We took Lucid camping to another level while chasing the moon-shadow this weekend:
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The Exped Duo air mattress fits just about perfectly with the back seats down.
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Add a mess of blankets and whatnot, roll up the window shades, and it makes for a very cozy "tent."
Us two (relatively slim, to be fair) adults fit back there perfectly as well. Surprisingly, there's even plenty of room under the parcel shelf for me to lay on my side. I know from experience that's not the case in every sedan.
The result: we both slept soundly through the night. I have a hard time doing that at home half the time. We actually brought a 4-season tent as well, but never bothered putting it up because this was easier and more comfortable.
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Creature comfort mode kept us creatures comfortable all night. It was cold out - I'd say 30-50ºF - but I think it was mostly A/C running rather than heat, since 2 people in a confined, fairly well insulated space produce plenty of heat. It looks like Creature Comfort used about 1kW on average overnight, meaning roughly 10-15% of my Touring battery. This seems to be on par with what Tesla owners have reported from their camper mode. Just be sure you actually put the car mostly to sleep by locking it, otherwise it'll drain more. For safety, I took a battery powered CO2 meter with an audible alarm on the trip. Luckily there were no issues with Creature Comfort running. It did go off pretty easily without HVAC though. Keep that in mind if you're sleeping in cars, especially if they are reasonably air-sealed.
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Still a ridiculous amount of cargo space even with the back used as a bed. I had this 35L powered cooler in the frunk (which doesn't have any power). At those low outside temps, I just threw a
cooler brick in there and it stayed icy without power for 4 days. For other trips I've kept this in the trunk where it can be powered off the 12V, but it's a bit too tall to fit with the foldable trunk floor down for sleeping.
The negatives (sort of):
- I don't think it's possible to
completely lock the car from the inside with the fob unless you have a faraday bag? You can lock it, but I assume pressing the door handles will still unlock it. I didn't think about this before leaving, so the faraday bag stayed home. No home invasions this time, but something to note for the future. It'd be nice if a "camp mode" would let you disable handle unlocking.
- The screens can't be turned off in either hold or creature comfort mode as far as I can tell, so they're pretty bright as seen in the picture above.
@Bunnylebowski has a funky workaround suggestion for this, but I haven't tried it yet.
- While I can turn the exterior lights off via Home Assistant, unlocking or locking the car will turn them back on. I may have slept with my car facing another car-ful of campers and regretted this. I wish this could be disabled temporarily.
- The only way to activate or deactivate hold or creature comfort is by opening and closing the driver's door. Makes sense for those features, not so much when your plan is to stay in the car. There was a lot of fiddling as we needed to get in and out and turn the feature back on repeatedly. A real camp mode should be activated purely from the screen(s).
- USB-C plugs (at least most of them?) are not powered in this mode. It would be nice if they stayed on for camp mode to keep gadgets charging.
None of these things are bugs, because camp mode isn't a thing currently. However, I think these
features are what it would take to add a camp mode to the existing set of HVAC controls. I sure would love to see all this in the Gravity especially.
