An unofficial race seems to be happening in the caravan world right now. More batteries, more solar, bigger fridges, bigger bathrooms, bigger vans and bigger price tags. And look, we love seeing what manufacturers can squeeze into a seriously capable touring caravan, but what about those of us who simply want to just nick off for the weekend?
What if you don’t own a big 4WD? What if you don’t have somewhere to park a full-size caravan, let alone a medium-sized one? Or perhaps you simply don’t want to spend the equivalent of a house deposit on something you’ll use for a handful of weekends and holidays each year.
Should you miss out on having your own little home away from home? German company Urbanoid reckons not… and we agree.
Its solution is called the Booba One and, once you’ve finished sniggering at the name, there’s actually a rather clever little camping trailer underneath it. And I have to admit, I would love to try this one.
Urbanoid’s thinking is pretty simple. Why wait for the big annual holiday when there are weekends and public holidays ripe for a quick camping escape? The Booba has therefore been designed to live at home, hitch up quickly and be light enough to tow behind almost any car.
The production-spec Booba One has a kerb weight of just 280kg, a payload of 120kg and a maximum permissible weight of 400kg. It’s an unbraked trailer and Urbanoid says almost any car can tow it, although naturally Australian buyers would need to check the towing limits and requirements of their particular vehicle.
It’s also small enough to suit people who don’t have acres of room at home. An optional storage frame allows the Booba to be stored vertically, while its compact dimensions make it a much more realistic proposition for garages and smaller properties than a conventional caravan.
This isn’t a miniature hard-sided caravan. The Booba is effectively a compact camper trailer with a fibre-reinforced composite body. Once you reach camp, the top folds out to create the sleeping area and an inflatable tent expands above it.
According to Urbanoid, one person can inflate the tent in just one minute and 50 seconds, with the entire setup ready for sleeping in around five to seven minutes. That’s exactly the sort of setup time you want from something designed for weekend escapes.
The air-column tent uses ripstop fabric with a 5,000mm water column rating and includes two side windows, a roof window and 11 ventilation areas. There’s also an inner blackout tent. So while you’re still very much camping rather than caravanning, there’s considerably more between you and the elements than there would be in your average dome tent.
Here’s something I particularly like about the Booba. Despite its tiny footprint, it has four seats around a removable, swivelling table.
One of the compromises with many ultra-small campers is that they’re essentially a bed on wheels. They’re fantastic when the weather is nice, but when it starts bucketing down you’re suddenly spending an awful lot of quality time sitting on your mattress.
The Booba gives you a proper little dining space as well as sleeping for two. Although when you’re sleeping, your feet and legs do encroach into the dining area. So despite those four seats, it really is a couples camper. If you were travelling with kids, you’d need another sleeping solution for them.
There are also five storage compartments, so you’re not necessarily going to spend the entire weekend climbing over your bags.
Small doesn’t have to mean completely stripped out. The Booba One comes with an EcoFlow River 3 power station with 245Wh capacity and 300W rated power, offering AC, DC, USB-C and USB-A outputs.
There’s also a separate 50,000mAh power bank feeding the 12V LED interior lighting, plus two illuminated storage compartments with motion sensors.
Water is handled by a 45-litre tank that can be filled externally, paired with a 17L/min diaphragm pump. And in one of the Booba’s quirkier design touches, the outdoor shower is concealed inside what looks like one of the trailer’s exhaust outlets.
No, the Booba doesn’t actually have an exhaust. It just apparently likes pretending it does.
The 180cm pull-out shower gives you a way to rinse off outside, although don’t expect an ensuite bathroom. This is still a very compact camping trailer and you’ll need to make your own arrangements when nature calls.
There isn’t a built-in kitchen either. For some buyers, that’s going to be an immediate deal-breaker. For others, I’m not convinced it matters. Plenty of us already own portable camping stoves, barbecues and fridges, and Urbanoid’s accessories are intended to expand what you can do around the base trailer. Accessories announced for the Booba include a bicycle rack connection, inflatable awning and external table.
So, rather than dragging an entire kitchen around every time you leave home, you can pack the equipment you actually need for that particular trip.
Well… kind of. But I don’t think that’s necessarily an insult.
Urbanoid itself doesn’t pretend the Booba is a caravan. The company positions it somewhere between a caravan and traditional tent camping, even referring to the experience as “tenting”. Here in Australia, we would probably just refer to it as a tiny camper trailer.
For me, that’s where the appeal lies. The Booba isn’t trying to recreate your entire house on wheels. It’s trying to remove some of the annoying parts of tent camping while keeping the simplicity that makes camping fun in the first place.
You’re sleeping off the ground. You’ve got a comfortable sleeping setup, somewhere to sit, storage, lighting, power and water. Yet you’re not towing a two- or three-tonne caravan behind you. For a quick Friday-afternoon escape that’s ready to go when you are, it’s an appealing compromise.
This is probably the most appealing part of the whole concept. Caravan design has increasingly gone hand-in-hand with large tow vehicles, but not everyone owns (or wants to own) a dual-cab ute or big 4WD.
At only 400kg fully loaded, the Booba opens up camping to a completely different category of vehicle. Urbanoid specifically designed the trailer with smaller cars and EVs in mind. The company claims towing the small, light and aerodynamic trailer increases an electric vehicle’s energy consumption by around 15 per cent.
How that figure translates across different vehicles and Australian driving conditions is another matter, but the underlying idea is pretty interesting.
As more people move into hybrids and EVs and as plenty of Australians continue driving perfectly capable small cars, perhaps the answer isn’t always finding a vehicle capable of towing a bigger caravan. Maybe the answer is finding something smaller to tow.
At the moment, the Booba One is a European product and not yet available here. In Europe, it’s priced at €15,900 (approximately $26,000 in Australia).
At that price point, it would probably be a big fat no for the vast majority, given its tent-on-wheels vibe. But who knows what will happen if they make their way across the ocean or if a local manufacturer introduces something very similar.
For extended touring or spending months on the road, I’d choose a proper caravan or camper trailer every time. The Booba isn’t going to replace one.
But remember, not every camping trip is a lap of Australia. Sometimes it’s two nights beside a lake. Sometimes it’s leaving work on Friday, driving an hour or two and being home again Sunday afternoon. For that kind of camping, dragging around a shower, toilet, kitchen, washing machine, huge battery bank and several tonnes of caravan can be serious overkill.
Is it for everyone? Absolutely not. But does it have a place? I reckon it most definitely does.
And if a Booba ever makes its way to Australia, I’ll happily volunteer to spend a weekend finding out whether tiny camping really can beat towing the kitchen sink.
