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Check out National Indoor RV Centers (NIRVC). They are a perfect signal of the terrible engineering of even current high-end Class A’s because they built their

Check out National Indoor RV Centers (NIRVC). They are a perfect signal of the terrible engineering of even current high-end Class A’s because they built their business around how much these contraptions need servicing. They themselves do an awesome job of that servicing, but generally the industry needs to ship marine grade engineering design and instead mostly opts for very unsustainable and marginally serviceable designs that don’t nearly stand up to what marine engineers are expected to deliver. I wish there was a Dashew for RV’s. If there is highway self driving in the near future for RV’s, I’d expect it to piggyback onto what the commercial trucking industry builds and uses.

bombcar 4y ago
The average RV customer gives up the RV lifestyle before the vehicle does, so arguably they’re developed right where they should be.
- yourapostasy 4y ago
  Point taken for the current average customer. I wrote the above within the context of the article of the "potential" of considering long-term options with alternative housing, and within the context of the thread discussing RV's as an alternative to a broken housing market for younger generations. Within that narrower scope, pretty much the only way a Z or Millenial young family making good money in our industry but tired of seeing their down payment savings keep getting blown out by rampant dirt real estate asset inflation could reasonably consider going full time RV as an option is to learn a range of maker skills and DIY build their own, or buy a used RV off someone who knows what they are doing like an RV inspector who fixed up design flaws over time to round out the sharp edges. RV's depreciate with alarming speed so I find the "put your $500K down payment into an RV instead of SV real estate" proposals specious. Probably the only way to blunt that steep depreciation is to build from a Class 7 or 8 chassis that you can resell later to recover much of the cost; even a full-time RV family would not put the kind of load and miles onto that chassis that a normal CDL holder does, so they will hold their value nicely. But those Heavy Duty Trucks are expensive capex and opex, easily pushing the total build and opex into $1M+ territory in the first 7 years. And most people don't haul around enough mass to justify a Class 7 or 8 chassis, usually a Class 6 is plenty even for a reasonably McMansion'y RV build on a steep mountain climb. I'd only go Class 7 or 8 if I was expecting to haul around my workshop with me, for example. But like many artifacts in today's world, unless there is a commercial market for it, I find I have to procure what I want by building it myself to satisfy my own quality standards for what are usually my long-term use cases.

bombcar 4y ago

The average RV customer gives up the RV lifestyle before the vehicle does, so arguably they’re developed right where they should be.

yourapostasy 4y ago
Point taken for the current average customer. I wrote the above within the context of the article of the "potential" of considering long-term options with alternative housing, and within the context of the thread discussing RV's as an alternative to a broken housing market for younger generations. Within that narrower scope, pretty much the only way a Z or Millenial young family making good money in our industry but tired of seeing their down payment savings keep getting blown out by rampant dirt real estate asset inflation could reasonably consider going full time RV as an option is to learn a range of maker skills and DIY build their own, or buy a used RV off someone who knows what they are doing like an RV inspector who fixed up design flaws over time to round out the sharp edges. RV's depreciate with alarming speed so I find the "put your $500K down payment into an RV instead of SV real estate" proposals specious. Probably the only way to blunt that steep depreciation is to build from a Class 7 or 8 chassis that you can resell later to recover much of the cost; even a full-time RV family would not put the kind of load and miles onto that chassis that a normal CDL holder does, so they will hold their value nicely. But those Heavy Duty Trucks are expensive capex and opex, easily pushing the total build and opex into $1M+ territory in the first 7 years. And most people don't haul around enough mass to justify a Class 7 or 8 chassis, usually a Class 6 is plenty even for a reasonably McMansion'y RV build on a steep mountain climb. I'd only go Class 7 or 8 if I was expecting to haul around my workshop with me, for example. But like many artifacts in today's world, unless there is a commercial market for it, I find I have to procure what I want by building it myself to satisfy my own quality standards for what are usually my long-term use cases.