Look, I’ll be honest with you here: this post is not a good idea. Mercedes just wrote a more straightforward post about this thing already, the Grounded T1, a sort of e-bike-based RV, and we don’t really need two posts about this thing. But I can’t help myself. I can’t help myself because this thing is one of the stupidest fucking things I’ve seen in a long time, and it hurts too much to just keep that inside. I have to let it out, and, I apologize in advance, but I’m going to let it out here, right now. Let’s get it over with.
Okay, so, let’s just be absolutely clear about what we have here: this is an e-bike that’s pulling a small, narrow box. It’s a tiny, tiny home mounted on a four-wheel platform with a seat and some handlebars and a front wheel bolted to it. It’s electric powered, with a claimed range of 150 miles and a top speed of 15 mph. It can technically sleep two, but you’re only supposed to drive it with one, because I guess you can’t have anyone in the house part while it’s in (very slow) motion.
Here, looking at a picture gives a pretty good idea about this thing:
It definitely appears to be well-made, which just makes me angrier, because I know there are a lot of people who put a lot of good effort into this thing, a lot of hard work and talent and skill. And all of that is a damn shame, an absolute tragedy, because the fundamental idea behind this $30,000 machine is so deeply, irretrievably stupid.
Here’s my problem with this thing: who is it for? What are you supposed to do with this fucking thing? You’re not taking it off-road, at least nothing beyond a pretty mild trail that doesn’t have too many tree roots or especially robust mushrooms. You’re not taking it on the highway, because it only goes 15 mph. I guess you could drive it in the same places I drive my absurd little EV, my Changli, which can hit 20+ mph, if needed. And those places are pretty much in-town streets with a speed limit of 35 mph or less.
So, is that where you’re camping? Down the road from your house? Between where you live and that restaurant you like? Is this for going over to that bar or pub that’s just about walking distance from your house, but now you can crash in the parking lot when you get too drunk? If so, that’s the first practical use I’ve been able to think of for this inane pile.
Sure, it has a range of 150 miles, that’s not so bad. But you can only go 15 mph. And the driver’s seat is completely exposed to the elements out there. A beach chair on an outdoor deck has more protection than that bright green seat. So, that means if you were actually going to use this to go any distance – to go “adventuring,” as the company implies you can, you’ll be in that exposed seat for potentially up to ten hours, in the cold and rain or baking sun or whatever is going on outside.
Who the hell wants that? What’s the point of this thing? Again, who is this for?
Grounded’s website describes a target buyer for us:
“The bicycle-class light electric vehicle combines the cargo capacity of a van with the carbon footprint of an e-bike, enabling sustainability-focused adventurers to live and work comfortably in the outdoors with a minuscule footprint.”
Okay, so it’s for “sustainability-focused adventurers to live and work comfortably in the outdoors.” You know what? I’m calling big heaping forkfulls of bullshit on this one. Are these adventurers already in the outdoors? Just sitting there on a pile of leaves? Because that’s the only way this stupid heap is getting to the outdoors: if it gets delivered there. And it’s not getting them out of the outdoors, unless their idea of adventuring and outdoor living means doing it all within a short hop from a town, a hop that doesn’t require the use of highways or interstates.
This is, at best, like backyard camping. For $30-fucking-thousand dollars.
Look at this picture Grounded sent out:
Where is this? Is it on a parking deck? Because that’s the only place that looks anything like that where you can comfortably drive an overpriced toy that only goes 15 mph. It sure as hell isn’t on a real overpass on some highway, because taking this on the highway just proves you want to commit suicide in the most expensive and inconvenient way.
What about this promo picture up there? It looks like a screenshot from Myst or some shit. How did that trike-camper get there? Maybe it’s always there, condemned to circle that perfectly smooth ring of a road forever.
Is this part of that same smooth ring-road? Maybe. Probably. Because its only in fictional environments like these that this idiotic contraption makes any sense.
Ugh, this thing, this stupid fucking thing. It feels so cynical, so much the product of hubris from some tech-industry dipshits who are convinced any idea they have is a great one. It’s so frustrating because they almost have something good here, if they weren’t so inspired after seeing (as our own Thomas Hundal guessed) a Big Wheel parked next to a porta-potty.
There are so many baffling bad decisions here. Like, why not enclose the driver? How much harder would that have been? Look:
And the camper itself –it looks nicely made and elegantly designed and remarkably light – wouldn’t it have been vastly more useful if it was a pull-behind camper for small cars with minimal tow ratings?
Why couldn’t this have been something like that? A camper you could tow behind a Metro or Miata or Mirage or Mini or some other tiny car that may or may not start with “M?” That would actually be useful. You could actually take the damn thing places, places that you may need to use highways to get to, places that you may want to go to at speeds faster than that of an average dog.
And, as you go there, you won’t get rained on, and you can bring a friend!
Why is Grounded building this thing? Who is telling them this is a good idea? Maybe there are people with highly specific use cases for whom this makes some kind of sense? People who really want a Tiny Home but also need to, what, move it a couple times a week to avoid parking tickets? People who vomit if they go more than 16 mph?
I feel like the market for people who are into this sort of responsible, slow adventuring are already pretty well served by all the bike campers out there; things like these:
That’s 25 minutes of ultra-light, bike-camping options. They can actually go on park bike paths and trails, which usually don’t allow any motor-driven vehicles, even e-bikes. The Grounded T1 feels just too large and heavy for the sorts of places these bike campers go, while simultaneously being too minimal and slow for places fully motorized campers go.
It’s the worst of all the worlds!
It’s useless. It’s so stupid, it makes me angrified, because a company has gone through all of the effort to make this thing real. Of all the things that haven’t made it to production, this thing gets to? Why? Why?
Let’s even pretend it’s not $30,000 dollars. Let’s pretend I just gave you one of these. What are you going to do with it? Could you even take it anywhere that makes sense? Can you find some meandering path to a place worth camping out in? Will it take you days to get there? Are you just going to sleep on the shoulder of the road while you slowly crawl there? Are you going to just ask some random house if you can recharge from one of their outdoor outlets?
Or is this thing going to sit in the corner of your driveway until the heat death of the universe, though maybe occasionally you’ll crawl in it to have a snack or a wank to something that requires a special level of privacy.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. I’m happy to listen to defenses of this thing, and I’d love to be convinced that I’m wrong. Maybe there is a great use case for this dumb, heavy tricycle-with-a-shed. If so, I’d love to hear it.
But, so far, I’m just annoyed this idiotic thing is on its way to existing.
“Where is this? Is it on a parking deck? Because that’s the only place that looks anything like that where you can comfortably drive an overpriced toy that only goes 15 mph.”
What about taking this RV camper trike thing to another celestial body with a weaker gravity?
The moon is about 1/6th Earth gravity, and mars is around a 1/3 or so?
Perhaps over to one of those floating rocks with lighter weights and faster speeds, it’s practically a Mclaren!
The phrase “solution looking for a problem” comes to mind…..
All I’m saying is it takes a pretty long time to get from one side of Costco to the other.
The staff could drive it around Costco so the store-d’oeuvres come to YOU! Such a pain in the ass to walk from station to station.
“Store d’oeuvres”
I’m not a Costco member so I don’t know–is that a phrase, or did you make it up? Either way it’s genius.
McMaster-Carr has industrial tricycles you can order. For a lot less.
I actually have a problem with that part that I was hoping Jason was going to mention in this tag-team coverage. The cycle company building the “semi-trike” is based in Detroit, yet this thing is a totally open-air vehicle with just a windshield for weather protection. Nobody thought about the poor delivery rider who would have to ride that thing in a Michigan winter?
Now we know where Tavares is going next!
Deliver for Uber Eats?
Yes!
Well, Vanderhalls somehow sell to people who can easily afford Miatas, despite having zero weather protection other than in speculative renderings of options they’re considering for the future. Maybe certain people are just OK with being wet and/or cold much of the time?
True! But I generally don’t see one of those unless it’s warm outside. Presumably, a business using these for delivery isn’t going to stop delivering goods in the winter. Unless the expectation is that they’ll buy these for the summer and other vehicles for the winter, which seems like a waste?
Why am I putting so much thought into this!?
This post is glorious.
What a well-timed post on a day with heavy membership promotional content; if the reviews and news don’t convince someone to subscribe, they’d be Torch-raving mad to hold out against this!
You can’t have a passenger in the camper because then top speed would be 7 mph.
6 mph if they had a big breakfast.
But maybe 8 if they take a big dump.
But, back to 6 mph because of the weight of the cassette toilet taking up 25% of the open floor space. With that dump in it.
Nah, just cut a hole in the floor and drop that deuce! 🙂
Amen
I ran over to skim Mercedes’s article so I could come back and read this one. While I agree it isn’t a “necessary” article for a trailer that no-one will buy, I’d say the writing of the article was worthwhile and got at least one reader (myself) excited.
Well, the motion blur in that shot super-convincingly shows that this thing MOVES. It’s really a shame the name ‘SuperFast’ was wasted on a Ferrari.
And since there is no pilot while it’s MOVING, we can 100% safely assume that it is a totally autonomous vehicle.
Bet you didn’t think of that, did you, Mr. Cynical??
Gotta love the motion blur on the dashed (!) lane divider, and on nothing else in the image. Also, moving but no driver?
Superpesante is available.
This is aimed directly at Burning Man Techbro Dipshits whose income far outreaches their intelligence
ironically, those same dipshits are the ones that invented it.
Who better to know the audience
And I think in this incredibly narrow space, these could be rented as campers for the event. Then the battery dies 3 miles from civilization in the middle of the desert and the tech-bro on LSD gets heat stroke, everyone gets sued, and the company goes bankrupt. The same place it was bound to end up, but in a much more interesting way.
Is there supposed to be a downside to this scenario?
That was less pessimism and more optimism/fan fiction on my part lol
They’d have some flunky following them around in a quad in case they need a tow.
Thank you for that rant, Torch. Not only do I agree with you, but your tone here sounds a great deal like one of my very best friends when something really dumb gets on his nerves and he has to let it out. I enjoyed that.
A classic Torchinsky rant! Thanks, I needed that.
Torch gonna torch.
I propose this phrase as the title of Torch’s next weekly-for-a-few-weeks-only series.
I feel like this was designed for that one very specific Mennonite or Amish community that needed a replacement for their horse and buggy, but they can use electric bikes but not electric cars or anything gas-powered.
I was thinking the same thing! It would be perfectly safe to drive in Amish country, where everyone is used to slow moving vehicles going along the shoulder.
Mennatite? As if. That box will only fit one man a night.
Solution to the affordable housing crisis in places like San Francisco?
It might work better than homeless camps.
The inside of this is almost exactly the same size of the Promaster camper I built out, and the simplicity of the tow rig almost guarantees it will be more reliable than a Promaster. That said, if it’s mostly just going to be parked somewhere for housing, it would be cheaper to buy a bunch of high mileage Promasters with that just bit the dust on their second engine and park them there.
Considering how the city is stating its $113K per 100sq ft unit for their homeless living areas, these are a way better deal. Ready to go, only 30K!, Then just sell the trikes off to someone else and recoup some money!
I think if it goes above 15 mph the camper encounters rollover issues because its 4 feet wide and over 7 feet tall
I think that if it gets a stiff side wind it encounters rollover issues.
This is a canal narrowboat that does not require water. It is BRILLIANT.
I didn’t read the original article because I looked at it and said “that thing is dumb and useless”. I read this one though because that thing is dumb and useless.
Same.
What advantages does this have over a shopping cart, which I can also afford.
“It uhh *looks at ground for a concerning period of time* it can *stares at sky* like… move itself! Yeah it can move itself around! As long as you charge it, don’t ask about moving it with a dead battery. There’s not pedals and you can’t push it.”
This is pretty clearly a luxurious enclosed rickshaw for strange people to hire and ride around in without interacting with the outside world.
I cannot imagine an owner being the same person who operates it.
That’s objectively a better and more marketable use, but the damn thing is configured like a camper, so it wouldn’t even be useful as a rickshaw since only 1/4 of the floor space is even dedicated to seating. And yet this is still far and away the best use for this thing I’ve seen anyone come up with.
It would be perfect for Ice Fishing amiright
I was thinking a modern version of a Victorian bathing machine
Until your auger goes right into the batteries.
That activates the “Campfire” feature
Sounds like something Torch would do.
Do any actual production examples exist? Every image looks like a 3D render (renders less impressive than Myst, I must say).
Could it be vaporware?
I think Jason missed that these aren’t in production yet, but honestly, the half-baked renders make it even more hilarious.
You’re looking at this from a camping point of view, but it’s more dystopian. It’s more of the van life thing. This isn’t for people to go camp, it’s for people to live in parking lots in urban areas and constantly move around to avoid their home being towed away.
It’s still stupid and terrible. It’s more easily stolen than a van, more identifiably a camper, and slower. It’s a lot more risk in exchange for more efficiency.
That checks, but it would have to be a lot cheaper.
Or they plan to offer 30 year mortgages on that 30k.
Yeah, cheaper would be better, but people buy really expensive camper vans to avoid paying ridiculous rents, so they may think they can get in on that market. It’s still a terrible choice for it, but they may think that #vanlife people will spend their money on a payment plan for this.
Is this eligible for the $7,500 EV tax credit? Nearly 33% off; by Grabthar’s Hammer, what a savings.
I think it’s a van life thing but for rich people who want to be able to brag about how green they are. So they live in this in urban areas in parking lots – when they feel like it – but they also have a McMansion somewhere else.
I feel far less terrible about my sarcastic comments in the original post now, thank you
Ditto
No worries! Jason and I had a plan where I’d do my normal straight RV news thing while he took his Torchian-style steaming dump. I could never copy a Torch rant so I’d never even try. 🙂
This does seem better equipped than the typical motorcycle camper, but it would be an aerodynamic nightmare to try and pull with one on the highway.
It’s probably not made to withstand the speeds either so even if it wasn’t like trying to drag a bank vault, the thing would disintegrate at highway speeds