In reply to BoulderG :
I'm assuming it's a brace. I've done some digging into these recently for a project and many panhard setups have something similar.
In reply to BoulderG :
I'm assuming it's a brace. I've done some digging into these recently for a project and many panhard setups have something similar.
In reply to BoulderG :
that's the Panhard Bar Bracket Bracket (BB), which reacts the lateral forces from the Panhard into the crossmember above it. Without the BB, the lateral forces from the Panhard would twist the E36 M3 out of the rail or tear the Panhard bracket off the rail.
187" wheelbase and 6.9" ground clearance, for your high-centering pleasure.
I just can't help but feel that Rivian would have expanded its potential market significantly had it given the Delivery a "range extender" - ie, a small underpowered motor that only operates when battery is depleted and can barely maintain 75mph. They wouldn't even need a hybrid system, the could completely disconnect it.
I have a buddy who bought a R1T as a work truck and has generally been impressed, and would consider a Delivery, but after dealing with the range issues of the F150 Lightening (base), he is hesitant to buy into anything that doesn't get at least 250 miles plus. He works in a lot of areas without charging infrastructure on the Rez, and often will drive 60-75 miles to a job site, and perhaps has another job he'd like to estimate that's 40 miles out of the way, and he (or the employee) can't come back to the work site without staying overnight at a hotel that's further out of the way and has a charger. It's 60+40+40+60 = 200 miles back to home base. Add in the occasional tow and its a problem.
So far the R1T (standard pack dual motor 270mi) has just about the right amount of range. He's considering maybe replacing the Lightening with a R1T Dual Motor Max Pack.
Sorry to pivot from the camper conversation but, do these as civilians have any advantages as a food/ice cream truck? I was just thinking where the low floor and unencumbered box space with a hole in the side would have an advantage over a traditional Grumman/box truck.
I would assume you would still carry operational fuel tanks but how much could be offset by solar panels if sitting for extended times.
I want to pitch in on the I think this has merit side. Of course the price tag is excessive but let's set that aside for a minute. People do all kinds of different camping, that is evident whenever you go to a camping site and there are rarely 2 of the same camper there. If you are at a conventional campsite you would have access to charging, cool. If you were boondocking in the west it seems like there is a lot of sun, even if you were only getting 10% of the capacity in daily charging from solar you would have the ability to move around and stay at places for a few days to get some range. Of course you could always hit a charging station when they are available.
I would think the same set up that is in all of the Dodge/Mercedes/Transit vans would be great. One thing that may help to deal with the cost is the Ludacris financing period for RV's. Many people are content to make the payment and since you can finance them for super long periods, maybe the price will be less of an issue? I can't tell you how many $150K+ class B's I see at campgrounds these days.
Has Amazon ever said how many miles they will put on their Rivians before they are retired ?
And have any ever showed up at a salvage auction ?
At the moment, the only think I think we can tolerate is a fully electric travel trailer. That has a bathroom, too.
Being over 50, getting up in the middle of the night requires a place to drain yourself without going outside or trekking to the bathroom. Especially for the kind of money this would need to just make an RV. If I wanted to cheap "tent" camp, there are plenty of options to do that, too. Even things that can be easily towed by an EV pickup.
But if I'm going to spend more than for either a popup or tear drop camper, it has to have a bathroom.
As for heat, space is a big deal. So the heat pump system has to be small. Or a small space heater- which is what we use.
Our vintage camper is all electric. Works great.
BTW, for this truck, one really key part is a good inverter to power the living area. If it already has an inverter to power enough, cool. If not, well, a lot depends on converter losses unless you can find an inverter that runs with the nominal battery voltage.
I'm also in the "I want a shower/toilet" in my camper. The few times I've been tent camping, getting up in the middle of the night.......for #2, the bathrooms and shower facilities have always been beyond disgusting.
californiamilleghia said:Has Amazon ever said how many miles they will put on their Rivians before they are retired ?
And have any ever showed up at a salvage auction ?
Here's some preproduction units getting scrapped a couple months ago.
pheller said:I just can't help but feel that Rivian would have expanded its potential market significantly had it given the Delivery a "range extender" - ie, a small underpowered motor that only operates when battery is depleted and can barely maintain 75mph. They wouldn't even need a hybrid system, the could completely disconnect it.
This was supposed to be an Amazon exclusive, so Amazon got what Amazon asked for. And that didn't include a range extender, as delivery trucks live pretty structured and predicatable lives. You're describing a series hybrid, like an i3 or the recently announced Ram 1500.
Our Tesla uses roughly 1 kWh to go 3 miles, so it would take 20 kW of generation to travel 60 mph - that's pretty much a best case scenario, a big box would be a lot worse. A standalone 20kW generator from Kohler measures roughly 2'x4'2.5' and weighs 500 lbs. There's no point to this statement, I was just curious what sort of generator would be required to keep up.
No..Just no.
200 miles. So you can get 100 miles from home and then coast back home on your last few electrons. Sounds super relaxing.
If you are camping where you have 50A of 240V available, its gonna be at a private park like a KOA or maybe some state parks. Either way full of big rigs, bright lights, and loud people. The whole point is to get away from it all, and last time I checked most oak trees did not have outlets on them.
No ground clearance. No decent traction. No parts availability. I can't even imagine trying to tow it without a rollback. And then its eleventy feet tall.
Lets do as you suggest and throw away the the ZOMG it wont go 3000 miles and cost 5 dollars for a second and pretend it breaks down in a moderately sized city with a full charge. Who is going to work on it? How do you even get parts?
Know why Econolines are popular? Parts are free. Any hillrod can work on them. Even if something real bad happens, you can get parts delivered to you in just a few days and local Midnight Auto can install them.
I can't think of the last time I saw an Econoline camper van. Around here, they're all Sprinters with six digit price tags. They're all at least eleventy feet tall. And while they're all jacked up on knobby tires, they're mostly seen on pavement :)
This thread has made it very clear that we all expect different things from our campers/RV. Looking at how we use our 2WD Vanagon, a camper built on this would align with our use. We can get to our favorite campsite without having to drive 100 miles. It's down a dirt road, but not one that would require AWD. It has no services, no lights (you can't see a single light from it) and no loud people. We like small over huge the rest of the time. There's nobody in town who can work on our van, and most parts are not in stock. Maybe that's why I find the concept interesting.
In reply to Stampie :
Perfect dimensions for at least four canoes on that trailer.
Alfresco dining park. Level 2 chargers designed for Rivian food trucks outfitted with full electric kitchens.
If Milwaukee develops a fully immersible R18 sous vide that can be closed inside of a cage of sorts within a pelican case with several servings, multiplied out by a dozen and finishing done via the electric range and oven...
The game will have changed.
Call the food truck model the Star.
Then have a rapper drop a bar
About their food truck that's a star
And it rides on Michelins...
Try the infused menu
It'll get you high as a pilot, sport.
Lifted like a donk
And just as krunk, as Lil Jon and the Eastside boys back in 2003.
So step up to the windooooooow
And place your order
Or you can do it on the app.
This is a feasible conversion but expensive. A wet bath (sh!t and shower at the same time) is common and workable. Also there are cassette toilets that do not require a black tank but also have minimal capacity. A grey water(sink and shower) tank does not have to be huge, depending on frequency of draining. Since most water heaters are 5 gallons or less a tank of 10 gallons would work. There are transfer tanks, a big jug on wheels, that might be a neat application. You could drop off the chassis when full then wheel over to a dump station. Look at tote tank for grey water.
The consideration you need to address is how far are you going, what are the roads like, where are you camping and for how long. Cost to build the camper is not a question it will cost more than buying something already available.
Size is a personal thing. We prefer small, it is easier to deal with and cheaper. We spent 9 months in a 19 foot van conversion in our 20s and now in our 60s spend up to a month at a time in a 19 foot trailer. Yes it is cramped on rainy periods but it has a cool feature that allows one to drive away and find better weather.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Odd. I see E-series campervans all the time on the east coast.
How one camps depends on where one lives. Depending on which directions I travel, I go 100 miles and I'm still in suburbia. I want a camper for a rather specific purpose - to ride at downhill bike parks. Some have facilities nearby, some don't. All are subject to weather conditions, thus making reservations at hotels or even campgrounds (often not refundable) less than desirable. The places I want to go are sometimes 100 miles from home... and sometimes 1000's of miles from home. My "4 S's" are not just a "want" but an absolute "need" due to the travel uncertainties. And being able to travel with those uncertainties is the point of it for me. I want to be able to camp whenever and wherever I happen to end up when I'm too tired to drive any more.
This is a subject I've spent far too many brain cells on over the past 25 years. Every solution has pros and cons. The only one I've found that comes close to equaling a camper van is an R-Pod 180 travel trailer behind my existing Grand Caravan. What keeps me from trying that plan is the very real question of how long the FWD transmission would survive under that sort of abuse.
In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :
It's not going to work for everyone, sure. I just have more fun trying to think of ways to make things work than come up with reasons why they won't.. Even the example of how far to drive to get outside civilization illustrates this mindset - saying that I can get to a very isolated campsite in less than 100 miles and "depending on which directions I travel, I go 100 miles and I'm still in suburbia" can both be true for the same person. It depends on if you're looking at the best case or the worst case.
I also like to look at how I could work around limitations instead of trying to map everything onto my existing routines. What new attributes would something like this bring to the party? Well, something like a very quiet and fully integrated HVAC without the need for a generator, for example. Could you pack enough solar to run that for an extended period? Or, given a certain amount of solar, how much stuff could you run without depending on propane?
I'd love to see a food truck gathering that didn't have a little generator running beside each truck, although I can't understand most of what Captdownshift posted :)
Around here, most of the camper vans I see are at bike trailheads because, well, that's where I hang out. No electric power available, but they all have vault toilets. I have done road trips in our bathroomless Vanagon and we've never failed to be able to find a bathroom when we needed one, although we do have a little chemical toilet that lives in a Rubbermaid bin thing if we need it. Never have. The southwest has a lot of primitive campsites with vault toilets. We never drive more than 200 miles in a stretch in the van before stopping to refuel and we don't Cannonball the thing, so a 200 mile range is plausible even in our environment.
Love the vans, but not so sure about as a campervan, since most of the places that I'd want to go are expressly where there aren't outlets to plug into.
As a work truck OTOH they are a bit large, but otherwise great. I used to run a sheet metal shop out of a converted breadvan. Would drive to jobsites, measure and fabricate fittings on the spot. One of the Rivian vans would be perfect for that application. But then, $83K pays for a lot of gas.
I was driving around and specifically looking at campers, and realized that maybe Ian is talking about Class C (van cab wearing a box) RVs instead of Class B (van with everything inside, which I call a camper van). Class C are very often Econoline front ends.
The bike trailhead had Ram, Transit and Sprinter camper vans in attendance when I drove past today. Also a slide-in on a pickup.
You don't need to plug in where you want to go. You just have to be able to plug in on the way :) No RV refuels while parked in the boonies (unless it's Stampie and his electric RV and a trailer full of solar panels). But the advantage of the electric EV is that you don't have to run a generator when you're parked either, since you've got a big battery on board.
This is a bit off-topic, but I live very close to the factory in Normal. I see these vans on the back of haulers almost every day during my commute and I'd say more than 50% of them have their headlights on, while strapped down to a trailer. At first I figured maybe they had a timer on the lights that hadn't shut off yet, but I've been seeing them 30-40 miles from the factory with lights still on. Is it hard to turn the lights off on these?
Look at all the opportunities for dispersed camping within 100 miles LOL.
Keith I can't believe you have never seen an Econoline camper van. They are literally everywhere, especially where you live. Ian isn't talking about van chassis motorhomes, he is talking about legit econoline camper vans like Sportsmobiles.
This is my Econoline camper van. 6.0 Diesel, 4x4, all the bells and some of the whistles. Doesn't have a bathroom, so far has not been an issue.
That was in the Black Hills. Day 2 of a 2100 mile road trip. Would not have wanted to do 700 miles a day in an EV, I would still be charging up by plugging into a buffalo's ass in the Badlands.
If you can buy a Winnebago Solis Pocket 36A for $85000. I know that you could build your own Rivian RV with the $2000 to price match. Like Keith was trying to say. You go RVing to see the great outdoors not be couch potato. Yes you would have to be creative with the build. And I agree with the solar panel covered roof would be helpful for inuse/camping charging. What does it cost to drive a small RV 200 miles? $40? I would think that me driving a EVRV would feel better knowing that I would not have to fill up with gas like everybody else.
1. Winnebago Solis Pocket 36A $85,000
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