Skip to main content

I turned my van into an office with a battery-powered AC and heat pump

Like a lot of remote workers, I know I’m lucky to be able to work from home. I have a home office with a comfy leather chair, a skylight, and an oversized doofus of a dog, Marty, who reclines adorably on the couch behind me for Zoom meetings. But I’d also be lying if I didn’t admit I go a little stir crazy from time to time, yearning to work from somewhere other than the same place I eat, sleep, and relax.

How about a van? I bought my 1990 Mitsubishi Delica for camping, but it always seemed like it could serve as a mobile office with a view, if not for one critical shortcoming: For nine months out of the year in Portland, it’s too cold, and for the other three, it’s too hot. Without adding thousands of dollars for a battery power system, my best bet was heavy socks and gloves. But EcoFlow gave me a glimmer of hope at CES 2023 when I spotted the EcoFlow Wave 2. With an onboard battery, it promised to heat or cool anywhere, no external power system needed.

Recommended Videos

So could it turn my Delica into a comfy mobile office? I welcome a good challenge, so I took my review unit and loaded it into the van, along with my laptop and a Thermos of coffee, and headed down by the river – literally – to dabble as a vanlifer.

An EcoFlow Wave 2 air conditioner and heat pump inside a Mitsubishi Delica van.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Down by the river

Look, nobody said staying comfortable in a glass box would look cool. Since the Wave 2 needs to both draw air in and puff it out, it requires a maniacal-looking tangle of tentacles that vent to outside air to work properly. While EcoFlow includes a foam rectangle with cutouts for the tubes, it was far too small to fit my window, so I spent 30 minutes with a box cutter and gaffer tape to custom-fit some cardboard. My final install ended up looking a bit like something you would build in StarCraft.

Lest you think this janky-looking setup would alarm my beachgoing compatriots, you haven’t been to Portland recently. At the parking lot, I ended up sandwiched between a couple of biker bros who rolled up on Harley Softails to smoke weed and a blonde lady in a GMC Denali who spent the whole time shouting into her phone or flossing with her door open. Neither of them tried to tell me about their startup, so I still considered my new digs superior to a coworking space.

A Mitsuhbishi Delica van parked at the Columbia River.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Reclined in my swiveling captain’s chair with a view of the Columbia River, I fired up the Wave 2 and got to work on my laptop. Though I had imagined using it in heat mode on a 58-degree spring day, the afternoon sun blasting the Delica’s greenhouse-like design left me sweltering as soon as I parked, so I flicked on the AC instead. Fifty-degree air pumped out the louvered vents in just a few minutes. To my surprise, it was so quiet, nobody even noticed on video calls.

Opening all the windows would have truthfully been a more reasonable way to keep cool, given the outside air temp, but I had committed to suffer for my gadgetry, so I sealed myself in and cranked the AC.

Though it’s rated to provide 5,100 BTU of cooling, which should really be enough for a small room, the Wave 2 struggled to keep up with the sheer amount of sunlight enveloping the van, and temperatures hovered around 78 degrees. In short sleeves, I was perfectly comfortable, but it wasn’t really what I imagined for such a cool day.

Impressive battery life

What was admirable was the battery life: Though the app predicted three hours of runtime under my nonstop use, the battery reached 1% and proceeded to inexplicably keep ticking for another 45 minutes. It was either a miracle fit for the Torah, or poor battery prediction in the app, but I have to admit I was happy for the extra time. Since I started my experiment after lunch, it got me to the end of the workday, but you’d really have to augment this thing to get eight hours of nonstop operation. The Delta Max 1600 would probably be the best pick from EcoFlow’s catalog, but any solid portable power station with over 1kWh of capacity would probably do the trick, by my estimates.

To test the heating function, I headed back out on an overcast 49-degree afternoon. My van started at 67 degrees (remember all that glass) and the Wave 2 worked its way up to 70 in less than 5 minutes of pumping out air that reached 105 degrees at the louvers. Since it was no longer fighting a relentless battle with the sun, it even managed to cycle on and off, keeping my space perfectly habitable.

We don’t yet know what the Wave 2 will cost, but considering the last-gen version goes for $1,500, we can rest assured it won’t be cheap. But there is literally nothing else like it right now. The previous-gen Wave doesn’t do heat, and any other heat pump solution would require a massive wiring project. Plus you could use this thing in a tent, a yurt, or just in place of a window air conditioner in a room that doesn’t get cold enough with your home HVAC.

After returning to a toasty warm van in a spring rainstorm, I think I could get used to this whole “van office” thing. I just need to build a bed for Marty.

Topics
Nick Mokey
As Digital Trends’ Editor in Chief, Nick Mokey oversees an editorial team covering every gadget under the sun, along with…
This Costway outdoor pizza oven isn’t messing around — $169 off for Black Friday
Costway outdoor pizza oven on patio

Forget those indoor-friendly pizza ovens. Forget the low-flame and low-smoke options. Me, personally, I want the real deal. That's why when I came across the Costway outdoor pizza oven I knew I had to share. It comes with a pizza stone, for authentic stone-cooked pizza duh, and a waterproof cover to protect the grill. But here's the best part: It can fire-cook a 12-inch homemade pizza pie. Oh, yes. Normally $309, it's on sale today for $140, which saves you $169. That is an incredible deal, let alone for something like this that can handle the fire and brimstone. It's live already alongside some other great early Black Friday deals.

 
Why should I buy this Costway outdoor pizza oven for Black Friday?
The best thing to do when it's time to cook, in my humble opinion, is to head outside and light up my trusty Blackstone. It works great, but if I want to wood fire a pizza I'll need something else. That's precisely where this Costway outdoor pizza oven comes in handy. You can adjust the level of fire and smoke to create a perfectly cooked pizza for your family, charred or not. The dual thermometer makes it easy to adjust the temperature when it's lit. Moreover, the under storage allows you to place some wood, utensils, or whatever else you might need -- so you're not always traipsing back to your shed, house or garage.

Read more
Be ready for storm season: Dual fuel portable generator is $150 off today
Pulsar dual fuel portable generator with gas can in background

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that a ton of early Black Friday deals have dropped. There are the usual suspects like laptops, electronics, gaming gear, and beyond. But me, I prefer to pick up unusual items during the huge holiday sales. You know exactly what I mean, the kind of stuff that doesn't usually go on sale any other time. One of those items is a portable generator. Where I live it seems like they rarely go on sale, and when you need them most they're never in stock. People flock to the stores to buy them just before a big storm. Well, right now, Pulsar and Walmart have an incredible deal on a 12,000-watt dual-fuel generator. Normally $900 it's down to $749 which saves you $151. It can run for up to 12 hours on an 8-gallon fuel tank.

 
Why shop the Pulsar 12,000-watt dual-fuel portable generator for Black Friday?

Read more
Save up to $550 on the Velotric Discover e-bikes for Black Friday
Velotric Discover 2 left profile view with parked by next to the Farmington River.

We're not even to the official Black Friday yet and already I'm feeling the deals fatigue. If I'm going to get around these next couple of weeks I'll need something that does all the work. Something like, you guessed it, an e-bike. Enter Velotric with its excellent selection of e-bikes, which tend to rate highly here amongst my colleagues. The Velotric Discover 2, for example, received high marks -- 4.5 stars. But while we do love a good product or two here at Digital Trends, we also love us some great deals and discounts. That's why we couldn't pass up the opportunity to share these Velotric on the Discover 1 Plus and Discover 2.
Velotric Discover 1 Plus e-bike -- now $1,049, was $1,599 34% off

Best Features:

Read more