Lightship Electric RV Trailer: travel trailer with solar panels and a self-propulsion system

[jplblue]

I’d be more interested in a camper conversion of the Rivian/Amazon delivery truck.

Or a pop-top conversion for the R1S, e.g., https://ursaminorvehicles.com/ ... Shouldn't be too hard to remove the glass roof.

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[harkco]

Looks pretty cool with an R1T pulling it!

 

[ohseedee]

I had my eye on the airstream estream concept, which is more or less the same idea as this. I would like to get a travel trailer and willing to pay the premium for something like this or the estream, however I'm still struggling with long distance towing with an EV. While this might get you to the 300 miles of range the truck normally has, you still have to charge this RV up every 300 miles too. It's hard enough to find a charger available without unhitching, I'd assume it would be a lot more complicated to now also figure out how to get this thing close enough to a DC fast charger (probably impossible at most DC fast chargers). While you could charge up at a campground, you'd still need to charge up your truck too at the same time (and I'm not very interested in RV campgrounds). I like the idea and think this is cool, but I don't think electric RVing works for me...

 

[kylealden]

Things I like:

1. Aero-first design with a really cool popup
2. Shitloads of solar
3. Seems to be just about the only design-forward trailer that isn't an Airstream

Things I dislike:

1. Interior layout seems underwhelming, at least from trying to parse their renders. Something like a Basecamp 20x has a much more usable interior in a smaller footprint, IMO.
2. That's an awful lot of low-slung glass for something I'm supposed to be putting serious highway miles on. Seems fragile, which is the opposite of what I want behind the R1T on a gravel road.
3. Costs as much as a modest house (or a modest parking space in Seattle)

Things I continue to think are absolute bullshit:

1. A trailer doesn't need to be self propelled. The four motors in my R1T aren't enough? This is getting rube-goldbergy.
2. What is the real utility of all that battery capacity and bonus motors? It might skip/abridge one en route charge per day, then what? Are you going to fast charge both your truck and trailer at an EA station? Come on.
3. The fearmongering about the carbon footprint of EV batteries is just that, but even I can't get behind stuffing dozens of kWh into a trailer that you'll only use a handful of times per year, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, to save you the occasional hour of charging on mythical long haul drives. Just buy a generator or an ICE truck.

Anyway, I put in a deposit.

 

[jjswan33]

Things I like:

1. Aero-first design with a really cool popup
2. Shitloads of solar
3. Seems to be just about the only design-forward trailer that isn't an Airstream

Things I dislike:

1. Interior layout seems underwhelming, at least from trying to parse their renders. Something like a Basecamp 20x has a much more usable interior in a smaller footprint, IMO.
2. That's an awful lot of low-slung glass for something I'm supposed to be putting serious highway miles on. Seems fragile, which is the opposite of what I want behind the R1T on a gravel road.
3. Costs as much as a modest house (or a modest parking space in Seattle)

Things I continue to think are absolute bullshit:

1. A trailer doesn't need to be self propelled. The four motors in my R1T aren't enough? This is getting rube-goldbergy.
2. What is the real utility of all that battery capacity and bonus motors? It might skip/abridge one en route charge per day, then what? Are you going to fast charge both your truck and trailer at an EA station? Come on.
3. The fearmongering about the carbon footprint of EV batteries is just that, but even I can't get behind stuffing dozens of kWh into a trailer that you'll only use a handful of times per year, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, to save you the occasional hour of charging on mythical long haul drives. Just buy a generator or an ICE truck.

Anyway, I put in a deposit.

Yeah if I was going to do RV trailer I could do without the self propelled function. I'd like to see the aero-first pop up design with just a large (50-60kWh) house battery that can do V2V in a pinch if needed and also function as V2H as a secondary utility. I have to imagine with an R1T and the right aero design the range impact wouldn't be terrible.

 

[BourboNole]

How are they coordinating power to the trailer motor? I don't do any trailering, but I doubt the 7-pin connector could possibly handle such duty. Seems extremely problematic to have an independent motor on a swing arm behind your vehicle that isn't fully integrated into the vehicle's power control architecture.

 

[CharonPDX]

I just don’t get the costs of this sort of thing for the perceived benefit. I really dislike hotels myself, but you can stay in extremely nice places for a decent amount of time for the 125k this thing costs.

We have a 23' travel trailer we bought barely used for $26k in 2020. For $100,000, I'll stop to charge twice as often.

Also, while this will let you go the full truck's range of ~300 miles between charges; then you have to charge *TWO* big batteries. Either have to find a CCS station with two open stalls, one of which that can accommodate the trailer; or a campsite with sufficient power to be able to charge both over your stay.

 

[ohseedee]

A trailer doesn't need to be self propelled. The four motors in my R1T aren't enough? This is getting rube-goldbergy.

But I think the point of being self-propelled is not about helping a low powered tow vehicle. It's more about preserving the range or fuel economy of the truck. For example, if you pull this thing with your R1 and it's not self-propelled you'd be able to go about 150 miles max, but with self-propelled you could go ~300 miles as the RV motors are canceling out it's own drag. Now a better way to do this would be for the R1T (or any EV) to leverage an external battery. So rather than rely on motors you could just use a high-voltage cable connected while towing the RV. That would be way cheaper and beneficial but would require an EV/RV integration that doesn't exist.

 

[PVguy]

Saw this today on Elektrek. Not really my cup of tea but I thought others would be interested, very cool.

https://electrek.co/2023/03/08/ligh...-rv-trailer-maintaining-full-range-ev-towing/

Okay, I have been on their email list fer awhile now and was “thrilled “ to receive the email that they actually had a product to offer. Before I went to the “reserve now” page, I considered what pricing may be. 80k? 100k? How silly of me. 125 to 150k. More?
Can we think about this? I am paying ~80k (hopefully) for a vehicle that will provide me ((and my dog) transport and perform work functions. Presumably ~365 days per year. Unless I am going to live in this thing 300+ days/year, how can I justify this? There are millions of people hat do not have safe, affordable place to live. I would like to think that the vehicle that I am purchasing is somehow helping us to “a better place”. Well, I do not think that I am typically naïve,but maybe I should reconsider that assumption.

 

[clockwork crane]

I've been looking forward to this for a few months, to see what they came up with.

I feel like they ticked all of the boxes for aero and efficiency, but the price is too high relative to the actual value.

Like many of y'all I would be fine with a trailer that doesn't push itself, and similarly I would worry about how the heck you charge the trailer traction battery and the tow vehicle battery at the same time. Even charging at a campground won't work very well since the typical 50/30 pedestal would charge your tow vehicle at ~10 kW on the NEMA 14-50 connection but could only charge the trailer at ~3 kW on the TT-30 connection.

From their pricing it looks like the $125k model doesn't have drive motors anyway, only the $150k one does, which makes the pricing even weirder.


Separate from that, it's not clear to me that this has the right components to be a good all-electric RV, regardless of how you tow it. They haven't said anything about their holding tank sizes, how the tanks are vented (usually the vents go up through the roof but the roof is flat here), whether there's a heat pump or how efficient the heat pump is, and even more basic stuff like the bed size.

Also this thing needs window blinds for visibility, and some way to protect the windows on the outside too. The inTech tilt-forward trailers like the Sol and the Terra have large exposed windshields and they absolutely need the windshield cover when in transit to not chip or break the glass.


I did put down a deposit since it's fully refundable and maybe they will work the issues out (and bring down the price slightly). I'm definitely in the market for an all-electric RV with good aero, and I would love to see more options in that market, but the Lightship is ... questionable right now. Hopefully they will have more to tell us soon.

 

[WSea]

For an extra 25k I doubt there is much HP. Probably more of an assist but not enough to get normal non towing range. Maybe charging is via the solar panels? pretty big array with awnings up.
can’t imagine cleaning the glass all the time

 

[moosehead]

...........Anyway, I put in a deposit.

Favorite post of the year.

If this somehow hit the driveway, I'd not be allowed back in the house.

So I also put in a deposit.

 

[mkg3]

Here is another from Airstream. Don't have much details or cost...

https://www.motor1.com/news/656372/airstream-concept-travel-trailer-debut/

 

[Dark-Fx]

I'm right there with you. I'd throw my money down today if they made a max pack van with AWD.

I'm really hoping for an announcement when they detail why they need to shut down the line early next year. One of the most recent Rivian RXX trademarks was "RLV" which I'm taking to stand for "Rivian Lifestyle Van". Since RCV is going to be the generic cargo version of the Amazon van, I'm overly hopeful.

 

[kylealden]

If this somehow hit the driveway, I'd not be allowed back in the house.

So I also put in a deposit.

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