and it wasn't a great experience - fair amount of it self inflicted.
My son and I went for to do a bit of kayaking down the Medway, so for one night we thought we'd give sleeping in the car ago rather than a tent.
(Featured Image Courtesy of Tesla, Inc)
As we we were only planning to stay one night we didn't plan on going too crazy with the setup, as the intention was to use camp mode to keep us at a nice temperature.
Our setup was simple a self inflating matress (from Trail Outdoors Double Self-Inflating Mat (5cm Thick)), pillow and sleeping bag as demonstrated by my assistant:-
In addition we had some blackout blinds for the side windows and windscreen sun shield.
So why wasn't it a great experience?
Firstly for me it was the camp mode itself - in the dead of night on a campsite it actually makes enough noise both inside and out to be irritating, for context I was part of a group:-
and so straight away I felt quite anti social for having it on as you could easily hear noises the car was making from 10 feet way. As I was part of a group most of whom are friends, I didn't want to be remembered as that guy with the car that kept the other campers awake - I could have moved the car prior to going to bed, but my son was asleep, it was raining and it would have been a general faff.
The one thing I noticed is that leaving it in Auto, meant the car would periodically pump air into the car, which always started with a rather noisy whoosh before setting down. After a point I turned off Auto and switched it to manual and set the air flow to 1 but I struggled to get to sleep with this constant hum. So in the end I switched camp mode off. BTW the car makes all manor of noises which when you live in suburbia get melded in the surrounding ambient noises - not so in the middle of a farm field.
Even turning the air conditioning off, the car periodically turns it back on which was unexpected.
After a period of time the screen does go off which is great, but if you need to adjust something tapping the screen did nothing, touching the park button nothing - bizarely I had to use the App to wake the car up.
Without camp mode, the car did get pretty cold and muggins here only brought a 2 season sleeping bag which meant I was quite cold during the night.
The mattress I found to be too thin myself so bit unconfortable for me, but if I had 2 I recon that would be of been fine - and I did like how if self inflates and packed up in to a bag.
With the seats down the floor is not flat and I did find I was gradually sliding down during the night.
I don't think there is room for 2 people really, my son liked to go into the foetal position kneeing me in the back.
I'm 5'8 and I found I needed to contort myself a little getting out, getting in was fine.
So in summary whilst i'm glad I gave it ago and learnt from the experience I think next time just bring a tent
Hope that was useful for some pople
My son and I went for to do a bit of kayaking down the Medway, so for one night we thought we'd give sleeping in the car ago rather than a tent.
(Featured Image Courtesy of Tesla, Inc)
As we we were only planning to stay one night we didn't plan on going too crazy with the setup, as the intention was to use camp mode to keep us at a nice temperature.
Our setup was simple a self inflating matress (from Trail Outdoors Double Self-Inflating Mat (5cm Thick)), pillow and sleeping bag as demonstrated by my assistant:-
In addition we had some blackout blinds for the side windows and windscreen sun shield.
So why wasn't it a great experience?
Firstly for me it was the camp mode itself - in the dead of night on a campsite it actually makes enough noise both inside and out to be irritating, for context I was part of a group:-
and so straight away I felt quite anti social for having it on as you could easily hear noises the car was making from 10 feet way. As I was part of a group most of whom are friends, I didn't want to be remembered as that guy with the car that kept the other campers awake - I could have moved the car prior to going to bed, but my son was asleep, it was raining and it would have been a general faff.
The one thing I noticed is that leaving it in Auto, meant the car would periodically pump air into the car, which always started with a rather noisy whoosh before setting down. After a point I turned off Auto and switched it to manual and set the air flow to 1 but I struggled to get to sleep with this constant hum. So in the end I switched camp mode off. BTW the car makes all manor of noises which when you live in suburbia get melded in the surrounding ambient noises - not so in the middle of a farm field.
Even turning the air conditioning off, the car periodically turns it back on which was unexpected.
After a period of time the screen does go off which is great, but if you need to adjust something tapping the screen did nothing, touching the park button nothing - bizarely I had to use the App to wake the car up.
Without camp mode, the car did get pretty cold and muggins here only brought a 2 season sleeping bag which meant I was quite cold during the night.
The mattress I found to be too thin myself so bit unconfortable for me, but if I had 2 I recon that would be of been fine - and I did like how if self inflates and packed up in to a bag.
With the seats down the floor is not flat and I did find I was gradually sliding down during the night.
I don't think there is room for 2 people really, my son liked to go into the foetal position kneeing me in the back.
I'm 5'8 and I found I needed to contort myself a little getting out, getting in was fine.
So in summary whilst i'm glad I gave it ago and learnt from the experience I think next time just bring a tent
Hope that was useful for some pople
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