For the sake of pollution I really hope he's not idling a diesel all day. And [most] generators are also really bad.
Hank certainly has other options. He can stay at RV camp grounds and use their hookups. He can buy massive banks of batteries. He can travel only in good weather in temperate climates. I'm just speculating assuming none of these are acceptable options.
It's far better to run an old one into the ground.
You don't even need to go looking for the production "costs" of the vehicle. Just think of the distance that all the different parts of your new vehicle have travelled before they're put together... and then shipped to your country.
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/readerschoice/4368147/A...
[1] Past personal experience: Many of the elderly people I have seen go through car crashes in which the airbag deploys experience injuries from the airbag that often lead to their death or convalescence. Of course, they would have fared no better without the airbag.
This has some interesting references: http://www.salon.com/2008/04/21/ask_pablo_cars/
The best of both worlds is to ride an old chassis with a modern/freshly rebuilt engine. Both frugal and low pollution. There's no reason to run the chassis into the ground using an engine that's burning oil and choking on the gas.
Partially agree! Modern engines, or a properly rebuilt & maintained engine, can do great things for an older chassis. That said, a rolling chassis can and will wear out. There comes a time where replacing all the failing parts is a losing proposition both for you and Earth.
But from a pollution point of view not even close.
PS. Shipping is not really that expensive in terms of energy.
Your purchase of that already-extant vehicle will trigger production of another in today's very tightly-managed-inventory world.
Increasingly, even automobiles are made to order (c.f.: Tesla).
Darren from Hak5 is touring across America to hacker spaces and the like, and he did something like that[0] which surprisingly was used to power more than I thought would be feasible. And this was on a sprinter van, so with a bus like this, one could get 4x the amount of energy.
Sample window air conditioner: http://www.sears.com/kenmore-15-100-btu-room-air-conditioner...
1410 watts, AKA 2 horsepower.
Old fashioned space heater: http://www.sears.com/kenmore-oil-filled-indoor-heater/p-0327...
1350 watts
If one of those units is enough for the bus, and it's on 30% of the time that would mean around 250 W per hour power requirement, resulting in 6 kWh over the day.
In a reasonably sunny environment, solar panels can get 100 W per square meter. Let's say there are around 15 sqm available on the roof, yielding a total of about 12 kWh over the day - that's assuming around 8 hours of sun. If that doesn't work out due to latitude, it would be relatively easy to design panels that can be unfolded, providing extra area and serving as an extensible roof at the same time.
If batteries and inverter don't swallow more than 50% of that yield, it should be enough to drive a normal AC, lighting, and a laptop, maybe even a small fridge. You'd need a backup stove for the winter though.
This is why some full time RV'ers are picky about what state they are in for a given season. If you're in Texas, or another hot climate in the summer in a large bus, you'll need two or three tons (24,000 to 36,000 BTU) of A/C capacity (sometimes more!) to keep it habitable through mid-day and late afternoon.
If you have a large (cover the roof) solar/battery/inverter system, you can run all night without having generators start (and interrupt everyone's sleep) in most cases.
Most people that I know of use LP for heat.
Many of the comments here about cooking fuels being heavier than air are correct about the danger- nothing that proper ducting and a bilge pump could not handle. In order to live like this you must adopt a camping lifestyle. Everyday life activities, such as cooking and bathing, become more like camping and require more preparation.
edit-poor formatting, sorry. I meant the asterisks to be bullet points.
That being said, I feel like one would probably better off trying to solve the heater on the cold night problem by first approaching it from a fluid dynamics perspective (kind of like a glycol HVAC) and then using minimum energy for things like a pump. Though that is probably outside of the scope for this specific project, but it is probably worth looking into for those interested in building on what is going on here.
Natural gas would be ideal, gasoline in a good engine second best.