3d ago

Colorado factory creates first electric RV in America

www.cbsnews.com Colorado factory creates one of the first electric RVs in America

This Labor Day weekend, many Colorado families may be hooking up their RVs and heading out on an adventure, but now there's an electric camper option in Broomfield.

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Looks cool, but first?
https://pebblelife.com/
https://www.winnebago.com/all-electric
https://www.groundedevs.com/camper

"It's part of Americana. One in 10 American families owns an RV," Kraus said.
That must include people who live in trailers. No damn way that many people own RVs.
- Maybe one in 10 dream of owning an RV lol
  Because that's me. I'd love to have a solar-charged EV-RV and just van-life life it across North America in my retirement years.
  
  I mean yeah I get it. Then I think of the reality, which is cramming it into KOA parking spots and watching kids ride bikes around the parking lot.
- A quick search says it's more like 8-10 million total, so closer to 1/40 people. Avg household size of 2.5 gets that to 1/16 households.

150-180k, yep definitely going to get mass adoption
- That's pretty typical for a large RV. They aren't mass market items
  Lightship is manufacturing the country's first self-propelled towable RV in Broomfield.
  Wait.. What? Now I have no idea what were looking at.
  
  From the article:
  "We really are developing what I would consider a new class of vehicle," Kraus said. "We do something that's a little bit wild, which is we actually put a motor in the vehicle. So even though it's towed, it's also self-propelling. It's supporting its own drag and its own mass."
  
  Yeah, this stumped me too. FWIW, their website is garbage. But digging around a bit, I'd say this is a travel trailer, not an RV. It does have it's own motor however, and it helps push when you're going uphill. So in theory, you could tow a larger trailer with a smaller vehicle. Or perhaps this would help if you were towing with an EV and needed the additional range?
  https://www.lightshiprv.com/technology

Really? We've had electric cars for 15 years but we never bothered to build an electric RV? I find that suspicious and false.
- Probably range-based. A pure electric RV probably would've had <100 miles of charge even 5 years ago.
  
  It’d also be murderously heavy if it had any serious range. And one of the primary points of an RV is to have serious range.
  
  But RVs have a much larger roof space that could be used for solar panels and battery charging. Maybe this could give you plus x % range on a sunny day?

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