Together with some friends, I decided earlier this year to particpate in the Carbage run 2025 Winter edition. This is a 6-day journey in winter all the way through Sweden to the polar circle, and back down to Helsinki in a group of roughly 400 cars.

One small catch (you might have guessed it from the name): your car has to be “carbage”. In practice, this means it needs to be at least 20 years old, and with a day value of less than €1000.

This route, including the drive to get there and back from Belgium would mean driving roughly 6000km in just over a week, often in less-than-ideal conditions. In addition, our car will also be judged on originality, which is why this idea popped into my head:

Why not make it self-driving?

A few months ago, I decided that it’s time I started to become more responsible and to start drinking more water. Unfortunately, the tap water where I live has a very high calcium content, which makes it a lot better when filtered and cooled first. To solve both issues, I picked up a second-hand professional water dispenser:

ION 900 series water dispenser

This thing is amazing. It’s connected to the water supply, has power save features when it detects it’s in the dark for a while, the filter lasts for years, …

Along with the cooler, I also bought thermally-isolated 1L bottles, which take about 50 seconds to fill. Unfortunately, you have to keep pressing the “dispense cold water”-button while filling 😑.

Since I’m lazy and not very rational in my decision making, I decided it’s time to fix that!