A startup that is out to electrify recreational vehicles expects to start commercial production before the end of the year in its new facility in Broomfield’s Baseline Innovation District.
Lightship co-founders Toby Kraus and Ben Parker want to make the kinds of advancements in the RV industry that they witnessed while working at Tesla.
The Lightship L1 is an aerodynamic, battery-powered travel trailer whose canopy, or top, is lowered for what the company calls “road mode.” For “camp mode,” the roof is raised, turning the Lightship into a camper with the capacity to sleep up to six people and furnished with all-electric appliances, including a dishwasher.
The canopy will be controlled by the Lightship’s “infotainment” tech system, spokesperson Amanda Winther said. People can use a tablet or a mobile app to lower or raise the top and monitor the onboard systems.
Kraus, Lightship’s president, said the towable trailer’s electric powertrain has up to 80 kilowatt-hours of onboard battery capacity, which allows the trailer to propel itself. That results in near-zero range loss for electric tow vehicles or little loss in fuel efficiency for gasoline-powered vehicles.
A 300-mile range electric vehicle used to tow the trailer maintains its 300-mile range, according to Lightship.
“The 80 kilowatt-hours of energy is about as much energy as you would have in a modern electric vehicle,” Kraus said during a recent tour of the company’s 30,000-square-foot building.
In addition, the RV has highly efficient solar panels built into the roof and awnings that will generate up to 3 kilowatts of power. “It’s about as much solar power as you’d put on a small home installation,” Kraus said.
Recreational vehicles are ripe for changes, said Parker, the company’s CEO. “One in 10 American families own an RV, but the RV industry hasn’t experienced innovation for decades,” he said in a statement.
Vehicles whose power relies on “smelly, noisy, gas or propane generators fundamentally hinder the amazing experience of traveling in the outdoors,” Parker added.
There are 11.2 million RV owners in the U.S., according to the RV Industry Association. A report by the association said ownership has increased roughly 62% in the last 20 years, with significant growth among 18- to 34-year-olds.
About 85% of the RVs are towable, said Jason Rano, the RV association’s vice president of government affairs.
“RVing is a massive, massive pastime,” Kraus said.
Winnebago and THOR Industries are among the mainstream companies developing electric camper vans or RVs. Other startups are also working on them. Kraus said THOR has invested in Lightship.
“I’m glad to see that the industry at large understands electrification is coming and that customers want it,” Kraus said.
The company said it raised $34 million in Series B financing early this year. Kraus and Parker founded Lightship in 2020.
“We started the company remotely in the pandemic over Zoom,” Kraus said. “At that time it was just the two of us and it’s grown. We’re about 80 people now.”
Kraus worked for Tesla and also for Proterra, an electric vehicle and powertrain manufacturer focused on electric school and transit buses and delivery trucks. Other members of the team have worked at Rivian and Lucid in addition to Tesla.
Parker is based in San Francisco, where Lightship does research and development and opened a service center and depot. Forty employees work in Colorado, where the production is based. Kraus said more people are being hired.
“Colorado is a much better place to manufacture than Northern California,” said Parker, who recently visited the Broomfield office.
“There are really talented folks here. It’s a great workforce and space is like four times cheaper,” said Kraus, who grew up in Boulder.
The day of Parker’s visit, a group of RV enthusiasts who tow their trailers with electric vehicles dropped by the Broomfield plant. The group, All Electric Family, had just wrapped up a gathering in Granby and stopped by Lightship to get a look at the company’s prototype.
“The aesthetics of it are beautiful because it’s more like an automotive camper,” said Steve Krivolavek, who was driving home to Lincoln, Neb., with his family.
Krivolavek was enticed by Lightship’s statement that the trailer’s battery system coupled with the solar panels can power a week off the grid without charging.
Before starting Lightship, Parker and Kraus went on a road trip from Colorado to California, towing the most aerodynamic trailer they could find, to get a sense of how to design an electric RV. At one point, after running into stiff headwinds, their Model X Tesla had 21 miles of range left. They unhitched the trailer, found a supercharger and went back for the trailer.
Kraus and Parker will probably take another road trip, this time in a Lightship. But before taking off, there is more testing to do.
“Before we built anything, we did a lot of aerodynamic simulation,” Kraus said.
Building the trailer with the ability to lower the top while towing reduced the drag on the trailer by roughly 40%, Lightship said on its website. Another design feature aimed at making the trailer more aerodynamic is its boat-tailed rear.
With the top down, the trailer is 6 feet, 9 inches tall and 10 feet with the top down. The interior height is 7 feet, 6 inches. Lightship L1 is 27 feet long and 8 feet, 6 inches wide. It weighs about 7,500 pounds.
Kraus said Lightship has gotten preorders for the trailer since revealing the concept at the 2023 South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. The price for the trailer will likely run from just under $120,000 to $140,000.
“We’re starting at what I would call the mainstream premium segment (price), like an airstream,” Kraus said.
The lower prices charged by the industry’s high-volume brands are “probably a couple generations out for us,” he added. The company might modify the size and design to offer different options.
After talking to attorneys, the company believes the trailer could qualify for federal investment tax credits for installing solar power and energy storage into a residence. The $7,500 tax credit for EVs are for light-duty vehicles.
As for the charging infrastructure, Kraus said. “Most RV campgrounds already have hookups and already have what’s called destination charging.”
Rano with the RV Industry Association said his organization is working to make sure that some of the $7.5 billion in federal funds intended to bolster the nation’s EV charging network will be used for pull-through chargers. Drivers towing trailers would pull up to the station as at a gas station and drive straight through when finished.
The association is also focused on building out charging stations in rural areas, Rano said.
“There’s been a lot of news about how demand for EVs has slowed and that is true, but it is certainly on an upward trajectory,” he said.