Suddenly on the road with a Tesla Model X with 175 kWh of battery capacity? It’s possible with the Boulder EV Camper.
Looking at what kind of driving range even fairly basic EVs can achieve these days, it seems to us that range anxiety is a thing of the past. Yet there are still some snags, especially because the WLTP range is not always perfectly in line with reality. And everything that costs driving range is in ideal conditions: good weather, quiet roads and just the car, no trailer behind it.
Boulder EV Camper
Hanging a heavy device behind your car eats up the driving range. And charging a few kilometers with a kind of power bank for cars is not necessarily easy either. Perhaps today’s product can change that. This is the Boulder EV Caravan from Colorado Teardrops and for EV drivers who want to caravan, this can offer a solution.
75 kWh battery
Just like the towing vehicle, the Boulder EV Caravan has a battery under the floor. And not such a small one either: 75 kWh! To paint a picture: the Tesla Model X that is used as a tow car has a 100 kWh battery, so you can get three-quarters of that from your trailer. That sounds like a nice boost for when you need to get a little further in inhospitable areas.
Usage
That raised a few more questions, but most of them are answered on the Colorado Teardrops website. The battery pack is, just like with EVs, between a kind of sandwich floor under the passenger compartment. As with better modern EVs, temperature is managed through cooling and heating to maximize battery performance. You can fast charge in both directions: the battery of the caravan can be charged by means of fast charging and you can fast charge the EV towing vehicle from the trailer. You can’t charge the tow vehicle while driving, but according to Colorado Teardrops, that’s largely due to Tesla restrictions. If this idea catches on, Musk will probably not be the least to develop a ‘charge-while-driving’ mode for Teslas.
Compensate
Not to let expectations of the Boulder EV Camper’s 75 kWh battery go through the roof, Colorado Teardrops says don’t expect mind-blowing driving ranges. At the very least, they want to compensate for, and perhaps exceed, the range lost from towing a trailer. It is therefore not the case that thanks to 175 percent of the battery capacity of a Model X you suddenly have 1.75 times as much range. But having some kind of power bank with you is not a bad idea.
Caravan
The whole EV aspect of the Boulder EV Camper is a noble pursuit, whether it works has to be proven in practice. Furthermore, it is a cozy caravan. It’s a small thing by American standards, but Europeans are quite used to our Kips and Eribas. Thanks to the brand name, it is logical that the caravan has a teardrop shape. In the middle section you have room for either a sitting area or a bed, in the back you have enough space for storage, a kind of kitchen worktop and a cooker. Also useful with a 75 kWh battery pack: you can possibly tap some power from the battery pack. Nice if you want to wild camp somewhere without electricity.
The Boulder EV Camper is still a prototype, but a product in the form you see today is close. You can already order it, which will cost you $ 67,000 (63,300 euros). Larger models are planned and there are a few options, such as air conditioning, heating and a water tank. The idea is fun and handy, the implementation still sounds a bit like ‘seeing is believing’. But we’d love to see it!
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