Have you looked into a Chevy volt. 53 miles electric, 44mpg on gas (something like 400 mile range with both fuel sources).

Unlike the Prius it only has an electric drive train with a gas generator.

And it's a hatchback with the seats folded you might just be able to sleep.

Are you thinking of the Bolt?

The volt is a sedan, but only 2 seats in the back split by a center console. I don't think that'd be very comfortable without an air mattress.

Volt is a hatchback compact sedan. It has no center console splitting the back seats anymore.

Here's an image of the new 2016/2017 volt with its seats folded down: http://www.tampabay.com/resources/images/dti/rendered/2016/0...

Cool, thanks! That's a lot different than I remembered. Good to know.

Personally I ran into the issues that to save on weight many manufacturers compromised on leg room behind the wheel. It's not physically possible for me to drive something like the Renault Zoe.

I'm 6'3" (1.923m), get a used model S if you can, it's plenty roomy

I'm curious: why not simply rent a van whenever you go on a trip?

Because, if you frequently sleep in your van, being able to customise it to your needs is important, like building in a bed, stove, heater, cupboards and so forth. Renting a full camper van every weekend/holiday would be prohibitively expensive and not fully customised to your taste.

My guess is the OP is a climber or similar and has pretty specific van needs.

Speaking for German prices, because it eventually adds up, specially taking into consideration that to be on the safe side it is better to have full coverage insurance.

With own car one pays insurance once, while renting the insurance gets payed every single time it gets rented.

Not going full coverage is an open game as they will charge for any little new scratch the car might get, no matter how tiny.

Meanwhile, I have been in countries where the only thing that matters is that the car is returned in one piece still.

Dont buy comprehensive insurance top up cover from the car hire company. Use a third party insurer. e.g. insurance4carhire.com Same price for a year of 'super cover' as for about 4 days cover from the car hire company.

I doubt any of the car dealers here work with such type of companies, and in any case I usually don't thrush they would properly handle the case when called to act upon.

Surely that's anti-competitive behaviour; it's not up to the car rental to choose whether or not they deal with your insurers. In fact they deal with you (as if you weren't insured), and you claim from your excess insurance. See e.g. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/insurance...

In Germany you cannot rent a car without insurance from the dealer, there is no way for them to deal with us as if we hadn't one.

The car hire company never knows that you have it because the insurance you take out is for the excess only, not the full legally required car insurance. Most hire cars come with a basic insurance included in the cost, but with a massive excess charge if you damage the car. When you hire the car you accept the massive €2000 (or whatever) excess. If you need to make a claim, you reclaim the cost of the excess from the third party insurer and pay this to the car hire company. The third party insurance costs ~€40 per year. This is a much cheaper way of reducing your excess to a manageable amount than taking out the €15/day 'super cover' option from the car hire company.

EDIT: The car hire companies make a massive profit on the 'super cover' optional insurance.

If you are worried about the provenance of a financial services company, there are usually national regulators who maintain registers of companies that have to abide by certain standards. You should check that an insurer is on this register before taking out a policy, as well as checking to see if there are a lot of complaints about them on the internet.

Thanks, I will need to research into it.

The idea is to go nearly every weekend - as a climber living in Munich, all those lakes and the mountains offer enormous weekend potential. As someone else deduced already, I'll be building some platform in the back and add curtains, something I can't be putting in a rented van.

> "I just bought a VW Caddy, but was also struggling with the decision as I thought about going electric."

If you don't mind doing the work yourself, and don't mind a range lower than 500km a day, you can get something like this for less than 30k Euros. For example:

http://hackaday.com/2017/05/17/solar-powered-camper-is-a-mag...