Can you live in an electric car? FREDA LEWIS-STEMPEL took the new Tesla Model Y to a remote island on ‘camp mode’ to find out

For anyone living under a social media rock, #vanlife has become one of the biggest viral trends of the last few years.

Taking off during the pandemic, on TikTok the hashtag has been viewed more than 12 billion times, with a further 15 million posts on Instagram. 

The nomadic way of life is popular with (mainly) young people, and preceded the ‘underconsumption core’ lifestyle.

Golden sunsets, expansive beaches, fairy lights and romantic filters; living out of a van is as Instagram aesthetic as it gets (on the surface).

But what about living out of an electric car? Could that be the most eco and luxury van life possible? Or is the reality just a photo opportunity but a holiday to avoid?

This is Money’s Freda Lewis-Stempel took a new Tesla Model Y with its own specially designed ‘Air Mattress’ and ‘Camp Mode’ to one of the remotest islands in the UK to find out….

How the Model Y is designed for ‘van life’ glamping?

It makes sense to first explain how Tesla has taken the American ‘van life’ idea and added special features to the Model Y SUV to make it double up as a home on wheels.

Tesla Air Mattress: This £200 blow-up mattress has been designed to fit the rear of the car perfectly when the back seats are folded down. Penned on tracing paper, it has the cutouts in precisely the correct places in order for it to sit flush to the floor around wheel arches and arm rests.

It pumps up almost instantly when connected to the car’s 12V outlet in the boot.

Just roll the air mattress out, plug the air pump into the 12V, slot the air pump nozzle into the air mattress intake, turn the air pump on and watch it inflate.

At this point you can decide to go full glamping ‘boujee’ and bring a sheet, pillows and duvet like we did, or you can go more pop-up tent style and just use a sleeping bag and inflatable pillow.

Tesla has a specially shaped Air Mattress for its Model Y SUV that inflates to turn the car into a bed for the night

Tesla’s Camp Mode is another sleeping-friendly feature that keeps the cabin at the perfect temperature overnight to make sure you don’t get too hot or cold

Camp Mode: Sort of genius from Tesla, Camp Mode maintains the optimum temperature and airflow within the cabin while you sleep so you don’t wake up freezing cold or boiling hot in the middle of the night.

It also maintains the lighting setup you want or even music or a podcast if that helps you sleep.

There’s even a Camp Profile which remembers your preferences and sets them automatically when you want to conk out for the night.

To enter Camp Mode, just tap the temperature menu icon on the bottom of the screen and select Camp (or use the Tesla app).

Sentry Mode, auto lock and the Model Y’s alarm system are all disabled with Camp Mode so the alarm doesn’t go off every time you exist – just remember to lock the car yourself while you sleep!

Day 1/night 1: Regrettable decision? It can only get better…

My plucky school friend and I left London at around 5.30pm to drive up to the Peak District.

It was all going swimmingly, cruising up the M6 in the warm, extremely comfortable and smooth Model Y.

Though I tend to find Teslas a bit clinical (or ‘spaceship-y’, as my friend said) for long journeys, their performance is undeniably strong. 

The space, comfort, and how Teslas hold their range makes driving for hours minimum effort, and the Y was no different.

Deciding to charge at the Superchargers near Stoke-on-Trent – because we didn’t know how much range Camp Mode would use overnight – we snuck in the back door of a restaurant nearby to use the loo to brush our teeth and get ready for ‘bed’.

There were a few funny looks as we set the air mattress up for the night at the Superchargers (so we didn’t have to figure it out for the first time in the middle of nowhere in the pitch-black Peaks), but it was very easy to set up.

While the Y finished charging, we used the Theatre function – which has Netflix, YouTube, Hulu etc – to watch the different Christmas adverts on the touchscreen; Waitrose’s ‘who dunnit’ was of course the clear winner.

Thanks to Tesla’s Theatre suite we could watch all the Christmas adverts on YouTube while the car charged 

Brushing your teeth and washing your face in a restaurant loo near a Tesla Supercharger is the glamorous reality of Tesla living

Then we drove off in search of our sleeping spot in the wild for the night. 

We’d pre-selected a place using the Park4night app, but driving up to a lay-by under a remote bridge and encountering just one guy and his camper van we got the heebie-jeebies and decided to find an alternative.

The only other option nearby was a lay-by/field gate entrance, and (after accidentally driving through someone’s farmyard) we decided this was the best of two rather unappealing options, as it was already almost midnight.

Off to bed (a bed that was as steep as Everest because the parking spot was on a sharp incline) I awoke just over four hours later at 4.55am. 

My friend had seemingly disappeared. In a bleary state, I thought she’d been abducted, but thankfully she’d just moved to the front seat to try and sleep. 

Turning the headlights on, we had a near heart attack (my second in 10 minutes) when they picked up a Land Rover Discovery that had silently turned up sometime between 12.40 and 4.55am.

Convincing ourselves we weren’t going to end up as front page horror story news, we tried to get back to sleep.

It was at this point we learnt two valuable EV glamping lessons: never park on an incline and an overinflated Air Mattress is, as I ruefully summarised, like sleeping on a slab of rock.

Waking up in Leek in Staffordshire wasn’t the most picturesque first wake up in the Tesla I’d envisioned as the beautiful countryside was hidden in fog and we’d had 4 hours of sleep each

I failed to fall back to sleep, but my friend did, so I watched a very cold and wet dawn creep in through the windows and panoramic sunroof. 

I also watched two other cars come and go – one of which was a hunter’s van containing three Hound of the Baskervilles-sized hunting dogs. 

In the end, my friend and I ended up getting four hours sleep each. 

It wasn’t a great way to kick-off but thanks to the Camp Mode we were at least nice and warm. And, as only a year before we’d spent a night in the Peaks in minus five degrees on top a Jeep Wrangler in a Tentbox, we knew how absolutely brutal car ‘glamping’ really can be in cold weather.

Going for a brisk wake-up walk around 8am, we packed down the Air Mattress and set off for our pre-Scotland charging and feed stop at Tebay.

Day 2/night 2: How much difference a day can make

The Tebay pit stop seriously perked us both up. 

The car had a full charge on the Superchargers – we were charging to 100 per cent, which isn’t as good for the battery as charging to 80 per cent but it’s sensible for wilderness camping to have maximum range – while I managed a nap.

The nap was followed by a shower (you swap your car key for the shower key at Tebay and it’s free to use), and we both scoffed full English breakfasts.

Then it was back into the car for another three hours of driving up to Edinburgh for an afternoon ‘city break’.

The roads were opening up and the scenery became road trip goals – in my opinion the best motorway driving in the UK is the Cumbria-Borders stretch – and everything was looking up. 

Edinburgh was a chance to get some steps and movement in, and a bit of big city excitement before the total and utter isolation that the next sleeping spot would bring. 

We’d pre-planned to sleep in a very remote valley between Edinburgh and the Ardrossan ferry terminal where we had a 9am ferry to catch the next morning. 

I wanted to try Edinburgh public charging because it has a bad reputation, and although I did manage to find a charger, for a capital city Edinburgh charging has some way to go 

We drove for about three hours to walk around Edinburgh and find some hot food before our next lay-by camp 

I also wanted to test Edinburgh’s EV charging infrastructure because it has a bad reputation for being underprovided. 

In reality this is unfortunately true – considering it’s the capital of Scotland the charging options are pretty slim. 

We weren’t fussy and didn’t mind what speed we charged, but that didn’t really help. There weren’t many chargers and almost all of them were in use. 

And unlike London, Edinburgh doesn’t have lots of lamppost chargers, so all the on-street chargers are taken by residents.

We did, however, find one fast charger near George Street, so we walked around Edinburgh and had some hot food while the Model Y slow charged back up to 100 per cent. 

At around 6pm we drove off to find our next Park4night place.

The second night camping location was the stuff of Instagram posts – although murky weather the remote Scottish hills were beautiful and it felt safe which led to a great nights’ sleep 

The Model Y has massive windows and a huge panoramic roof so you get 360 views when you wake up

This time we wanted the spot to be as isolated as possible, and we found it; a single-track road about 30 minutes from the coast without a soul in sight. Not a star, not an animal – nothing. And it felt so much safer.

I should explain that my school friend and I both grew up in very remote parts of Herefordshire and Shropshire so having no-one around feels safer to us than having people nearby, but over people might entirely disagree with this logic.

Feeling far more secure than night one allowed us to relax into our bedtime camping ‘routine’ (i.e. cleaning our teeth with water from a bottle).

And we got the bed blowing-up level right this time, which meant the Air Mattress went from being a slab of rock to incredibly comfortable. 

While we could use the Tesla Model Y’s Theatre mode again, part of the relaxation of camping is winding down reading a book 

Then we got the Camp Mode temperature perfect, read our books and drifted off to sleep in our very cosy hotel on wheels. We slept like logs.

I woke about 6am to a glorious stormy Scottish dawn sky, and an empty valley of mountains. 

It was everything I’d thought Tesla living would be. And the night became an amusing memory.

Day three/night three: Tesla living on the Isle of Arran – as good as glamping gets

Scotland has ‘right-to-access’ laws so it’s much easier to camp in a car in Scotland than England. A place as remote as the Isle of Arran is a real test for glamping in an EV 

Starting off at 7.20am to drive 20 minutes for an ultra-rapid top-up before we boarded the Ardrossan car ferry, we pulled up at the InstaVolt chargers outside Stevenston McDonalds. Who doesn’t love a retail park and a Maccies hash brown before 8am? 

The loos gave us the chance to brush our teeth and clean our faces while the car went from around 80 to 100 per cent charge – after all, glamping is all about glamour.

The Model Y Long Range AWD has a range of 373 miles which gives you around 330/340 real world range. 

We didn’t actually need to be at 100 per cent before going across to the Isle of Arran – which is only 56 miles in circumference – but, while there are a few chargers in the ‘capital’ of Arran (Brodrick), ZapMap said they only take RFID cards so we played it very over safe. 

We put the car on some Instavolt ultra-rapid chargers near the ferry port before we boarded 

While living out of a Tesla you have to find food and washing facilities wherever you can, and sometimes it’s McDonalds or nothing (even at 8am)

Sentry Mode – Tesla’s anti-theft feature which records footage using the car’s threat detecting external cameras and sensors – came into its own during the crossing, as did the Tesla app 

Boarding the Ardrossan ferry, we were in excellent EV company with the four cars nearest us all being EVs. Clearly range anxiety isn’t a thing in the Scottish Isles.

During the 55 minute crossing, Sentry Mode – Tesla’s anti-theft feature which records footage using the car’s threat detecting external cameras and sensors – came into its own during the crossing, as did the Tesla app in general. 

I felt very smug knowing that the none of the many car alarms going off belonged to the Model Y because the Tesla app hadn’t alerted me to any issues.

We also had far too much fun watching ourselves on the Sentry Mode cameras disembarking the ferry as we sat waiting for the cars in front to drive off. 

For the rest of the day we drove around Arran, enjoying the freedom of the car and lack of time restraints, like hotel check-ins, and simply let nature lead us. We went for a walk, swam in the very cold sea, and watched the wildlife – Arran is famous for its seals.

The Isle of Arran only has four public chargers and you can only get a ferry to the mainland: There are three in Brodrick and one near Blackwaterfoot so you can really test range anxiety

Driving around the Isle of Arran with no check-in times to abide by we could enjoy the scenery and outdoor pursuits to our own schedule 

Tesla’s cabin pre-conditioning feature on the app was also a godsend for when we wanted to come back to a warm car and heated seats and steering wheel after a freezing dip.

While our day activities were quite messy, the Tesla and its vegan seats were very easy to keep clean. 

As a living in a car goes it was remarkably easy to stay tidy and the vast storage throughout meant we were never short of space for our stuff.

The Model Y has 854 litres of boot space as well as a 117-litre frunk: more than enough space for all our ‘glamping’ stuff and the front trunk became a designated space for wet swimming costumes, towels and muddy boats. 

The hooks above the passenger doors were also useful to hang our clothes to dry.

The Tesla has lots of space, and it was very easy to keep clean. Even if we left the bed in place, we still had plenty of space for our bags and the frunk meant we could separate wet clothes

Although the Model Y has bi-directional charging (where you can power appliances from the car), we didn’t take a kettle or camping chairs mainly because, without an awning or a settled camping spot, sitting outside in the bracing Scottish winter wind didn’t seem very appealing.

While the car means you can go anywhere, anytime, playing everything by ear also has its downfalls: We drove to get dinner at 6pm on the far side of the island only to be told the restaurant was fully-booked. 

Although we did eventually manage to have a very early dinner at a hotel near Brodrick, the Tesla glamping lesson of the day here would be to at least pre-book your meal reservations, especially if it’s out of season.

Parked up against the sea, Tesla camping on the Isle of Arran is truly an amazing experience 

During the afternoon, we’d driven from the north west of Arran across to the north east and had passed many a lovely, big, isolated lay-by, noting a few that we’d be happy to park for the night in (frankly we were spoilt for choice on Arran).

Amusingly (or mildly concerningly depending how you look at it), I’d turned to my friend as I eyed up one particular lay-by (the one we ended up choosing) and said; ‘I’ll never look at a lay-by the same way again’. She said she’d been thinking the exact same thing. 

In the space of a few nights, Tesla camping had changed us – we’d become discerning connoisseurs of lay-bys. I will forever look at scenic lay-by and think ‘that looks like a very nice place to spend the night in an EV’. 

In the end, we chose one glorious lay-by near the sea, and with our glamping night routine down to a T, we settled in for our last sleep.

We watched Netflix’s Nobody Wants This from our Air Mattress bed, thoroughly enjoying the Model Y mobile cinema offered to modern day EV nomads, and the brooding backdrop of the dark Scottish hills.

Waiting to board the ferry back to mainland UK: Is Tesla glamping for the fainthearted? No. But is it a fantastic adventure? Yes. 

It felt sad to say goodbye to our house on wheels on the drive home as we’d become quite attached

The next morning, after we had one last cold sea swim before boarding the ferry to begin our drive back to London, we both agreed we’d happily spend another three nights sleeping in the Tesla. 

Living out of one? No. Glamping out of one again? Without a doubt. 

Just make sure your friends are up for an adventure and aren’t at all precious…