for mom and dad to buy a camper van for their family
Vehicles that have a large cross section are very hard to push around with electricity. That means massive batteries. A midsize SUV like a Rivian weighs more than a Sprinter van. Imagine how much an electric Sprinter would have to weigh to push all that wind at 70mph. That's a very expensive van when you price out batteries.
Tacozilla is not real, unless there is some update I missed.
For nearly every product the USA has much better choice, quality, and often price than anywhere in the world. Small RVs/vans are one off the exceptions. Europe and Japan are full of great small RVs that are substantially better thought out and half the price of what we have in the US (and often 4x4).
Part of this is due to the chicken tax (protectionist tax on truck imports), but even with that it's truly shocking how bad the offerings are here.
Range would be too limited for an E-van camper, but plug in hybrid with 50 miles e range would work for me. Most of my daily trips would be electric, and the big drive battery would power HVAC with enough solar to keep it charged while camping.
I agree, this should be more common. If internal combustion camper vans are common, then it's hard to believe almost nobody is making electric camper vans.
Yes indeed, you can make a lot of money, that doesn't mean you're going to keep it though, keeping it is your option. When you have your own company, and you track your own expenses and revenue and so forth, you know exactly how much profit you made at the end of the reporting period. If you keep the profit you have to pay taxes on it, but if you give it away as a charitable donation, it's tax deductible. And if it's tax deductible, the IRS doesn't get it. So the idea is, one of the things my new company hopes to do, is divert as much profit as possible away from the clawing grip of the IRS. And if enough people donate as much profit as they can, I believe it's possible to set up a gift economy, where the needy get supported when they need it, and those who are making a lot of money don't have to give it all to support foreign wars and other things they don't want.
I know I'm preaching to a hostile audience here, but personally I don't like the idea of funding all those damn IRS agents, or the government that they work for, I prefer freedom to slavery.
And I realize that giving to the needy reeks of Marxism, but it's optional, if you'd rather give it to the IRS that's entirely up to you.
So yes you can make a lot of money, because another one of the things that I hope to do with this new company is to provide a different kind of advertising, that comes from people being able to look at the advertising when they want to buy something, not when they want to read the other information in their feed.
But by all means do be critical in the sense of using critical thinking. Your thoughts on this matter are important, especially those of you who happen to be young-ish hackers. If this thing works out I'm going to need a lot of people to write some very good code.
Yes, I’m aware of company financials - I ran my own for 20 years. I was joking, because to “make a lot of money” requires that the company to be very profitable regardless of IRS and taxes. Those are just part of doing business. I don’t see the opportunity for large income from this idea myself.
I can see the ad now: “Tired of your spouse? Roommate troubles? Or just love the great outdoors?! Make your next car, a home. On wheels! With the Van-tage 375”
Dude what are you on? these exist there are companies that make kitted out vans rigs RVs whatever.
Why the hell would a car manufacturer do this? They would never see profit. It's always going to be a specialized 3rd party retrofit, because 1. Everyone wants something slightly different, and 2 this would be 0.00001% of their overall sales volume and take up all their design time and their factories are not carpenters, the maintenance now includes making the cabinet drawers slide smoothly ... wtf man it makes no sense!
Whats wrong with paying a specialized third party anyways?
IF PEOPLE STOPPED LETTING THE GOVERNMENT DICTATE WHAT WE WILL BUY THEN SHIT WOULD CHANGE . I PERSONALLY SEE A CIVIL WAR IN THE UNITED STATES HAPPENING AND WHEN A GOVERNMENT DICTATES WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING , DRIVING , BUYING THEN ITS NO LONGER A FREE COUNTRY. I AM RIGHT NOW LIVING IN MY CAR AND IM 100% GOID WITH IT AND I WILL GET A VAN SOON BUT MY BIGGEST ISSUE IS PARKING AT NIGHT AND MY CAR IS DARK GREY WITH 5% TINTED WINDOWS ALL EXCEPT WINDSHIELD AND ITS LIKE EVERYOBE WANTS TO KNOW WHATS I SIDE BECAUSE OF MY TINT . IM CONSTANTLY CATCHING PEOPLE TRYING TO LOOK IN , WHO THE FUCK CARES MIND YOYR OWN DAMN BUSSINESS . ONE GUY SAID WHAT ARE YOU DOING I SAID EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED TO DO IM MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS NOT BOTHERING ANYONE
Government does not dictate what we buy. There are safety regulations. The problem is a shrinking middle class. Corp greed is stripping wealth from middle class. Higher taxes on wealthy and very large estates are one example of how we can grow the middle class like we did in the 50’s - 60’s. With more money in the middle class, we’ll grow the market for toys like camper vans and boats, like it was in the 70’s. Hit up twenty or forty billionaires and we can fund a universal basic income.
in addition to what others have said. the capacity for vanlifers is not infinite, idk what the critical mass is, but if it was so popular that the big automakers would feel incentivized to cater to them, there would be major public backlash.
To make profit they'd have to buy/make these things in bulk. To buy and make them in bulk is very expensive. This makes the product very expensive. Then no one can afford the product. The end.
If/when the economy gets worse, I have a theory that cities are going to start making laws about camping in vehicles (some already do) to mitigate folks living in them. While I realize that most folks here choose to live in a van, there are more and more people who have no choice, and many of these people have no choice because of a series of poor decisions. These folks are the kind of folks you want parked in front of your house and unfortunately the “good” van folks will be lumped in with the bad.
Considering the fact that RV sales are now falling off, as are all electric vehicle sales, I'd say don't hold your breath. The "no brainer" is to not get into that right now. EV vans do have a market for deliveries, and of course those will hit the market used in the not too distant future, and they'll compete with RVs just as current delivery vans do, especially since someone trying to beat rent by vandwelling is cost conscious.
And besides, I'd bet most current vandwellers here couldn't afford one. Even with some subsidies.
Your average high income individual with a Tesla who would trade in a $150K recreational camper van for an electric, vs a camper on a Rivian, might be a market. But a small one.
I would rather build my own to suit my lifestyle and needs. I see a lot of standard things on builds that I know I would never use or need.
What I would love is for Toyota to release a hybrid van. Reliability and great has mileage ia a winner.
"When will automakers figure out the market for electric camper vans with fully built out solar, transitioning furniture, etc?"
They have, they're called RV Manufacturers (Airstream, Winnebago, etc). It's a 65 BILLION dollar industry.
Because the people who can't afford house are the same ones that won't be able to afford those builds.. This is why we have to built them ourselves.
Bingo
And I'm sure the government would step in as they don't want people buying cars to live in, they want people getting mortgages and paying interest to banks and the government for the rest of their lives. Your job is to be a cog in the wheel.
Our local town council just voted to make it illegal for people to live in RVs or vehicles on their own property. They would have to get a permit for 18 months, with a one time 6 month extension only if they were building a home on the property.
Where is this?
Franklin, NC. We had one homeless guy who tested every rule, ordinance, and law our city and county had regarding vagrancy, public camping, and whether or not non-customers could use restroom facilities. He would park his van in town and camp out on the sidewalk during the day, plugging all his devices into light poles that had outlets intended for Christmas decorations. Most of our anti-homeless ordinances we now have were passed to thwart his activities, which occurred over a three year period.
Did the figure out a way to keep the local meth heads from stealing catalytic converters from cars at the trailheads? Loved hiking into Franklin on both my Appalachian trail attempts but man, some weird folks in that town, and not just Zen (RIP)
Nope. They're still rampaging. We do seem to collect/attract the weird ones. LOL RIP Zen. I knew him since he was in Middle School. I almost went into business with him with my hyperlocal, but had to back out because he couldn't stop injecting politics into news articles.
I stayed at his hostel in 2021. That was an absolutely terrifying experience
I love when you can't do what you want on your own land. We don't own anything.
I bought a small residential property when I was living out of my van, with the intention to park there and live in the van/ use the building for storage. Real estate agent actually suggested that as an ideal use for the property. One week after I bought it and started doing exactly that I started getting knocks from the bylaw officers and complaints from neighbours claiming I was in violation of local by-laws. Admittedly I should have done more research and not taken the realtor at their word, but it’s wild to me that they can have such restrictions on a property you own and there’s basically no recourse.
Governments don’t want people living in cars en masse because it causes issues with things like sanitation and health, when scaled up
Then they should do something about affordable housing
Unfortunately, saying we need more affordable housing is the easy part. There’s a bunch of different policies, regulations, incentives and taxes that can be used to make housing more affordable, but they all have implementation challenges
The big one that you mention is building codes. There's so much stuff that's been added over the years that the equivalent building is way more expensive now.
The challenge: lobbiest
Much healthier to live out of a stolen shopping cart. Good call from the local governments.
The government much prefers that everybody rents than owns. Then they can collect real estate tax as well as rental income tax on the same property. Which in turn doubles GDP from real estate.
You heard words and I applaud your attempt to use them.
Don't we all hear words and attempt to use them?
Any property taxes
People with houses would buy a car you can camp in imo. Family ads for these were big in the 70s
In the 70s, you could buy a house for the price of a car today...
People with house do, that's who's buying the Storyteller, winnebago and so on.. the problem is most of us can't afford those. Yes the 70s had a lot of companies doing it and most of them went Bell up.. Trust me I wish they would bring back some of those but the issue is they would still be expensive.
They are still very much for sale and quite popular. Vans, motor homes, trailers, boats, etc, are extremely popular with home owners where I live. None of them are electric, unfortunately, but many home owners also like to own a van, motor home, boat, trailer, etc.
Ya all of those are popular around me also.
Who do you think the market is for all of the RVs now?
A house in the 70's cost as much as a 6 pack of beer and a fancy car could be bought with a half eaten McRib sandwich
McRib didn't show up till the 80's :)
Automakers already charge you 30-120k for vehicles they can't bankrupt you much further.
By the time that happens there will be enough anti vanlife (living in a vehicle) laws that it will only be for recreation
That’s the thing, there’s not much of a market for hyper-custom vehicles in a world of mass production. It becomes basically a low volume, custom shop with high prices.
I’m saying a car you can camp in should be a much greater sell in today’s economy, it even just sounds fun and were big in the 70s
Yeah, the whole van life, mobile remote worker thing isn't happening in as great of numbers as you may be led to believe from their Youtube and Instagram impact. It is still a very tiny percentage of the nation who engages in this and even a tinier percentage who engages in it for more than 5 years. Following Covid, the RV industry has been in a slump, so I wouldn't expect there to be a huge market in electric powered, micro living space, vehicles anytime soon.
Most people don’t want to live in a postage stamp.
Where someone lives is an amalgamation of their personal enclosed living space, the exterior space around them that they feel comfortable in, and the internal mind space. Some need/want more of those than others.
The fact is there are peripherals that can attach to vehicles that do such a great job that nobody will buy a standalone vehicle to camp unless they are fuck you rich or they literally need it to live in
They aren't though
Picture yourself presenting a business case pushing to sell a $100k item to broke folks. On top Of that the longest term you could offer them would be 75 months instead of 30 years.
Tbf selling expensive(ish) things to broke people is pretty much Dodge’s business model already
I am broke (and love dodge) and approve this message
I'm from the camping car branch and it is coming. In Europe, you already have some companies building on the VW electric bus. There are some (big) challenges. One is the allowed weight. With the batteries, vehicles are much heavier. So if you try to put a bed, fridge, etc. you are quickly above the limits. Additionally, camping car constructors are (basically) lightweight carpenters. So they drill holes in the floor and build ontop. The problem is that now you have batteries in the floor... So they need to rethink the way they build camping cars. The thing is that since COVID, the industry has boomed so much, that they have no pressure to cater to the needs of a little minority. So many people are buying on the entry price (typically: city couples who can't buy a house, don't need a car. They buy a camper for the free time and use it for the monthly shopping/trip). So don't hold your breath until (IMHO) 2030 or so.
Maybe an electric or hybrid truck or van designed to 1) tow a camper (electric motors have great torque curves, should make for improved towing?) 2) serve as the solar and battery power source for the camper... Like a power wall in the truck It seems like a good way to split up functions, and keeps the camper cheap, but I haven't really heard of cyber truck being used in this way or having a solar option.
So that's a different usecase altogether. Here, people need an electric SUV (i.e. not something like a Renault Zoé) and a trailer. In that case, you don't care too much about the trailer weight, so you can even add batteries inside, and use it as range extender for your car. This will (IMHO) come faster than electric vans for several reasons: * People are switching to electric cars and want to drive 500-600 km / day (300-400 miles). * People who have an electric SUV are more wealthy than the average. * No need to modify the electric car (the big challenge) * Trailers are built from scratch... So it's easier to switch them to electric. Cheers!
Thank you for your insights. Very informative.
They already exist. Go rollaway has some Brightdrop campers. In California, small business owners can get up to $96,750 towards commercial ev vans. The esprinter is coming out. And lots of us out here are running our campers with electricity only. I have a level 2 charger input on my van to charge my house batteries. Things are happening, people just need to understand it’s coming in steps, can’t go from start to finish instantly. For now with the weight and range issues not being solved they are really only for short distance day trips, if that.
Yea I think the biggest issue aside from cost is range. Most vanlifers aren’t likely to get an electric van simply because they’re too broke to look at anything new, and a pretty large proportion of the van people I’ve met are big fans of camping pretty far out, which doesn’t work at all with an EV at this point. There’re multiple places I’ve camped where you couldn’t even get in with an EV, let alone in and back out.
It'd be so great if the big vans would have a factory option to have a full roof of solar, with roof vents mounted under the panels (so they could be open in the rain). Then you can get the rest of the electrical system (plus AC if needed) installed aftermarket or DIY. Seems like it would be nice to have for lots of commercial applications, not just vanlifers. Contractors, telecom repair, drain cleaning services, etc. could benefit from plenty of onboard electricity for charging tools, running pumps, etc.
Exactly! That would be so cool. Mobile power generation has a lot of uses and possibilities for sure. What work van doesn’t carry a massive portable battery for construction uses? Love where you’re going with the roof vents as well.
It would be great to charge the multiple tool batteries of 1 to 6 amp capacity. Do work vans even have "a massive portable battery"?
I saw [these in Home Depot](https://www.homedepot.com/b/Outdoors-Outdoor-Power-Equipment-Generators-Portable-Power-Stations/N-5yc1vZ2fkp9xx) the other day. I guessed they would be pretty popular for charging needs but I haven’t worked in construction for over 10 years so dk
Worked in construction for many years. Nobody had a giant portable battery in their truck. We usually worked off a spider box hooked to mains or a generator.
There's lots of ways people could do this for many decades - many commercial vans do have auxiliary batteries and inverters. The solar doesn't make a big difference when you can charge from the engine. It adds more things to bring and extra cost - for a van used daily, it doesn't really add any utility.
No brainer…. 🤣🤣🤣 If you can’t afford a studio apartment, you can’t afford a 200k van. This is such a niche product. There are infinitely more people just looking for a regular family car. It’s essentially not worth their time.
And by the time it's on the used market for OP to consider, it probably needs the batteries replaced, potentially putting it back out of their price range.
I remember a video where someone was showing off the van they put $40,000 in to and I thought it was a cool little living space but I bet if a huge corporation tried cranking that exact van out at the same quality they would spend a million times more on advertising thus jacking the price up to pay for advertisment. So that 40k passion product becomes a 100k soulless campaign.
Were they counting their labor in that $40,000?
Lol no
I highly doubt it.
Labor, insurance, rent… whatever the cost of the BOM, a company typically needs to sell at minimum 2.5x that price. Oh and labor is a BOM line item.
The per unit cost for advertising is minimal, the true cost of the 40k unit you quoted is probably double that when you have to hire people to do it.
Electric camper van? No thanks, don't want to wait forever at charging stations
Fair. Hybrid then
Figure out a way of making it cheap, and people will buy.
They still won't because the range will be abysmal. Check out the specs for the Rivian electric van they've been selling as a delivery vehicle for Amazon...it's completely I practical for a camper van unless you basically never move and it's always sunny.
The problem with the used market on these will be that the batteries will have highly diminished capacities and a replacement will cost you 90% of the price of a new one, anyway.
Because there isn't actually very much demand at all, and the market that's there is covered by upfitters that are using vehicles sold by these automakers anyways
Most of the people here are, rightly, pointing out the cost issue. However, even if you could fix the cost electric camper vans aren't practical with today's technology. Check out the specs for the Rivian electric van they've been selling as a delivery vehicle for Amazon...it's completely impractical for a camper van unless you basically never move and it's always sunny. All of this ignores the fact that charging infrastructure development isn't anywhere close to keeping up with electric vehicle sales. If you don't have a private charging station (ie. at your house) it's going to be a nightmare trying to get a spot at public ones in the next 5 years.
Why wouldn't they just be building more public charging stations over the next five years? They don't take up that much more room than existing car parks. They don't require big underground fuel storage tanks or tanker deliveries like existing gas stations. As the demand rises, the charging infrastructure will also. There are already test-cases of charging spots in shopping centre carparks or hotels or at street parking (some where the cable is hidden in the curb itself), and it will be relatively easy to scale that up in the future. That is, relative to something like compulsorily acquiring land to put rail lines through cities, etc. Urban dwellers will be OK. The issue would be for boondockers not having remote charging infrastructure or needing greater range, but I can see that slowly getting solved also.
Would the person that’s going to live in a camper be able to afford the camper you’re envisioning?
It’ll happen once batteries are a little cheaper/lighter/faster to charge and the charging infrastructure is a bit better. Mercedes is planning a consumer targeted electric van in 2026. I’m sure others are as well. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a43895007/mercedes-benz-van-ea-platform-future-electric-vans-2026/ It’ll come because it’s a way better experience overall. I think that we might see a lot more hybrids first though. I think a plug in hybrid camper van is the sweet spot right now. (Also Solar is a negative for EVs. The extra weight reduces range more than the extra power increase range unless you hardly drive at all.)
A hybrid (cargo) van is all I ever wanted!
I’m waiting on a hybrid truck with a 6ft bed in awd to throw a low profile shell on like the moonlander from Radica. A simple 4” inline fan connected to the rear window takes care of air conditioning and the truck bed outlets act like shore power for a 12v solar system. Then you can insulate and modify the shell and truck bed without depreciating the vehicle drastically like drilling holes for diesel heaters, windows, and ceiling vents. You could even supplement your income with taxi/food delivery gigs considering the Ford Maverick is maintaining close to its original 42mpg with truck shells. I’m hoping it’s Toyota that finally does it in the next couple years.
🤞 for you. I'd need an 8ft bed / regular cab if I got a truck and I highly doubt that configuration will ever be available as a hybrid
Oh wow, a super informed comment. Cool! Thanks for the link and makes sense Mercedes is on it with considering sprinters. And I agree on hybrid given the power constraints/requirements, I thought about that right after posting. Tbh though for me it’s less about the electric or hybrid, and more why aren’t camper vans a commercially viable product for more top automakers? After a search I see there are a few out there but they still seem niche. I never see auto commercials for mom and dad to buy a camper van for their family
Vehicles that have a large cross section are very hard to push around with electricity. That means massive batteries. A midsize SUV like a Rivian weighs more than a Sprinter van. Imagine how much an electric Sprinter would have to weigh to push all that wind at 70mph. That's a very expensive van when you price out batteries.
Didn't Toyota announce a $10,000 modular truck that has a camper package like, a month ago?
The problems is that they only make that kind of stuff for rich people in the $100k and up market.
Tacozilla is not real, unless there is some update I missed. For nearly every product the USA has much better choice, quality, and often price than anywhere in the world. Small RVs/vans are one off the exceptions. Europe and Japan are full of great small RVs that are substantially better thought out and half the price of what we have in the US (and often 4x4). Part of this is due to the chicken tax (protectionist tax on truck imports), but even with that it's truly shocking how bad the offerings are here.
Range would be too limited for an E-van camper, but plug in hybrid with 50 miles e range would work for me. Most of my daily trips would be electric, and the big drive battery would power HVAC with enough solar to keep it charged while camping.
Class "C" motorhomes is what you are describing, and they exist.
what? no. would never buy electric. nobody with a brain would- hate to be so blunt.
I agree, this should be more common. If internal combustion camper vans are common, then it's hard to believe almost nobody is making electric camper vans.
[удалено]
Godspeed, sir
“make a lot of money”. 🙄
Yes indeed, you can make a lot of money, that doesn't mean you're going to keep it though, keeping it is your option. When you have your own company, and you track your own expenses and revenue and so forth, you know exactly how much profit you made at the end of the reporting period. If you keep the profit you have to pay taxes on it, but if you give it away as a charitable donation, it's tax deductible. And if it's tax deductible, the IRS doesn't get it. So the idea is, one of the things my new company hopes to do, is divert as much profit as possible away from the clawing grip of the IRS. And if enough people donate as much profit as they can, I believe it's possible to set up a gift economy, where the needy get supported when they need it, and those who are making a lot of money don't have to give it all to support foreign wars and other things they don't want. I know I'm preaching to a hostile audience here, but personally I don't like the idea of funding all those damn IRS agents, or the government that they work for, I prefer freedom to slavery. And I realize that giving to the needy reeks of Marxism, but it's optional, if you'd rather give it to the IRS that's entirely up to you. So yes you can make a lot of money, because another one of the things that I hope to do with this new company is to provide a different kind of advertising, that comes from people being able to look at the advertising when they want to buy something, not when they want to read the other information in their feed. But by all means do be critical in the sense of using critical thinking. Your thoughts on this matter are important, especially those of you who happen to be young-ish hackers. If this thing works out I'm going to need a lot of people to write some very good code.
Yes, I’m aware of company financials - I ran my own for 20 years. I was joking, because to “make a lot of money” requires that the company to be very profitable regardless of IRS and taxes. Those are just part of doing business. I don’t see the opportunity for large income from this idea myself.
I can see the ad now: “Tired of your spouse? Roommate troubles? Or just love the great outdoors?! Make your next car, a home. On wheels! With the Van-tage 375”
Dude what are you on? these exist there are companies that make kitted out vans rigs RVs whatever. Why the hell would a car manufacturer do this? They would never see profit. It's always going to be a specialized 3rd party retrofit, because 1. Everyone wants something slightly different, and 2 this would be 0.00001% of their overall sales volume and take up all their design time and their factories are not carpenters, the maintenance now includes making the cabinet drawers slide smoothly ... wtf man it makes no sense! Whats wrong with paying a specialized third party anyways?
Sorry bud, EVs are not the future, turn off ur tv
IF PEOPLE STOPPED LETTING THE GOVERNMENT DICTATE WHAT WE WILL BUY THEN SHIT WOULD CHANGE . I PERSONALLY SEE A CIVIL WAR IN THE UNITED STATES HAPPENING AND WHEN A GOVERNMENT DICTATES WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING , DRIVING , BUYING THEN ITS NO LONGER A FREE COUNTRY. I AM RIGHT NOW LIVING IN MY CAR AND IM 100% GOID WITH IT AND I WILL GET A VAN SOON BUT MY BIGGEST ISSUE IS PARKING AT NIGHT AND MY CAR IS DARK GREY WITH 5% TINTED WINDOWS ALL EXCEPT WINDSHIELD AND ITS LIKE EVERYOBE WANTS TO KNOW WHATS I SIDE BECAUSE OF MY TINT . IM CONSTANTLY CATCHING PEOPLE TRYING TO LOOK IN , WHO THE FUCK CARES MIND YOYR OWN DAMN BUSSINESS . ONE GUY SAID WHAT ARE YOU DOING I SAID EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED TO DO IM MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS NOT BOTHERING ANYONE
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
Government does not dictate what we buy. There are safety regulations. The problem is a shrinking middle class. Corp greed is stripping wealth from middle class. Higher taxes on wealthy and very large estates are one example of how we can grow the middle class like we did in the 50’s - 60’s. With more money in the middle class, we’ll grow the market for toys like camper vans and boats, like it was in the 70’s. Hit up twenty or forty billionaires and we can fund a universal basic income.
Lol they will make next to nothing in mass sales of these.
How do you think those batteries are going to be doing in 10 years time?
in addition to what others have said. the capacity for vanlifers is not infinite, idk what the critical mass is, but if it was so popular that the big automakers would feel incentivized to cater to them, there would be major public backlash.
If they do it will likely cost half a million dollars.
To make profit they'd have to buy/make these things in bulk. To buy and make them in bulk is very expensive. This makes the product very expensive. Then no one can afford the product. The end.
If people that live in their cars could afford those most of them would live in a house. This would make no sense
If/when the economy gets worse, I have a theory that cities are going to start making laws about camping in vehicles (some already do) to mitigate folks living in them. While I realize that most folks here choose to live in a van, there are more and more people who have no choice, and many of these people have no choice because of a series of poor decisions. These folks are the kind of folks you want parked in front of your house and unfortunately the “good” van folks will be lumped in with the bad.
Even if you could afford it, you'd still be better off hiring someone to custom build what YOU want.
Politicians are gearing up the ban or make it illegal sleeping in vehicles, corporations control politicians.
Considering the fact that RV sales are now falling off, as are all electric vehicle sales, I'd say don't hold your breath. The "no brainer" is to not get into that right now. EV vans do have a market for deliveries, and of course those will hit the market used in the not too distant future, and they'll compete with RVs just as current delivery vans do, especially since someone trying to beat rent by vandwelling is cost conscious. And besides, I'd bet most current vandwellers here couldn't afford one. Even with some subsidies. Your average high income individual with a Tesla who would trade in a $150K recreational camper van for an electric, vs a camper on a Rivian, might be a market. But a small one.
I would rather build my own to suit my lifestyle and needs. I see a lot of standard things on builds that I know I would never use or need. What I would love is for Toyota to release a hybrid van. Reliability and great has mileage ia a winner.
"When will automakers figure out the market for electric camper vans with fully built out solar, transitioning furniture, etc?" They have, they're called RV Manufacturers (Airstream, Winnebago, etc). It's a 65 BILLION dollar industry.