Quote:
Originally Posted by BigChief
I saved up enough to either buy a really nice RV, or buy a really nice car and put a camper on top of it. I live in the city with only street parking and drive out to campsites on the weekends, so this makes more sense logistically.
I've been driving an EV for years now (Smart Fortwo with some of my own ecomods like pizza-plate hubcaps) and once you have an EV you can't go back.
So I want to make the switch to the Tesla because of all the synergy with my camper idea. My Fortwo is super fun but is essentially a highway-legal go kart, I certainly can't tow anything with it. But a Tesla is heavy, powerful, very stable, auto-leveling suspension, battery 5 times more capacity/range than mine, and all current Teslas are being produced with autonomous driving cameras installed.
Picture this: my camper like I described is 20 feet long above the Tesla, which gives it enough space for around 2400 watts of solar cells (these only add about 20 pounds of weight if you encapsulate them in the same method like they make solar race cars). At 5 hours of sunlight in the day, that's 12kwh, after the inefficiencies of charging I might gain 10kwh per day back to the 90kwh battery. That means every day I'd get back 40 miles of range, or 20 miles of range and surplus energy to heat/cool the camper and run accessories. Now imagine in 5-10 years, the Teslas log enough miles for the government to feel comfortable legalizing autonomous driving. I could hop into the drivers seat, take a nap and take up in another city.
A self-driving road-trip without ever having to fuel or charge anywhere. I could park anywhere I want or drive to the middle of nowhere and make it home for a night or a week. Now that you've asked why, I'll ask "why not"?
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Because it still doesn't make sense. You have to leave the camper up there all the time or would need somewhere to park it, it might as well be a trailer all of the time. A small single axle hi-lo would be towable by the car, is insulated, has full stand up height, and not much added frontal area in the down position. It even has a bathroom. You could find a really nice one for under $10,000. Look for a 17T model.
You are way underestimating what any structure up there is going to weigh especially once you add gear. The beauty of having it all in a trailer is it is ready to go all the time, and then doesn't need unloading after the trip. Weekend trips all packed out of the trunk take forever to load, forever to set up, forever to take down, and then forever to unload back home. Got a trailer? Feel like bugging out? Gone with a stop maybe at the grocery store on the way.