Explore your borders on wheels

Project Edgar

To explore distant countries, discover exotic places and go to foreign cultures. All these things makes traveling so appealing to us. But reality shows that we close ourselves to these secrets by carefully planning and accept a kind of staged show. At the same time, we take the opportunity from us to react flexible to new opportunities on location.

With Project Egdar, we are addressing this problem in order to regain flexibility and freedom when traveling.

Issue 1: Mobility
An important point for us when travelling is to be mobile. We want to make it possible for us to explore the country on our own and to discover remote places far away from all tourist. And this without restricting our ability to travel in cities. The solution for us is a compact SUV with permanent four-wheel drive.

Issue 2: Accommodation
Planning accommodation in advance without knowing what the country has in store for us has always been a limitation. Therefore, it is important to us that we do not depend on external accommodation. Since a compact SUV is not suitable for sleeping inside the car without time-consuming conversions, we decided to use a roof top tent.

Issue 3: Dependencies
The longer you are on the road, the more important things like food, electricity and your own well-being will become. Therefore it is important for us to cover these areas in Project Edgar to enable us to travel in a more independent way.

Issue 4: Flexibility
Having the option of dealing with different situations in a foreign country usually provides an enormous enrichment for the overall experience. After all, listening to the stories of a local while you take them for a ride is priceless. This is one reason why a flexibly organizable space is so important to us.

Realization

Our mobile base is our 2009 Skoda Yeti, which is perfect for our project because of its well usable interior: straight edges and 90° angles make it easy to construct an extension without wasting much space. All unusable spaces should be filled with things like water tank, electrical installation or the refrigerator. All the necessary measurements were quickly taken and we were able to move on to the design phase in 3D.

After our virtual prototype was ready, we had all the individual parts cut to size and the handcrafted part of the finishing work began. When everything necessary was ordered and delivered, it took about a one-week to assemble the kitchen.

Water installation

In the lower part of the kitchen we have space for a 32 l water tank and a submersible pump, which is controlled by the amature. So we can wash up comfortably while standing. The gray water is led outside through a hose and collected in a folding tub. So it can be easily dumped.

Electrical installation

Since the space in the back of our car is very limited, we chose a lithium iron phosphate battery (LiFePo4). It is safe, reliable, durable and has a high energy density. The battery is charged while driving, via 230 V power supply or via the mobile 100 Wp solar panel. This supplies the water pump, the refrigerator and LED lights. In addition, we have a 200 W inverter that provides us with 230 V if required. So we can charge our laptops at any time. For all other devices we have two 12 V cigarette sockets and two fast charging USB ports.

Kitchen installation

The heart of our kitchen is a combination of a 38 l refrigerator compartment and an 11 l freezer compartment. This enables us to have a varied and healthy diet even when traveling. Cooking is done with a camping stove, which can be operated with petrol, diesel or gas. We have also reserved a small place for fresh herbs with which we can enhance our dishes.

Roof extension

A roof box is ideal to gain additional storage space. But since we also decided to sleep on the roof, a solution had to be found to combine both. Our choice fell on the Overcamp roof tent from Autohome. Compared to other roof tents, it can be folded along its length and thus takes up only 65 cm of the width of the roof. This leaves enough space for a roof box or other things like a kayak or bicycle. Our Yeti also shines here with a roof load capacity of 100 kg, which makes all this possible.

Flexibility

Since the storage space of the roof box is large, all back seats remain untouched. They can therefore continue to be used according to individual requirements. For example, if we exchange the space for the roof box for a kayak or bicycles, we still have enough storage space.

Conclusion

With our expansion of a compact SUV, we have created the possibility of independent and comfortable travel. Through effective planning, the available space is used in the best possible way to accommodate everything important. This way we can discover foreign countries, sleep wherever we want and are not subject to any constraints imposed by others. With Edgar we discover the beauty and the secrets of near and far regions, from which we get inspired and from which we let you participate further here. We are already looking forward to the upcoming adventures that we can experience with him!

Here you can find another article about our expansion: Dachzeltnomanden

Technical specifications

car	KITCHEN INSTALLATION	ROOF TOP TENT	ROOFBOX
Skoda Yeti 1.8 TSI	National Luna 50 TWIN WEEKENDER  38 l Fridge 11 l Freezer	Autohome Overcamp Smal	Thule Ranger 500
Performance 118 kW / 160 PS	32 l Water tank with sink and water pump	Dimension closed: 65 cm x 2 m x 35 cm	Volume: 260 l
Drive system: permanent 4-wheel drive	victron energy Peak Power Pack 40 Ah LiFePo4	Living space: 1,30 m x 2 m x 1 m	Overall dimension 190 cm x 50 cm x 30 cm
Roof load capacity: 100 kg	victron energy Phoenix Inverter 200 W	Weight: 54 kg	Inner dimension 185 cm x 45 cm x 25 cm
	Solar Swiss 100 Wp Solar panel		Payload: 50 kg
	Stove: Primus Omni Fuel		Weight: 11 kg