Life is all about making compromises, if you’ll allow the cliche. You can’t have it all, so you have to choose, to compromise. But, what if you could?
This compromise also applies to tiny houses, where you often sacrifice size and features, and even comfort, for a higher degree of mobility, and the other way around. If you want to stick to a smaller budget, you cut down features, but if you can afford more, you’ll end up with a bigger house that you won’t be as eager to haul from place to place.
So what if there was a house that could do both, namely be very towable and lightweight, yet still offer the comforts of a much larger mobile home? This is not a rhetorical question, because this tiny claims to be just that: the perfect mobile home, which also happens to be the first folding house on wheels to hit crowdfunding.
On paper, the Grande S1, the first model from California-based startup PODX GO, is the ideal mobile home. It’s very compact and relatively lightweight, so you can still tow it wherever you might roam, as long as your daily is an F-250 or equivalent, but it offers the comfort and the size of an actual apartment. It’s the tiny house unicorn, offered for the first time to the public – in CGI form, for the time being, and only on the condition that you take a giant leap of faith to pay for it to go into production.
Photo: PODX GO
The startup is actually a U.S. and China-based business, with a team of “avid RVers, designers, architects, and technologists” behind, and “a decade of experience in renewable energy, RVing, AioT, and sustainability.”
Them’s a bunch of fancy words considering PODX GO doesn’t have as much as a prototype of the Grande S1 tiny to show, so it’s ok if you’re feeling slightly suspicious. But the company does have something to show for the idea, namely a one-off college dorm project that they set up in Asia in 2020 and, which, apparently, is “still working great.” It’s shown in the second video available at the bottom of the page.
The Grande S1 would use the same system to blow up in size at camp, tripling the available living space. In travel mode, the unit has only 140 square feet (13 square meters) of interior space, which expands to 364 square feet (33.8 square meters) by opening up the sides. “Expand your tiny home from a trailer to a 3X larger apartment with a push of a button in 15 minutes DIY,” PODX GO says, in what sounds like the most magical of magical invitations on the tiny home market.
Photo: PODX GO
The system is not unlike what is already being used on the Casita from Boxabl, with the difference that the Grande S1 integrates a trailer, so it wouldn’t sit on the ground. The frame is high-tensile steel while the walls and roof are made with insulated polyurethane and laminate-covered plywood for the floor. The unit is indestructible, more or less: PODX GO says it’s water-, fire- and wind-resistant – and that’s not even the most spectacular thing about it!
Once you arrive at camp, you open up the sides, fold out the floor and the roof, and connect the parts to form the two expansions of the structure. The areas with utilities, like the bathroom and the kitchen, are located in the middle of the home, and everything else simply pops up by means of modular furniture.
It’s magic, but not quite. The Grande S1 offers a bedroom and a living area, and a secondary bedroom that can alternatively serve as an office or what-have-you. You’ll get all the creature comforts of a proper home, from washing machine and full-size appliances to enough room to move about and not feel like you’re living out of a box. You’ll also get water heater and AC, and the possibility to opt for a solar system to go off-grid, and smart home automation. What is there not to love, really?
Photo: PODX GO
Well, the fact that the Grande S1 doesn’t exist would be one thing. The current crowdfunding campaign is meant to raise funds towards the development of the first prototype, with the company promising a 90-day lead time on orders once the ink dries on the contract. Three floorplans will be made available, but no customization will be possible beyond getting to choose between the three.
Not that anyone would still want to personalize this space. As it is, the Grande S1 is close to the perfect tiny home because it’s lightweight (17,600 lbs/7,983 kg dry weight), compact and off-grid capable, but mostly because it’s spacious, well equipped, and ideal for the entire family. Whether the same degree of perfection will translate into the first prototype, and then to the production model is a whole different story.
But if it does reach production stage, a Grande S1 standard will retail for an MRSP of $85,000, which would make it more expensive than a Casita – but also larger and better specced, so much fancier.
Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends. Full profile
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