Mercedes benz esprinter: bad for vanlife?

Newbie's Corner
1

New to van life, eyeing my first build. I’d prefer to drive an all-electric vehicle. The mercedes benz esprinter seems to be one of the only options, the other being the ford e transit. On YouTube, I don’t seem to see any instances of people doing builds on electric vehicle platforms. Too short range?

Are there just no good EV options in the vanlife space yet?

2

I looked into fords version. The first model only got about 200 mikes on a full charge.

I think the other main issue is, at least for me, i have a DCDC charge controller hooked to my alternator. In an e transit youd only have solar or shore.

Eventually someone will fogure out how to hook the house batteries into the whole system and be able to charge as you would the vehicle. Theres a way to hook it all up to fill the vehicle battery and then the house battery, but thats over my head.

I imagine we will start seeing it, and when the vans get closer to 300-400 miles per charge i think more people will start building them.

I love the idea

3

Then again, maybe its not possible. The e-transits battery is also lithium but its capacity is about 340,000 larger than a 200mAh battery as its a 68kWh battery. Im not sure what that step down would look like

4

Just get a second $10,000 e transit battery as the house battery and be good for weeks lol

5

I would think range and cost is the main reasons for us not seeing more electric vans.
I found one YouTube video a few weeks ago about an electric Ducato build, but I can not find it again.
They said they could recharge the house battery with solar and then the car battery with the house battery, but it would only give them 30 km range (less than 20 miles). It was for emergency only.
However it would be interesting if you could make a stackable solar panel solution, so you could charge the car battery too with solar.

6

Hi @endre, I’ll try to find that YouTube video, but if you stumble upon it again, please share the link.

7

This seems interesting. ytb dot com slash watch?v=3T1vlIQOTbs. (I’m new, I can’t post links)

9

How long until you can post links here. Because im new and it wont let me