backchannel: vanworld silliness

the OP

I restrained myself from posting this mini-rant on reddit:

it seems a little silly to use an inverter to convert the 12v battery to 240v, only to then plug in a laptop charger that takes it back down to 20v…

can’t I just go 12v > 20v?

yes

it seems a little silly to use an inverter to convert the 12v battery to 240v, only to then plug in a laptop charger that takes it back down to 20v.

Vanworld is infested with silly. People who don’t understand the basics fixate on buzzwords¹ like inverter and whip out the credit card. So we get threads like “I plugged my (12v) Maxxfan into my inverter and it burned up. Why did that happen?”

Am I right in saying that buying a DC voltage regulator to go from 12v to 20v and plug that directly into my laptop would be more efficient?

Yes, although there are OEM and aftermarket car chargers designed for that purpose. I cut the ciggy connector off mine and replaced it with an Anderson PowerPole (the connector standard in my build).

immediate example

My next tab of reading contained this thread:

I have a [van] with 2nd battery and solar. IF I go to a campsite I’d like a portable ecoflow, jackery, Bluetti or recommendation for a solution that I can plug it it to shore power for charge and the like

Buzzword brainworms make people fixate on buzzword solutions. I keep hearing the word power station so a power station must be the answer to every problem.

1. buzzword timeline: reflectix ->, flexible -> walkable -> DC-DC -> power station -> CIGS. Nothing inherently wrong with any of these products. The problem is people beliveing them to be magic solutions to poorly-understood problems. ↩