So I found other sources carrying the same story, and linking to Bloomberg. You're an adult; if you feel like going to Bloomberg's site, go ahead, but I'll skip that.
I'm not sure if said hipster hasn't gone camping before or just hasn't taken his big bucks Tesla, but there's an interesting aspect to this story. The Tesla Model S has a mode that users informally call "camper mode". It configures the car in a low current consumption mode, allowing you to sleep in the back with the air conditioner on (although it appears to leave the running lights on). It seems it would be most comfortable if you're under 5'6"; if you're bigger you'll have to sleep on your side with your knees bent. Assuming you're in a campground, you'll be the quietest air conditioned camper in the place.
Because an electric car is silent when not moving, noise isn’t a problem and ventilation needn’t be an issue either. Assuming your battery won’t run down too far, you can set the climate control system temperature, fan, and filtration to your preferred levels. In Tom Randall’s test night, he found that the battery charge decreased from 40 percent to 33 percent. That still left him with a 90-mile driving range for the Model S configuration he was sleep testing.It's not as easy as pulling into a campground and flipping a switch, but you can get there. There are online forums, tutorials, and an enthusiastic community. There's even supposed to be an independent (that is, not Tesla-official) phone app that you can use to put your car in camper mode.
Growing up in Florida, I think of camping weather as November through March or April. This time of year is too unpleasant, but I never had a camper with air conditioning. I could see how having AC would extend my camping to other times of year. Not that a Tesla is even remotely in my future!
We go "camping" a lot; 100-150 days a year. Now we "camp" in a trailer, still have the tent and sometimes use it but mostly the trailer. This spring at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon we watched three 20 something guys pull up within an hour or so of sunset. They messed around, unloaded some stuff from their car onto the table. Eventually a tent was produced and laid on the ground. They ate, messed around some more. One of them spent about half an hour trying to get half a dozen splits of wood lit. finally with darkness rapidly approaching one began to mess with the tent. Clearly didn't know what he was doing. Headlights on now, still trying to get the tent right. Three hours after they arrived we went to bed, could still hear them over there. Morning! Their tent looks like Mama Cass laid on it overnight. I'm guessing they forgot the poles. We ate breakfast and went on our hike. Come back at noon; their gone. Their spot reserved for the weekend stayed empty. I assume they will never camp again...
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