Power and storage: Lower voltage is surly safer and easier to manage, in addition to the fact that you would be drawing less attention to yourself when you charge up at big interstate malls like they have on the I-95 heading north of Maryland. Some times there are plenty of nice and safe rest areas with restaurants which allows for a meal break and some charging. I started with power packs that would hold 20k mah per unit, like the power banks you buy online, after destroying quite a few in my morbid need to take them apart and figure out how they work, I started to build my own. The reasons and logic is as follows:
1. The reason to build your own battery bank. Most of the power you need when you are on the road that cannot be fulfilled by the cig lighter are your electronic devices and their batteries, the lipo cells in your electronics require constant current and smart charging which just cannot be done efficiently on the road, and relying on the shore power or whenever 110v is available is just impractical. So storing them in either 12v deep cycle or marine batteries or storing them in 3.7v lipo batteries are the best choices one might make. Going back and forth between the 12v or 3.7v solutions, I have found that 3.7v is by far more superior and easier to manage. I can build modular units which I can unplug to fast charge on a lipo charger and I can take one bank at a time to use with a modifies power bank to provide the USB power I need to charge my devices, the conversion rate can be as high as 90% and I can charge up to 20 amps at the time If I set the banks on multiple chargers, this is easily more than 10 times charging efficiency of the actual phone charge, then while on the road I can have my power bank feed it to the phone at 2 amps rate. The modular banks also acts perfect as a balancing mechanism, so I can plug 3 or 4 banks onto my harness which effectively turn the 4 1S batteries into a 4S, which I can use straight charge for a laptop or I can use this on an inverter. Large 1S banks also serve well for lighting the place as more and more USB led lights are available, I cam set one bank connection to dedicate itself to the Led light, a switch for the fans, a momentary switch for the power monitoring and so on, it is a well balanced system due to the stability of the lipo.
2. Storage: You will want to use all spaces you can find for storing things. In general, you want to place your heavier items eight on the floor and boxed in or locked down and your lighter items some what levitating if possible, secure with nets and hooks. Some water tight container is always nice for storing foods, Having a cooler is always a plus. While clothes are flexible, you want them to be inside a bag of some sort. There's always some space inside the door panels, especially if you do not intend to open a door from the inside.
3. Shore power for a small vehicle. Run an extension wire from the firewall into the cabin for shore power, this may serve as a great place to cook or sometimes, a place to charge your battery bank overnight.
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