Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by alexhektor 1411 days ago
Tesla RV for 70k? Can you teleport me into your alternate universe, please? ;) Different brand might make more sense, but even those will probably cost you at least doulbe that, unless you're maybe only talking about certain climate zones, bare minimum living standards and an abhorrent range together with some other bad tradeoff decisions regarding price vs. quality. Or maybe in a decade or two (at today's prices/without inflation).

Also, others made the point already about rent for the space to park on (most likely outcome would be high taxes and rent for RV parks (don't think they'd be much more efficient than regular housing on a sqft basis, especially if you're not putting them on top of each other, Ready Player One style).

1 comments

Also, others made the point already about rent for the space to park on (most likely outcome would be high taxes and rent for RV parks

I can't speak for everyone but the way I would circumvent that would be to buy a piece of unrestricted or minimally restricted land that allows an RV as a primary dwelling. This requires some research on youtube among the existing RV nomads. Non-farmable land is very affordable. Some states are stricter on this than others and some counties within those states also vary a bit. Land is an investment vs dumping money into rental space. A few acres of land, some solar panels on the RV and some next to it should provide enough power to get by. The missing piece is water and one can plonk down a large water tank and have a truck come out to fill it every 3 to 6 months and/or do rain capture assuming one knows how to implement proper filtration. Some states promote rain capture and some ban it. Many RV's already support composting toilets and have grey/black water tanks. Some states will require installing a septic system, whereas some states have rules on the books but nobody to enforce it. I would suggest also having an EV motorcycle or street legal side-by-side for going into town for groceries. That requires some research as well as to which of those is supported by that state/county/province. For internet there are 4G/5G modems specifically designed for RV's and boats that have multiple external roof mounted antennas and can use multiple SIM cards.

Plenty of people/road-nomads already do this. They have a piece of land that is their legal domicile and sometimes they just stay put on that piece of land. My preference if I went this route would be to have a hybrid RV for times when solar is not cutting it.

The downside of all this would be finding people that can perform advanced maintenance on the RV and staying close enough that a towing job would not be crazy expensive. Some mechanics can bring a subset of their tools out to the remote location. I would suggest researching RV's that are based on common platforms. The upside is that one could research which states have the most conducive weather, taxes, laws, culture, etc... and if any of that changes, just buy land in a better state, pack up your solar panels and move there. When the market is right, sell the previous few acres of land and the old tank. Tanks are affordable and it's easier to just buy a new one than to clean and move the old one. Another potential downside to putting an RV in the middle of nowhere is that when dodgy people find out someone is alone and isolated, they become a target. One has to be ready to defend themselves. Try to find a piece of land that is not visible from any of the roads.

I literally did this.

My recommendation is just learn how to repair the RV yourself. RVIA has an online cert program you can take for $300.

I know how to repair RVs and I just had to pay $6700 to repair a $55K RV before selling it. Do not underestimate how expensive RVs are to pay someone to fix.

That's awesome that you did your own training. Agreed the RV's, especially the less common platforms are crazy expensive to have someone repair and that is assuming one can even find a mechanic that will touch it. That's why I suggest using a common platform if one can manage having a smaller RV. One example would be RV's based on the Ford F450/550 platform [1]. There are plenty of Ford mechanics and I envision Ford some day having an EV or hybrid version of the example I linked. Linking overpriced example, there are more affordable examples

The people that build "custom schoolies" are especially on their own unless they are part of many forums/facebook groups of schoolies and can find a mechanic that knows how to work on school buses.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53fkkxc-IWw [video, annoying music]