This Cute Electric Camper Is An Off-Roading BEAST!

[Music] foreign the idea of getting off the Beaten Track literally and figuratively sounds deeply appealing The Great Outdoors off-grid Retreats and the sense of adventure but I suspect that most people have cars decked out with the capability to go on those off-road Adventures don't do much more than Mount a curb with gusto perhaps that's due to a lack of confidence or maybe the lack of mountains in Chelsea River and owners might be an exception to that rule GMC hum reviews I'm not so sure and of course there are a load of EB van conversions such as the ID buzz but all of those are thundering great big brutes ready to bulldoze whatever lays in their path go gently and all that jazz so really you want a narrow Nimble mountain goat that can competently and elegantly scale a boulder and offer you a place to sleep I think that's precisely what we've got here with the adventure one from potential Motors here in Canada and if not mountain goat then certainly a mini benevolent Transformer cameoing as a cooler box a brief pause if you're wondering why we're out here filming in Canada it's because we're here ahead of our live show in Vancouver on the 8th 9th 10th of September it will be a fantastic Festival of clean energy and electric vehicles in partnership with BC Hydro so get your tickets today let's start by looking at the exterior of this adventure one which in my mind is very reminiscent of a Daihatsu hija only one that's got a little bit more sophisticated either that or you know a canoe that's done some serious summer shredding but the thing that we absolutely need to focus on first is the proportions because they're definitely a little bit strange it's 1.6 meters wide and 4.5 meters long which technically puts it in the same footprint as like a bydato3 or a Nissan Aria but it looks a little bit strange and that's because it's so much taller it's about 2.2 meters tall the ground clearance is 30 centimeters or so and that has the effect of making it look like it's sort of sucking in or you know a bit like the night bus and Harry Potter or that weird thing where you kind of Stroop or try to squeeze out of an aisle and that choice is very very deliberate because if you've got a slightly narrower track one that's maybe more reflective of what you'd expect on a recreational vehicle it matches the trails and Pathways that you would want to go off-road on it means that this vehicle can go places that something like a rivian or a GMC Hummer EV absolutely wouldn't be able to go and that's really reflective of what potential Motors are trying to do here they're trying to make these vehicles so that you can go further and Adventure further and go to places that other vehicles can't necessarily take you all that whilst having sort of the Comforts of an RV as well and to further make that possible they have equipped this vehicle with a ton of super sophisticated intelligent software all powered by their proprietary oros or off-road operating system and we will come on to that in just a little bit but before we do if you're outside of the lucky people who were fortunate enough to place a pre-order for one of these you may not have heard of Potential Motors so who exactly is this New Brunswick based company so potential Motors is an off-road electric vehicle technology company that builds technology to enable people to drive in challenging conditions so our team has a ton of experience in AI computer vision and software development and then in vehicle Dynamics and all of that leads into the technology that we build to apply to mining Automotive Vehicles like this in the off-road space and then even into two-wheel Vehicles like motorcycles so this vehicle is really meant to be a demonstrator of you know what we see this future to look like and what we see our technology looking like in a vehicle so this is really focused around you know that experience getting it out there in one way so we can start showing this at different shows and you know get the potential Motors brand out there as well and get close to the customer understand exactly what their problems are when they're driving in challenging terrain and off-road so that we can build technology that's better suited for them I see this what we're building here as being a piece to the autonomy puzzle you know I think this idea of autonomy in every place all the time we're still quite a ways off of that I mean we see it in you know Phoenix and San Francisco kind of in located areas where autonomy is is working but if we expand that to be in all kinds of different areas and specifically in our use case looking at off-road terrain and you know case like mining industry or in the off-road industry where it's just completely different every time you get in the vehicle we're still a long ways out from that so the part that we're really solving is what is one of those fundamental parts that can help people today who are driving these vehicles but then also fundamentally help solve that problem autonomy in the future and that's really using sensors to understand the types of terrain that you're driving over pull up features from the train that you're driving in and all of that is going to help people drive today in a more fun experience we think and then also set ourselves up to be able to help solve these autonomy problems for you know the wider breath of what autonomy can be in the future now it is worth noting that this is a prototype so I'm not going to comment too much on the fit and finish but let's take a closer look at some of the features so first of all let's look at this light bar which I think is it's pretty sophisticated it's pretty elegant it makes the front of this look pretty friendly made only slightly more aggressive by Our Little Fangs that we've got here at the front tow hook clearly very useful if we're going to be taking this off-road and doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things now moving around to the side you can see these enormous and very appropriate 30 inch tires you can see that they've already had quite a lot of fun in this car already but obviously very necessary if you're going to be adventuring off-road we've got some interesting doors which again will come on to a little bit later when we go and have a look at the interior but big girl wing door so you can imagine already that that's probably going to emerge as a lovely canopy so you can sit out and and look at the environment lovely rugged Edge so you can scrape the mud off the off your shoes so you don't gather into the lovely interior you can actually store 40 liters of water on board very necessary if you're going to be spending a weekend camping or in a really really remote location but I think one of the coolest things is that it's got this inbuilt ladder so you can imagine sitting up there having a lovely rose at the end of the day um or you can store your spare tire there and then at the back you've got this enormous window so imagine sitting in there it's raining and you can look out of it at a beautiful Vista and actually it just looks so incredibly benevolent and friendly which if you're marching through an environment I think that's very important actually [Music] thank you we've come around to this to this technology demonstrator to see the oros or off-road operating system in action and what that is is an AI powered Vision system that can provide predictive analysis to predict the terrain in front of the vehicle and that could be integrated into a whole host of different vehicles from mining from recreational vehicles from side by sides and of course the adventure one and it's using a whole load of sensors from lidar to stereo cameras to control algorithms to machine learning you name it so that it can make proactive decisions about the terrain head rather than reacting to that situation as it arrives at it and it can use that predictive terrain analysis for practice suspension torque distribution precisely controlling the power to each of these wheels as well as that automatic terrain adaptation as well now this vehicle here it has thrown everything at it to test all of those different things so it's really got you know everything in the kitchen sink here including quad Motors so the adventure one doesn't have all of this but this is really really stress testing the technology that you have on the adventure one so it still is equipped with that automatic terrain adaptation and the overall effect of this is that you've got this kind of strategic crystal ball AI powered vehicle that can make those really really Savvy decisions about how to drive in the terrain ahead [Music] so we use a couple of sensors to actually detect what's in front of the vehicle and we look for two things we look for the shape of the terrain so that tells us how the vehicle is going to interact with the shape which can help us inform control but then we also look at visually what it looks like and that helps us infer characteristics about the terrain about how slippery it is or how soft it is and this is very much a technology demonstrator so you've got everything that you can possibly sort of demonstrate here on this vehicle um and then I guess you can cherry pick the specific things for different vehicle types but I'm really interested to know about the side-by-side market and imagine that there were you know a plethora of electric vehicle options surely this is going to take away from the Driving Experience well we hope not and that's one of the real challenges about new technologies and new markets the side-by-side Market is a recreational so it's not like getting from point A to point B it's actually about driving so what we're really interested in is how do you build in new technologies that make the vehicles safer but more fun to drive and lets the driver experience the drive more and not have to worry about fiddling with settings or changing modes and so when it's changing the modes what specifically is happening um from a kind of like it's detected the terrain ahead then what happens so that goes through our AI models so basically those artificial intelligence in there that helps decide what would be the best modes for the vehicles and those modes are typically controlling the drivetrain so classic examples are like should I be in two wheel drive or four-wheel drive but it can also go on to like should I be in sand mode or mud mode or hard pack mode and that can affect drivetrain but it also affects suspension so that you can either have the ride be very comfortable or if it's like hard packed you can do performance driving this is very much about assisted driving really instilling that thing that you mentioned that actually you can get serious efficiency here as well yeah so one of the really big challenges about off-road is it introduces a whole other complexity with efficiency so you can think about driving on-road you're kind of always on pavement it's nice and smooth relatively but in the off-road the conditions are changing all the time what happens is the wheels start to slip and they spin a lot and of course that's wasting energy so it takes a lot more effort to get a vehicle like these through terrain like that because they're soft so we found that with just being pretty smart about the right modes again making sure you're in the right mode and actually putting the right power to the right place at the right time you can actually save you can actually save energy and of course moving to EV and range anxiety that's a really big consideration for most drivers right let's talk about price as this is not cheap at 136 000 or roughly 88 000 pounds but it's maybe unsurprising given the limited number they're making and you do get a lot of off-road worthiness as alongside the predictive Advanced Driver assistant stuff there are some Mega approached breakover and large angles that surpass the rivian and the GMC Hammer EV and to pretty respect what are the stats too including a 70 kilowatt hour battery and 100 miles of off-road range or 250 ish on-road now here in Canada there's are a genuine consideration the adventure one seats for but sleeps too so two people will have to Brave the outdoors on an off-road overnight surgeon [Music] so moving on to the interior as we mentioned earlier we've got this lovely Gold Wing door which is doubling as this lovely canopy with a sort of panoramic roof it has this pretty nifty pocket so you can store your bits and Bobs in there they will stay in there and you can still open up the canopy now we've got four seats in here two of which can be removed to double as camping chairs so you could Swift them out sit under this canopy and enjoy the campsite and the lovely view now I did say that this is a prototype so I won't dwell too much on the quality of the fit and finish but immediately you can see that it's got that very lovely scandy style that so many of these electric vehicle campervan conversions have at the moment now despite the fact that this is still very narrow the it's still pretty sizeable in here and actually you can take out everything inside and still fit in a full palette so it remains that kind of deeply practical vehicle as well now potential motors have partnered with a really interesting company called egoe to make this fantastic kitchen now these are available for about five thousand pounds which is the same price as the rivian kitchen set that they did have although they have recently discontinued that and I have to show you some bits and pieces here because it is so neat and when you just slide it out honestly I cannot even begin to describe the sort of quality feel that that has much better than my own kitchen at home has to be said um so this slides in and out as we've just seen like that but you can actually take the whole unit out and leave it if you want to have the full interior space for storing things there are a couple of really nice features this is honestly the ultimate Tetris of kitchens uh this is a chopping board that and you can pop this a little sink like that and then you've got a couple of attachments so I could put a sink on there that just pops on there alternatively I could put a full shower again that just pops on there and then you've got your whole Choice there so super useful for all of those outdoor activities ax [Music] despite the fact that this vehicle is pretty narrow it doesn't feel that way once you're inside and I think that's largely because you have such an enormous amount of glass that gives you that sort of complete almost feels like 360 degree view enormous Windows enormous windscreen and actually because you're sat right on top of the wheel you have a very very clear of what's ahead of you and actually we've recently had a review in r1t and I did find that a bit of a challenge being sat so far back from the front of the vehicle definitely didn't give me that same confidence to really understand where I was in space whereas this does give you that real good perception and control a couple of other bits and pieces so we've got enormous buttons which I think super helpful if you're getting in and out of this car in Winter you've got gloves on you don't want to be fiddling taking the gloves off finding something on the screen it's really useful having that complete kind of tactility and big easy to find buttons there is a ton of space here it is not cramped in any way at all I have masses of space above me I thought I could stand here turned out to be sadly mistaken but certainly the rear seats and the front seats would glide through the Jack test foreign I think for whoever has placed a pre-order for this vehicle is going to have a fantastic time but potential Motors is about so much more than just this vehicle however what this does do is provide a really really clear example of how Advanced Driver assistance Technologies can equip you with the confidence and freedom to travel far and wide and I think about my dad who is you know 66 retired spends his time gallivanting across the UK in his camper van sourcing the UK's best bakeries and if he had something like this he could continue to do that for so many more years to come without his world shrinking and that is what Mobility should be all about

Channel: Fully Charged Show

Views: 706,165

Keywords: electric car youtube channel, renewable energy youtube, renewable energy electric vehicles, latest news on renewable energy, crowd funded youtube, kryten, fully charged show live, ev show, fully charged show, robert llewellyn, electric cars, fully charged, electric vehicles, evs, RV, campervan, sustainability, product design, self driving, autonomous driving, off-road driving, adventure, exploring, canada, automotive, lidar, clean mobility, electric mobility, everything electric show

Id: uLG7gxZkTNo

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 29 2023