The most amazing thing is the photo of the lumber where a hole underneath the dash is revealed allowing the hauling of lumber the entire length of the vehicle. That is an impressive amount of utility right there. Whether quirky features like that would survive the process towards production remain to be seen, but this is certainly an interesting take on a truck that could be very useful in rural America.
I have an 8 foot utility trailer that I tow with my Honda Fit. I overloaded it once on accident with 2500lbs of roofing materials. The capacity is 2000lbs. I frequently load it up with long and heavy stuff, and I don't risk ruining my interior. It does 95% of what most people do with a truck, but I can still drive to work on Monday or take it on a long road trip and get 35mpg. Started with a $300 Harbor Freight trailer and added sides and floor to it. I guess my point is that you can pretty much haul whatever you need to with damn near any car on the market.
Just don't tell the service people if your car is still under warranty -- most North American non-truck vehicles are not rated for towing _at all_ even when their European counterparts are. This includes most so-called "crossovers" and small SUVs. Something as big as a Chevy Equinox (which is larger than the Isuzu Trooper we had in the 80s, which my family thought was massive for the time) is not rated for towing until you go up to the biggest engine and AWD.
Americans seem to love^H^H^H^Hdemand huge vehicles, but those huge vehicles rarely have the clearance and towing capacity to actually be "utility" despite being advertised that way :-(
Any idea as to why is this different from the EU? My 2006 Ford Focus C-max van pull up to 1200 kg (= 2650 pound, braked, 665 kg unbraked) legally here.
That works out to 1466 pounds. The guy was towing 2500 pounds with a Honda Fit that (unless it's a hybrid) weighs less than 2400 lbs for the car itself.
Do you think the Fit's brakes are designed to safely stop 2x the design weight? Plus the stability just wouldn't be there. Plus any appreciable "tongue weight" behind the back wheels will make the front end light. Bad for control. Wikipedia touches on the issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towing#Towing_safety
Here's another counterexample. The Porsche Cayenne can tow 7716 pounds (3500 kilos) braked, but only 1653 pounds (750 kilos) unbraked. And it's a vehicle that weighs twice as much as the subcompact Fit: http://www.porsche.com/usa/models/cayenne/cayenne-models/cay...
I always assumed it was just a combination of regulatory body idiocy and caution on the side of car manufaturers. So I didn't feel bad putting a hitch on my diesel Jetta and towing a trailer with it because it was rated for at least 2500 lbs in Europe.
But a friend who is more auto-literate looked into it and said in Europe the way trailers are positioned is different somehow such that the weight on the hitch is different.
Also more aggressive speed limits on trailers and other safety regulations enforced on the drivers.
So I don't know, it might actually be partially legitimate.
I once saw a Mazda Miata with 16' 2x8s. They were in the passenger seat, seat reclined. One end in the foot well and the other high in the air. They rested on the little roll bar and were strapped down nicely. Utility is what you make of it.
Yesterday I was at the local recycling centre and spotted an older gentleman dropping off garden waste (big black bags of branches, hedge trimmings etc.) with his mint condition ~1999 Peugeot 306 convertible. I bet he was the original owner too.
Basically any midsize-and-up with hatchback-style fold-down rear seats (even non-hatchbacks with fixed rear dashes) will accommodate such lumber. Some would require the removal of the passenger seat headrest.
According to its spec sheet, the B1 has 12ft between the front and rear liftgates when they're closed, the car is 12.5ft long. The Model S is almost 4ft (and 30%) longer.
It's cool but it's kind of a gimmick. You can easily haul lumber on almost any vehicle with a roof rack. Many cars with fold down rear seats can fit 8' lumber too.
> You can easily haul lumber on almost any vehicle with a roof rack.
-You can easily haul very limited quantities of lumber on almost any vehicle with a roof rack.
I've tried once to put the maximum legal (well, in Norway, at any rate) weight of 200kg/450lbs on my Land Cruiser's roof rack, just to see how it affected handling.
I've only felt more nervous in a car once, and that was in a Congolese taxi seemingly bent on having a go on the sound barrier. In the dark. With no lights.
The body roll was extreme, and any bump in the road led to damped oscillations like you wouldn't believe. After a bit of trial and error, I found that slightly less than half the max allowable weight was about as much as the vehicle could take and still be somewhat drivable.
Come to think of it, an estate wagon of some sort would probably be better for hauling stuff on the roof - sits much, much lower.
Re: what you said about wagons, I think the Subaru Outback is actually the most practical ICE vehicle out there. Pretty high clearance, very powerful engine, great towing capacity, good roof rack options, ample trunk space, and low centre of gravity.
I just wish they made one with an electric motor and a plug.
I think that you're confusing "Land Rover" and "Land Cruiser".
Land Rover vehicles are made by Jaguar Land Rover. The term "Land Rover" usually refers to either the Land Rover Defender (a bulky, tractor-looking SUV that isn't legal in the USA* due to a lack of safety features and emissions controls) or a variety of luxury SUVs that are remarkably good off-road but suffer from questionable reliability.
Land Cruisers are made by Toyota. The term "Land Cruiser" can refer to two totally separate Toyota vehicles. The J20, J40, and J70 models are known for being incredibly sturdy, reliable, and versatile vehicles, while the J50, J60, J80, J100, and J200 models are luxury SUVs; the J200 has a base MSRP of USD$86,000. Toyota doesn't sell the rugged, non-luxury models in the USA, although unlike in the case of the Land Rover Defender this may be more due to market analysis than legality.
There's no way to know from the original comment whether they were driving a rugged Land Cruiser or a luxury Land Cruiser. I've never driven either of them, but I'm sure that they behave very differently.
*Yes, I know that the person who commented specified that they were in Norway. I'm just adding the bit about Land Rovers not being legal in the USA (with a few exceptions) so that Americans like myself won't be scratching their heads trying to remember what Defenders look like :-)
I was in a J95 - in some markets called the Prado. (Basically less rugged than the 70 series, but still at the fairly utilitarian end of the range - a close relative of the J80 - beam axle at the rear, independent up front, lockers rear¢er.)
It is more a matter of physics than utilitarian/luxury, I suspect - 4x4s ride tall (my roof rack is 6'8" above ground), so to behave properly with a significant load on the roof, you'd need lots of mass to keep the centre of gravity low while also requiring suspension stiff enough to be unusable to keep the roll in check.
Defenders aren't legal in the USA? I have been a scofflaw for the last ten years?
Sorry, you're totally wrong about that. Rest-of-world (ROW) Defenders are absolutely legal in the US, as are any vehicle > 25 years old with original spec motor. Also legal are North American Spec (NAS) Defenders, which were imported for three years in the 90s.
Source: I am the co-founder of NAS-ROW, the Defender forum. https://nas-row.com
That's why I said "with a few exceptions". There are legal Defenders in the USA, but they are uncommon enough that I didn't want people thinking of Discoveries or LR2/3/4's when I described a "tractor-like" vehicle. Next time I'll be more specific.
P.S. That's a neat site! I'm glad that there's an American Defender community. Defenders are beautiful vehicles, and on the rare occasions that I see one I always try to get a picture with it :-)
Not to mention that if you're in a rain/snow/sleet/hail/etc. storm and you need to keep your lumber (or some other very long moisture-sensitive thing, like one of those absurdly-long sub sandwiches) dry or otherwise protected while hauling it, you can now do so.
You could haul lumber in a jeep as well - fold down the front window (why people forget about this, I don't know), prop the lumber between the seats resting on the dash, tailgate, etc - tie it down.
In a farm/preserve/etc scenario with a big diesel tank for the implements, a large diesel genset to recharge the EVs might be workable and leverage that infrastructure. Fleets of these could probably be charged off a fixed genset (not datacenter scale, but up there), which might be useful in remote scenarios or where it is tough to deliver a lot of mains electricity. I don’t know how emissions would work out (is a genset better than multiple portable engines?) and it’d be obviously less efficient than just doing the combustion in the vehicles, but it is something that came to mind when you mentioned that which might be useful for this type of vehicle.
Even if it’s a little worse in terms of the math, electric utility vehicles are strongly appealing due to their torque characteristics and fewer parts which always seem to be the ones you forgot spares of and such. With passenger sedans you’re playing the efficiency game, but with off-road, utility, industrial, and so on, there is more to think about when considering EV. Might not be that weird. (I’m a Wrangler owner who reads about electric conversions constantly — look at South Korean work on Jeeps — and I completely get where Bollinger is coming from.)
