"A space that can turn into a trailer, instead of a trailer that can turn into a space." It may sound like a negligible difference upon first read, but the Touchdown trailer from Expandable proves that it's actually a significant one. The new towable living space serves as a panoramic designer mobile home that drops to ground level with a retractable chassis and grows its floor plan with an electric expansion system, ensuring that off-grid living feels the polar opposite of "roughing it." It's definitely a space first, a trailer second.
Expandable was founded in 2016 with the aim of establishing a niche between the two ends of the market for event trailers, the type of towables motorsport teams bring to races and companies use to market their latest wares at trade shows held outside. The Dutch company quickly found itself some Goldilocks-level middle ground between cheap standardized trailers and high-priced specced-to-order custom builds, developing trailers with standardized dimensions, easy-to-use expansion systems, and customizable options.
By standardizing the dimensions, Expandable was able to develop a uniform production system to maintain product performance and reliability and easily scale across a variety of markets, including event marketing, emergency response, education and mobile medical care.
Over the years, Expandable developed two types of expandable event trailer, each in various sizes. The first type is a traditional trailer that simply parks on its wheels and expands in place, inviting people inside up entry stairs. The second is the Hybrid trailer, a model that drops down to ground level, covering over its wheels in a dedicated compartment.
What Expandable eventually realized was it wanted the best of both worlds – a trailer that could be set up at ground level without losing any internal space for storing the wheels. That model is the Touchdown, launched last year as a trailer that lowers to ground level by way of a patented external retractable wheel system.
Using a lockable slide-out control panel on the side of the trailer, the owner drops the hydraulic legs to decouple the trailer from the tractor cab and lift the trailer wheels into the air. Then they activate the "retractable axle bogie" that moves the wheels from below the trailer to in back via a set of rails. With the wheels out from under it, the Touchdown earns its name by lowering to the ground via the hydraulic legs. This ultimately gives the unit the more natural look and accessible ground-level entry of a permanent building, without eating up interior space around the wheels.
Since it designed the Touchdown from the ground up, Expandable used the opportunity to incorporate commonly requested features into the new architecture. It had previously added options like air conditioning, heated floors and rooftop decks upon customer request, but its older products weren't developed with those add-ons in mind, whereas the Touchdown is.
With the addition of those more readily available modern conveniences, plus an improved insulation package, Expandable realized that the Touchdown would be able to meet growing demand for a livable mobile space. It then introduced what it calls the Expandable Mansion, or Ultimate Expandable.
To transform its cold, empty trailers into inviting homes, Expandable plans to offer home/RV-style multi-room floor plans, along with water, sewage and power solutions. From there, high-end appliances, full multimedia systems, ambient LED lighting and more will make occupants forget they're in a trailer and not an eight-figure luxury apartment in the swankiest section of town.
As for the glass, buyers can choose to line each lengthy sidewall in floor-to-ceiling windows, with or without optional electric sliding doors to open the space up whenever desired. The smaller front and rear walls can also be specced in glass. Expandable uses automotive-grade glass and has designed and tested its chassis to support and protect that glass from breakage, much like an automobile does with its own window array.
The Touchdown trailer is available in 38- and 53-foot (11.6- to 16.1-m) sizes. The Expandable Mansion promises to be a highly customizable portable living solution, but Expandable has not yet added all the ins and outs to its online configurator so we're not sure how much even a basic live-in model will cost. But to head off any high hopes and ensuing disappointment, we can say that even just a very basic empty 38-foot Touchdown business trailer with solid sidewalls in place of glass, no power or lighting and no climate control checks in at US$346,000.
Adding the left- and right-side full-length glass, an air conditioner, diesel heating, some LED lights and a base electrical package spikes that price over $500K. So we can only imagine what adding a deluxe smart home floor plan with premium appointments would do ... and that's before getting into the idea of upsizing to the 53-footer. Flagship Expandable Mansion pricing seems likely to make the folks at Living Vehicle do a double-take.
Given that pricing, we're not sure if it's good or bad news that the Expandable Mansion is one of the rare European mobile living products that has made its way to North America. Expandable opened up a dedicated North American office in South Carolina last year, so the Expandable Mansion will be as readily available for traveling to the Indy 500 as to Le Mans.
Along with those other big milestones, 2024 also brought Expandable a prestigious 2024 Red Dot "Best of the Best" award for the Touchdown design. Not a bad year.
We don't believe we frequent anywhere we'd be likely to see an Expandable Mansion in the wild, and we're having trouble even picturing where that might be, but we do hope to stumble upon one someday, somewhere and get a closer look. Eyes wide open.
Until then, we'll have to be content with videos like the quick Expandable Mansion intro below.
Source: Expandable
