Why are roof-racks a good idea?

I got a set of roof-racks on my 2018 Nissan Leaf, mostly as a cheap way to make the kids more comfortable on our adventures. Recently I found myself driving a rented “mid-size” SUV, family skis and all. To my surprise, the ski’s proved just as awkward to place inside the SUV as my trusty Leaf. Either you have to fold the 40% back seat split down, leaving my two kids squished together on the wider half, or build a ski-bridge from the front center console to the back. While the latter made the kids slightly happier, I really longed for my roof-racks.

Skis by nature are long and skinny. Ideally, they should reach somewhere between your chin and your nose. This makes them awkward to pack into just about any car, as a 2 meter ski is too long to fit sideways into the trunk. Even with a pickup truck, as most “crew-cab” trucks have a 5 foot bed, fitting 6 foot skis requires some ingenuity. Granted, if its only two or three people in the car, folding the back seat partially is perhaps an acceptable solution, but alas, there were four of us, and my kids did complain with some merit as the images below show.

The ski-racks make this much easier, and much more comfortable for my kids. Ive spent about a grand on the bars, with another $300 or so on the ski-racks and about a grand or so on a roof-box I use for camping, or when needed on a ski-trip (see this post). All-told, a $2000 – $2500 budget should get you a decent rooftop setup. Here in Toronto, Rack-Attack (source) offers a wide selection of roof-racks and accessories, and as always please do your homework carefully as your car’s setup might be different than mine, and it is important to source the right gear for your car. Thule for example offers a wide variety of fit-kits so that their products fit properly to your car. Also be mindful of your car’s cargo capacity limits.

While it is true, these roof-top setups do reduce efficiency compared to a bare-roof. The efficiency loss (in my experience 6 km/kWh to 5.5 km/kWh (roof-box) or 5 km/kWh ski-rack, see this post), pales in comparison to using a larger EV such as the F150 lightning (3 km/kWh source), not to mention, its a whole lot cheaper (F-150 Lightning MSRP: $79k vs Leaf’s $40k source and source). Plus off the hill, you are not stuck with a much larger EV than you need.

How about you? How do you store the skis on your car? Leave us a comment below.