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.
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:-
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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:-
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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