Saturday, October 28, 2023

The RV enters the electric revolution

Reimaging an American road icon

Ever wonder what would happen if Tesla and Apple designed an RV? You can read and share a full version of today's lead story on Bloomberg.com. For unlimited access to climate and energy news, please subscribe.

Reimagining an icon of the American road

By Todd Woody

When Tesla launched the Model X in 2015, the world's first electric SUV rolled on to a stage towing an Airstream travel trailer. In what seems like unintentional foreshadowing, the $30 billion US recreational vehicle market is now getting the Tesla treatment. 

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

"We're using technology to automate the hardest part of RVing, bringing this iPhone-like experience to the RV," says Bingrui Yang, Pebble's chief executive officer and an Apple veteran.

The Lightship L1 trailer. The startup hopes to have its electric trailers on the road by late 2024. Photographer: Courtesy: Lightship

The Bay Area would seem an unlikely birthplace of the RV revolution. Finding somewhere to park a Model X, let alone a 30-foot-long travel trailer, is hard enough. And the closest many locals get to RVing is renting a rig for a few days during the annual August exodus to Burning Man. Yet this may just be the time and place for electric trailer tech to blossom, given the confluence of the pandemic-triggered desire to escape to nature and growth of remote work along with the boom in EVs and efforts to build resilience to climate-driven power disruptions. 

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. (One hitch in that vision is the need to build out charging infrastructure at campgrounds.) 

The exterior of the Pebble Flow.  Courtesy: Pebble

Lightship's L1 Long Range travel trailer, for instance, boasts an 80 kilowatt-hour battery pack and a 3-kilowatt solar array integrated into its roof and awnings. "That's approaching the amount of solar you put on your average house and six Tesla Powerwalls' worth of energy," says Lightship co-founder and chief executive officer Toby Kraus, referring to Tesla's home battery system. 

That startup's offices in a San Francisco warehouse are filled with prototypes of the L1, including two chassis where engineers test battery configurations and power management systems. Co-founder Ben Parker, who's also the company's chief product officer, was a battery engineer on the Tesla Model 3. Kraus, meanwhile, served as a product manager for the Model S.

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. 

Steve Krivolavek and his wife Katie Krivolavek have been towing an Airstream with their Model X since 2020. "Range loss is real," says Steve. The Lincoln, Nebraska, couple have put $500 down to reserve an L1. "Having that battery pack to go off grid and not worry about power for a long time is huge," he says.

The Lightship L1's interior.  Courtesy: Lightship

Pebble last week unveiled a self-propelled travel trailer designed to cater to post-pandemic wanderlust. The Pebble Flow features a 45-kilowatt-hour battery and built-in rooftop solar panels that generate 1 kilowatt of electricity. The 25-foot-long RV shares the L1's futuristic aesthetic, replacing propane tanks and gas-powered appliances with induction stoves and touchscreens. A wall of electrochromic glass that sheaths the bathroom turns opaque at the touch of a button. 

"The RVs on the market today generally only get used two weeks out of the entire year, but we've designed this product so it can be used all the time," says Yang, who founded Pebble and previously worked on autonomous driving systems at Cruise and Zoox. "When you're parked at home, you can use it as a home office and for energy backup." 

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,, who worked on autonomous vehicle technology at Tesla and Volvo, showed this could be done using an iPad Mini tablet.

The Pebble Flow, which sleeps four people, sells for $125,000. A version that is not self-propelled and doesn't include autonomous hitching or remote control is $109,000. The L1 can sleep up to six people and costs $151,500 (federal tax credits for the solar panels and battery storage can drop the price to $139,600, though). An L1 that comes with a 45-kilowatt-hour battery but without self-propulsion retails for $125,000, or $118,400 after tax credits. Those prices are at the high end of the market but comparable with brands like Airstream, maker of the iconic travel trailer.

"It's kind of an expensive car or a really cheap house," says Kraus. 

The Pebble Flow's interior. Courtesy: Pebble

Meanwhile, the stereotype of the RVer as a retiree is falling by the roadside. Before the pandemic, the median age of RV owners was 53, but in 2022 the median age of first-time RV buyers had dropped to 32, surveys from the RV Industry Association show.

"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."

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This week we learned

  1. The world's biggest carbon capture bet failed. Oil giant Occidental Petroleum quietly sold off a carbon capture project that never operated at more than a third of its capacity.

  2. It's not just billionaires paying for carbon removal. An Amsterdam-based bassoonist is just one example of the regular people ponying up cash to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

  3. The carbon market can get more chaotic. The integrity of one of the largest single sources of credits faces serious doubt following the collapse of the partnership behind a massive offset project in Zimbabwe.

  4. EVs are even more political than we thought. The transition to electric vehicles has reached a tipping point for widespread adoption in the US — but only in states that voted for Biden.

  5. Argentina recorded a high of 113F – during spring! Temperatures across parts of South America have been way above normal over the last few months and it's not even summer yet.

A small boat navigates through a drought-hit river in Manaus, Brazil on Oct. 4. Photographer: Bruno Zanardo/Getty Images

Worth your time 

Japan's push to preserve coal has irked its developed-nation peers. But perhaps more surprisingly, it's helping groom a whole new generation of coal miners. At a last-of-its-kind mine the government is funding a training program for overseas workers. Their careers will need to be short if the world is to avoid the worst effects of global warming. You can read this story for free on Bloomberg.com with visual media produced in partnership with Outrider Foundation.

Photographer: Noriko Hayashi/Bloomberg

Weekend listening

This week, the International Energy Agency published its flagship report: The World Energy Outlook. It's dominating climate news because what the IEA says makes a big difference to how governments tweak their energy policies. But how did an organization formed by a handful of countries in response to the 1973 oil crisis come to hold so much influence over our response to the climate crisis? For the answer, this week we're revisiting one of our favorite episodes: an interview with Fatih Birol, the head of the IEA, about how it has cemented its role in the energy transition. Subscribe to Zero on Apple or Spotify to get new episodes every Thursday.

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Photographer: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

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