Head Out on the Highway: First Look at Lightship's Electric RV

pcmag.com:

Next up on the electrification revolution: RVs. A new startup called Lightship, founded by two former Tesla employees, released the first photos of its vehicle today. It's available now for pre-order(Opens in a new window) and is expected to go into production in 2024.

The Lightship L1 is a tow-behind trailer rather than a drivable unit. You can pull it with a gas-powered or electric vehicle, but in either scenario it has a major advantage over competing products: an on-board battery system that helps the trailer propel itself and preserve fuel efficiency on the vehicle in front.

"It is the type of RV that is ready to be electrified right now in terms of where battery technology sits," says co-founder Ben Parker. "If you think about another class of RV like the big converted bus style, the range you're gonna get out of it is not really adequate to do a long-distance road trip. So luckily, the product that is ready to be electrified, the trailer, is also the dominant type of vehicle in this industry."

RV sales were higher than ever during the coronavirus pandemic as people sought safe outdoor activities, even causing shortages as demand exceeded supply, Reuters reports(Opens in a new window). However, gas prices also spiked, creating an opportunity for Parker and his co-founder Toby Kraus to give RVs a long overdue efficiency update using their experience at Tesla.

"When you're towing with a traditional travel trailer, you get about two-thirds range loss," says Kraus. "With an EV, that means your range would go from 300 miles to 100 with a traditional travel trailer. Or with a 25mpg gas-powered truck, it'd be a third of that [roughly 8mpg]."

The Lightship RV achieves "near-zero" efficiency loss thanks to two main