Travels

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lstock71

New member
Oct 25, 2024
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77381
If I got one I would want to have the option to camp in it. So no soft top and preferred climate control like Tesla. Otherwise it looks cool.
 
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Size looks like it would be good for car camping-or I guess I could use the modern term - overlanding. The rear seats would need to fold down, but that is mostly expected. Depending on the person camping, the front seats might need to slide forward and tilt forward (less common, but still not unheard of). Camping/Pet mode would be very nice (it would really make this an optimal overlanding vehicle), with hard top preferred (at least for insulation - abet I am sure people will want to put roof top campers on - but that is a different type of camping to me). Eventually I will be curious about all the interior dimensions. It looks like I might just be able to sleep sideways - although my preference would be to eventually build a "cargo" deck to sleep on.

Did a bit of research. A lot of companies offer some sort of pre and post cooling - but most put a fairly short timer on it. Most guesses on the internet are that is due to liability and laws - many areas have laws against leaving children and pets unattended in a vehicle. Having the AC on does not change those laws. While I would not be surprised that a company uses that umbrella for their decision, I suspect the engineers had something to say about it as well. Mean time before failure. 100,000 miles at 50mph - 2k hours. It takes a long time to drive that distance. But if you look at hours on the AC, they will add up much quicker if it is run 24/7 (oh, about 10 weeks). I don't know about you, but my AC's tend to be the main point of failure on my vehicles. I can think of 7 or 8 AC failures in the last 10 years on one of my vehicles or another - and I don't idle to run the AC (a common practice with diesel trucks in my area - common enough that Ford will void the warranty if you do it too much, and I bet other companies do as well).

I can only expect that Tesla and Rivian have more robust cooling systems - or they decided to just risk it. Given their cooling systems might be ingratiated in some way with the battery cooling system, perhaps it is more robust. I don't think any car company really wants to engineer the AC system for van life - lot of cost for a few people. But I would like to run the AC overnight a small handful of nights a year. 15k miles a year is not all that uncommon - 300hrs. 10 nights at 10 hours per night - 100hrs... Not entirely killing the AC life - but still the equivalent of an extra 5k miles per year. It will add up. Bi-directional charging/120v output - just carry a portable AC - at least that would take the load off the vehicles AC if I wanted to use a tent - or route it to the cabin. Not sure how frustrated owners would be if Scout sold a camping AC for that purpose... Of course there is also the portable refrigerator too...
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I used to kayak a lot. Having AC at night was not all that important - our rainy season was winter, so that is when I lived on the river during the weekends. Sleeping in a vehicle had a LOT of advantages over a tent. I miss doing it. I now have an LJ set up for it - and it is wonderful to sleep in - abet not as wonderful to drive long distances. More tiring. To that end, I do hope a full suite of driver assist is available. Make driving as enjoyable as possible. Road noise on my LJ is so bad I don't really want to drive over 60mph. I have the time, but I am sure it annoys other people.
 
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