VanLife
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21d 13h ago by lemmy.zip/u/flint in vanlife from lemmy.zip

I looking for a bus/campervan. Not for full-time living but as small adventure bus for weekend or week-long trips and to also use as daily driver.

I am usually by myself or with 1 other person and occasionally with groups of up to 9 people (which might be a stretch, but just throwing out some numbers).

I am completely new to ownining a car and campervanning in general so am looking for people with experience with this type of model for spare time use and advice on what to look out for.

I've had my eye on the VW id. Buzz because it's electric and has a nice size for being mobile but large enough to to fit many people or lots of gear or a bed + living basics.

I am relatively tall (190cm) so am worried about not being able to stand up in it or having to permanently remove some seats to install a bed lengthwise.

I am open to looking at other models but It's important for me, that it is an electric car for the lower environmental impact and maintainence cost.

I don't have experience with electric vans. But I've been more or less full time in my van for the better part of a decade.

My opinion is that if you are buying a car, you should buy it for its main use case, and then maybe compromise a little around edge cases, and then just make it work. So if, for example, you are buying this van to ski bum in during winter weekends and vacations, and you are serious about skiing as much as possible, and you aren't really driving it as a commuter much, then it could be a good fit for you. Most of the use you will get out of the van will be as a camper.

But if your use case instead is to be a daily driver that you take from home to work to the grocery store, then, imo, you should look into smaller, cheaper commuter cars. A larger vehicle will be more expensive than a smaller one, and will take more money and time to charge. It will be more difficult to drive around narrow streets and to find parking for. And you have to deal with these issues all the time, while you may only use it as a camper or a big group hauler .1% of the time.

In the daily driver use case, I think you should explore other possibilities. For example:

  • In the case where you need to transport a lot of people, you could rent another car, rent a larger car, or ask someone else with a car to also drive.
  • In the case of going camping, you can just use a tent.
  • If your camping use case requires sleeping in the car, much smaller cars can work for this. The classic is the Prius, which has a fold-flat back seat that will work as a bed area for all but the tallest people. I've seen builds in Honda Civics as well.
  • If you want a luxury van camping experience occasionally, you can buy a practical commuter and then rent an already built Promaster or Transit. This would be far less expensive than buying your own van, far less work than building it out yourself, and you would have a more spacious and better equipped camper for the time you have it.
  • If you want the experience of owning and working on your own camper, you could get a practical commuter that has decent towing specs, then buy or build out a small camper trailer. Then you get all the luxury and experience of owning the camper, without having to bring it with you each time you get grocieries.

It's all about what you really plan to do with it. But I'm just worried that you seem to be chasing a lot of rabbits here, and if you try to catch all of them, you'll end up with a compromise that isn't really good at anything

3 replies

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