Divergent House Bus

A conventional RV contains an engine that makes waste heat, a heater that makes heat, a fridge that makes waste heat, an air conditioner that removes heat, and a generator that makes electricity while making more waste heat. Each of these was designed by someone solving one problem well and nobody solving the whole thing.

The result is a vehicle that spends energy fighting itself.

The premise

Treat it as one system. One structural battery, one coolant loop, one DC bus — so that heat rejected by one subsystem is heat another subsystem doesn’t have to generate.

The target build is a 25–27 foot battery-electric bus with roughly 300 miles of range, running a 300 kWh structural sodium-ion pack at 800 volts. Sodium-ion rather than lithium because the trade — more mass, lower cost, better thermal behaviour, no scarce inputs — is the right trade when the battery is also part of the structure and the thing is a house rather than a sports car.

Winter is the hard case, and the answer there is a small combined-heat-and-power generator whose waste heat is the point rather than a loss, tied into the same thermal loop.

Where it stands

Early-stage active design. The architecture and the energy model are established; the electrical subsystems are documented in most detail. This is not a validated build — nothing here has been through a full construction and test cycle, and the documentation carries explicit warnings about high-voltage and combustion hazards for exactly that reason.

Published anyway, because an integrated energy design that’s argued with in public is worth more than one that’s correct in a private folder.

Licensing

Hardware under CERN-OHL-S, code under MIT, documentation under CC-BY.