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Comment by rcpt | Hacker News Reader

Combination washer dryer in our prius https://ibb.co/Dp8YxM0

We've moved 5 times in the past 6 years and I spend a lot of time with outdoors hobbies (mountain biking, surfing -- pickups are hugely popular for both). But not owning a truck has never been an issue.

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Now do a 4'x8' sheet of plywood.

Should be fine with a roof rack (or without if you don't care about the paint)

When I buy sheet steel I use a station wagon because it's easier to plop it down on a roof rack and get it off later then it is to stick it in a truck or van.

It's actually devilishly hard to strap plywood to a roof rack in a way that it won't take off in the wind (you're essentially turning your car into a giant kite) but also won't warp. It can be done.. but it's hard.

Once I needed a good amount of plywood for some cabinets. At 8 sheets and other assorted lumber I started feeling really uncomfortable mounting that much weight on my roofrack - I know the rack has a limited capacity like 100-200lbs. Would have had no issues with a proper pickup truck.

I can just barely do that in my Mazda 3. Dimensional lumber is much easier since you can angle it more.

Easily fit in a Minivan ^_^

No joke, minivans are actually great for a lot of things people think they need a truck for.

But then you’re driving a minivan.

I've renovated four houses with my minivan.

We use our minivan for a lot of these things, but I’d love to buy bulk mulch / topsoil instead of the bags. But loose mulch doesn’t play well with the van.

I’ve always considered myself a GM//Chevy guy, but I’m strongly considering this truck.

And I love that it doubles as a Powerwall...

Eliminates the need for a generator (I work from home so if the power is out I can just take the ICE for errands and have the truck power the house — you don’t have to be a truck person to find that pretty nifty!)

> And I love that it doubles as a Powerwall...

That is a really cool feature. I think for extended outages (which we do have) a propane generator fed by a big tank is great. But most outages are a day or less, so having that all ready to go in your truck is really cool.

  Miata
  Is
  Always
  The
  Answer

Same, I pack two bikes inside our regular Prius all of the time. I moved across country with it packed full, and regularly do furniture moves, skis, climbing gear with 4x people, etc.

Be careful, just because you can fill your car with stuff, doesn’t mean you should, I learned that the hard way when I damaged my car’s suspension.

Be aware of the weight limitations of your car.

Firewood in the boot will do this I’m sure. There are a lot of big trees near me that like to fall over. Putting large sections in the boot to process at home can easily overload the car so much that the wheels at the front start to lift. You turn and nothing happens.

I own multiple station wagons fully agree with you. But what you're missing is that it's not about the ability to do things, it's about the image projected when doing them.

Over-specing vehicles is one of the ways the well to do advertise their well-to-do-ness. It's like a marble countertop but for the roads.

Sure you can put three kids in the back row of a Sentra, it has three seatbelts there after all. Sure you can haul plywood on anything with a roof-rack, that's what it's there for. Sure you can shove a washer in a Prius. All those things work great. Bust for most of HN to do them regularly would be "behavior below one's pay-grade" so to speak.

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