Bailey Endeavour EV – An Electric Dream

The NEC in Birmingham was site to something very special this year, as Bristol-based manufacturer Bailey launched the Endeavour at this year’s Caravan & Motorhome Show. This hugely impressive vehicle is the company’s debut foray into the panel van conversion market, and you can read more about it in this previous edition of our blog. The even bigger news is that there’s an electric version of this remarkable campervan too.

Concept Vehicle Illustrates Possible Future

The Endeavour EV is currently a design concept developed in partnership with Ford Pro (based on their E-Transit platform). Although it is not in production, the Endeavour EV has been created to illustrate the potential future of campervan design and sustainable travel.

“The Endeavour EV project has given us the chance to build on an electric base vehicle for the first time but has also provided with the opportunity to experiment with new design concepts and materials in the living space,” said Bailey’s Managing Director Nick Howard, ahead of the unveiling at the NEC.

Everything on the Endeavour EV has been built, engineered or installed with sustainability in mind, and so all services and appliances used in the Endeavour EV use no fossil fuels for use. Everything that requires power is powered electrically. Even the fixtures and fittings have sustainability as a central tenet of their creation, with low carbon recycled materials used in work surfaces and upholstery fabrics etc. This all-in approach is important to Bailey.

Environmentally-aware Bailey

The Bristol-based company completed a carbon footprint analysis in 2021 and found that 53% of emissions came from the use of sold vehicles, 34% from the components required to manufacture vehicles and the remaining 13% from the manufacturing process itself. The majority of the total emissions are created through the combustion of fuel required to drive leisure vehicles on the road.

Their aim is to become a NetZero business by the year 2050, and this focus has led to the decarbonisation of the company’s day-to-day activities and operations, including a new solar panel and low energy lighting systems, the introduction of new waste reduction and recycling programme. The next step in of the company’s journey to NetZero is the vehicles themselves – in other words, utilising alternative power generation to replace the internal combustion engine. The Endeavour represents Bailey efforts to date.

Self Sufficiency

The standard version of the Endeavour (though it’s a truly wonderful vehicle and there is nothing ‘standard’ about it) is on sale to the public after a successful launch at the NEC. There are already elements of Bailey’s drive towards full sustainability incorporated into it. It is fitted with a 100-watt flexible solar panel (Truma) and a 92 amp/hour leisure battery. These can, in combination, go some way to offering campervan lifestylers an authentic off-grid self-sufficiency for their holidays.

As the Endeavour EV is a concept vehicle at this stage, it won’t be available to the public – but something like it will surely be the mainstream in a few years from now. You don’t have to be Greta Thunberg or David Attenborough to recognise that mankind has some serious alterations to make to behaviour – but this does not mean life has to become dull and boring. The Endeavour EV points the way to an exciting and fully sustainable future where hitting the road doesn’t have to mean harming the planet.