The days of all-electric Jeep Wranglers leaving behind only agitated dust while roaming the vast Western wilderness may still be a long ways off, but Phoenix startup DirtBox Gear has a new way of electrifying the other half of the overlanding experience. Unique from the typical camper-in-a-box kit, DirtBox’s Juice Box wires lithium battery power inside the Wrangler tailgate. Use it to run an induction cooktop and 12-V fridge/freezer, and you can power your base camp without a single LPG tank or canister.
Throughout two decades of off-roading and camping through the deserts and mountains of the American Southwest, DirtBox Gear cofounder Greg Whitworth repeatedly battled two problems he couldn’t shake: the near-impossible task of organizing all the necessary off-road and camping gear, accessories, and odds and ends and the chore of trying to keep operational the fast-draining electronics that have become so much more prevalent over that 20-year timespan.
Campers can also plug into the Juice Box to power kitchen appliances, such as a blender, automatic drip coffeemaker, coffee grinder or crockpot. Attach a drop-down Wrangler tailgate table like this one from Front Runner, and the Wrangler transforms into a pretty solid little food-prep and cooking station.
Both the Juice Box and the fridge/stove module are made to mount to an accompanying polyurethane enamel-coated plywood base plate. DirtBox currently offers plates that fit Jeep Wrangler JK and JL Unlimiteds and old Cherokee XJ models. It is working to add options for popular off-roaders like the Toyota 4Runner.
Unsurprisingly, the Juice Box is the wallet-diving piece of the DirtBox puzzle at $3,929. The base plate tacks on $293, and the dual-slide fridge/stove box costs $1,297 (fridge and stove not included).
Off-grid electric camper box modernizes Jeep Wrangler camping [New Atlas]