Jackery’s rooftop tent is also a powerful solar generator

Jackery transforms a humble rooftop tent into a powerful solar generator that allows any car to spend a weekend or more off the grid. Although it’s just a concept shown at CES for now, Jackery says it will put the tent into production around the end of 2024.

The retractable solar panels are said to produce up to 1,000W of electricity when the car is parked and the tent is open and facing south. According to Jackery’s estimates, this is enough to generate 4.96 kWh per day in the western United States, and 4 kWh if moving east. There’s no mention of its wind resistance, but that’s not an issue at all for a concept parked on the ugly carpet at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Rooftop tents can already be fitted with solar panels from a number of companies, including Jackery. But these panels tend to be lightweight, flexible panels so as not to overwhelm the tent’s folding mechanism, and they rarely cover the entire surface area due to size mismatches. This results in relatively poor solar energy conversion efficiency for the available surface area. The Jackery’s rooftop tent maximizes power generation by filling the entire roof with solar cells and extending them outwards, while also cleverly integrating the wiring required to power the Jackery power station.

The CES concept tent is powered by an independent 1.26kWh E1000 Plus power plant capable of providing 2000W AC output. This is enough to run a 1150W portable air conditioner for about 1 hour, a 60W car refrigerator for about 45 hours, or a 900W electric cooker for about 1 hour – or longer if you add the LFP expansion battery for a total energy storage of up to 5kWh. The E1000 Plus can also be charged from the car while driving (full charge in 7 hours) or via a wall socket (1.7 hours).

It’s unclear who Jackery is partnering with to produce the tents. Nonetheless, the concept comes with a memory foam mattress, insulation, dimmable lighting with color control, and waterproof fabric with blackout windows. Jackery says the production version will “come with an onboard charging module” (whatever that means), with details to be revealed sometime in the fourth quarter.

It’s too early to call it a trend, but I’m excited to see solar generator specialists like Jackery and Ecoflow (through a partnership with Winnebago) embracing the community of Overlanders, vanlifers, and weekend warriors with fully integrated solutions that empower them Ability to easily escape the constraints of modern work/life.