The truth is it’s a marketing gimmick when you do see it. The roof area of a car is not nearly enough to do any meaningful amount of charging, and without being able to aim the panels, you’re getting oblique sun at best which is very poor efficiency to boot. The whole idea is frankly not worth the weight penalty and complexity of doing it.
Electric car batteries are huge capacity-wise, and car roof solar panels are tiny charging-wise. You need a house-roof-sized area to do the job.
I’m reminded of the Saab/Toppola which is so peculiarly Swedish it will make you squirm with delight!
In unrelated news, I once had a reindeer pizza in a Swedish campsite which I feel adds a new perspective to the whole pineapple on pizza debate.
Wow. The rear suspension is not happy in that photo. With all that weight shifted rear, steering performance would be pretty poor, I imagine. That thing would also be hell to drive in a crosswind. Or headwind. Or light breeze. Or a Wednesday.
Hm. Useless for charging the vehicle for driving, but perhaps for power use while camping?
Its electrical outlets, dimmable lights, induction cooktop, portable cooler, and water heater, among other accessories
That’s pretty clearly how Musk seems himself I imagine.
I think it got its start in the '70s when those sort of niceties were a worthwhile trade-off for the ability to take a small family on a camping trip around Sweden. I expect a second vehicle dedicated to touring and camping wasn’t realistic from a financial perspective for most people back then.
IMO a lot of Swedish stuff is odd (Saabs and Volvos for example) ‘til you see it in a the context of Sweden and it’s people. I read somewhere that Ikea products were designed and packaged so that any product would fit in the back of a Saab. And the back seats of a Saab 900 fold down to give a perfectly level load bay about 6’ long. (I’m not sure the first of those factoids is true, but the second is.)
In a similar vein to the Toppola, there was a small timber yacht, the Nordic Folkboat designed to be affordable and to fit a family of two adults and two children.
It seems to me that Swedish (maybe Nordic) culture places a lot of emphasis on freedom and quality of life.
The weirdest thing about Sweden? Someone can cycle to the main train station in the capital city, prop their bicycle on its stand and walk away from it (without locking it) safe in the expectation that it will still be there when they return in the evening.
It’s heavenly.
The physics of Watts and Joules make it impractical to cook with electricity in a small camper. Most campers use gas stoves for that.
But for powering a cooler, interior LED lighting and charging devices etc., a solar set-up is ideal.
And for heating water, a contractor bag/drum liner in the sun works pretty good.
But Musk isn’t trying to sell this to people who’d be happy bathing by tipping pots of water over their heads.
It just occurred to me that Teslas have mega-batteries!
So you probably could cook, heat and boil water using just electricity. But it would probably make a noticeable difference to the range of the vehicle.
Oh there’s nothing odd about the existence of a camper for a small truck or car. Those existed in droves in North America as well. A lot of people pulled holiday trailers with cars as well. Long before consumer-oriented trucks and the invention of SUVs, people everywhere did all those things with their cars.
All I said is that particular one seems questionably designed.
PS. Buy a bike lock.
People use electric cars this way, yep. The Chevy Bolt has a “camping mode” where it will keep the battery powered up for an hour after you shut it off so you can use accessories for various other things. You can also buy kits that allow use of an electric car as a backup battery for your house during power failures.
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