A pair of California startups staffed by alumni of the electric car company have developed the first self-propelled, battery-and-solar-powered travel trailers. The vehicles are set to hit the market in late 2024. Following the Tesla playbook, San Francisco’s Lightship and Silicon Valley-based Pebble aim to not just electrify a century-old icon of the American road; the companies are attempting to reinvent it for the EV age.
That’s because an electric travel trailer isn’t just an Instagrammable tiny house on wheels. If they fulfill their pre-production promises, the RVs equipped with powerful batteries and solar panels will become mobile power plants, capable of operating off the grid for days or powering stationary homes during a blackout. Down the road, electric travel trailers could also supply power to the grid, helping utilities balance renewable energy production.
Towing a 7,500-pound travel trailer puts a serious dent in the fuel economy of a fossil fuel-powered vehicle and reduces the range of an electric pick-up truck or SUV. The 27-foot-long L1 eliminates that penalty by propelling itself with an electric drive motor. Its sleek shape further reduces drag as does a feature called “road mode.” When you’re ready to hit the highway, the upper half of the 10-foot-tall trailer lowers so its profile is a shade under 7 feet tall when towed.
“The market has dramatically changed,” says Craig Kirby, RVIA’s chief executive officer. “I’m expecting younger buyers to continue to move into the market, and they’ll want electric vehicles and want to do right by the environment.” The Pebble Flow autonomously hitches itself to a tow vehicle. It also spares the driver the onerous task of backing the RV into a campsite with the tow vehicle. At the company’s Silicon Valley offices, chief technology officer Stefan Solyom shows how. Solyom, who worked on autonomous vehicle technology at Tesla and Volvo, is standing outside an unhitched blue Pebble Flow prototype parked in a fenced-off driveway.
“Putting a powertrain in the trailers is a really big deal, and we are doing significant development and testing work and are progressing to market,” says McKay Featherstone, Thor’s senior vice president for global innovation. “But it’s not a race to be first from our standpoint.”