The typical camping trailer has had the same downsides since nearly its inception. Big trailers are a tremendous drain on your tow vehicle’s range, whether it’s powered by fuel and an engine or batteries and motors. Then, once you get to your campsite, you might fire up a loud and annoying generator for your on-site power needs. One new company has an idea that could change that. This is the Evotrex, and it wants to be the world’s first travel trailer with an extended-range electric vehicle system that will not only allow you to go farther while towing a camper, but also deliver clean, quiet power once you get to the campsite.
The concept of a travel trailer that has a big battery for off-grid use is not new. Do-it-yourself camper builders and even RV manufacturers have been leaving the generators at home for all-electric camping for years. A newer idea is a camper that has huge batteries that also tie into a propulsion system. The Pebble Flow, which went into production earlier this year, is the world’s first production self-propelled travel trailer. The Lightship AE.1 launched almost immediately after as the world’s second production self-propelled travel trailer.
Both of these trailers have me amped about the future of RVs because they solve multiple real problems faced by RV owners. The first is that the typical travel trailer has the aero of a brick, which can slice your tow vehicle’s range – no matter how it’s fueled – in half.
This is especially frustrating for electric vehicles because many of the most popular electric cars and trucks on the market may see their range drop to the low 100-mile range when towing a blocky enough trailer. That means that roughly every 100 miles or so, the owners of these vehicles have to find a charging station, disconnect from their trailer, charge for however long that takes, reconnect to the trailer, and then continue driving.
What’s revolutionary about the Pebble and the Lightship is that they both have automotive-style, all-electric powertrains in addition to being far more aerodynamic than the typical trailer. These trailers use low-power electric motors to help tow themselves. These motors are not powerful enough to overpower the tow vehicle, but just powerful enough to lighten the load. What this means is that if you have an EV with 300 miles of range, that EV should keep nearly all of that range even though it’s towing a big trailer. These trailers are also tow-vehicle-agnostic, so that same range benefit applies even if you’re using a gas or diesel truck to tow them.
The other neat trick is that since these campers have battery packs as large as the ones that power electric cars, you can park them anywhere and have ample power for days. There’s no loud generator, no smelly gas, no fumes. Since everything is optimized to run on the onboard system, the batteries have no problem running high-drain equipment like air conditioners and heaters.
A Problem That An All-Electric Trailer Can’t Solve
Unfortunately, as the founders of both Lightship and Pebble have admitted to me, neither of their trailers solves the big problem that I noted earlier. America’s EV infrastructure was built around the idea of accommodating one vehicle at a time. Most charging plugs are in standard parking lot stalls. This is fine to charge your Tesla, but it means that longer EVs and EVs towing trailers are in a tough spot.
If you’re towing a Lightship or a Pebble and you must use a single-car charging stall, which will be the vast majority of the time, there will likely be a huge process required to charge both vehicles. You will have to detach the trailer from the tow vehicle and then charge both the vehicle and the trailer entirely separately. If you’re lucky, you might find one of those trailer-friendly Tesla chargers, but you still won’t be able to charge both the tow vehicle and the trailer at the same time.
Thankfully, General Motors, Pilot Travel Center, and EVGo have concocted a brilliant solution. What if EV chargers were pull-through like gas stations are? As of September, this corporate trio has opened over 200 pull-through-style chargers, sort of. Weirdly, some of these stations are positioned in a way that defeats their trailer-friendly purpose. Take a look at the press image below:
So, these companies invented a great solution, but aren’t rolling it out in a consistent way. At any rate, 200 chargers means that there are gigantic swaths of America that do not have these chargers, and will not have them for a long time.
All of this adds up to a headache. Sure, the Pebble Flow and Lightship AE.1 dramatically reduce charging stops, but you’re still on your own once you do have to charge. To be fair to Pebble and Lightship, this is not their fault, nor the fault of their trailers.
A Different Take
This is where Evotrex comes in. This company’s debut camper touts the same benefits as a Pebble or a Lightship, including an electric self-towing propulsion system, but has an added twist. Instead of depending entirely on battery power alone, this trailer has an engine to generate electricity for when charging is not possible. Yep, it wants to be the world’s first EREV (Extended Range Electric Vehicle) travel trailer!
TechCrunch wrote an exclusive about the company, and I was genuinely surprised when I saw the news.
Evotrex has been operating in stealth after being founded by Alex Xiao, Bruce Yang, and Stella Qin, alumni from portable power giant Anker and from Geely. Specifically, Alex is credited with growing Anker for more than a decade, turning it into one of the first stops for phone chargers and portable power stations. Bruce was once vice president of Geely’s Technology Center. Stella held supply chain leadership positions at Anker, IBM, and Lenovo.
In other words, like many of the latest RV startups, Evotrex is filled with talent from the tech sector and a smattering of EV people. The company reportedly has around 40 employees right now. In terms of money, Evotrex has $16 million in seed funding from Anker, in addition to backing from Chinese venture capital firms Kylinhall Partners, Unity Ventures, and Vision Plus Capital.
As TechCrunch writes, Alex and Stella spent seven months researching the RV market and found out that RV buyers are getting younger. These younger buyers like taking their rigs, often camper vans, into the wilderness rather than hooking up to a manicured campground. From TechCrunch:
These customers “want to bring their gadgets and other equipment on skiing, hunting, fishing, and other activities, and stay in the wild for like four or five days, which is different,” Xiao said. “They’re off-grid — off-grid living was not supported before within the RV life.”
I’m not sure what that last part means, because off-grid living has been possible since the dawn of the RV. Sure, it may not have always been as easy as flipping a switch, but it has always been possible.
At any rate, one of the biggest issues in staying off-grid is energy management and generation, since there is no shore power in the wilderness. The typical solutions involve a mixture of batteries, solar panels, and either built-in or portable generators. On the surface, Evotrex doesn’t sound like it’s doing anything all that different. Its RV will have an internal battery and a gasoline-powered generator, which isn’t anything new.
What will be different is the system’s implementation and how it will be used. The Evotrex trailer will be built like a modern EREV car, in that it will be entirely electric, featuring a large battery and a traction motor. When this system drains out, be it because of towing or because of an extended off-grid stay, an integrated gasoline engine will fire up to provide electricity. This engine will work only as a generator, and not drive the trailer.
The team at Evotrex recognizes that everyone hates generators at campsites, so there will be an emphasis on making sure the engine is whisper-quiet. Also, since there’s going to be an engine here, Evotrex figures it might as well have that engine handle multiple jobs. Waste heat from the engine will be used to warm the cabin in cold weather.
Evotrex has not revealed any further details about the trailer itself, but I think we have enough here to get excited. Why? Because EREV cars have proven themselves to be a great solution for today’s problems using today’s technology. Cars like the Chevrolet Volt and the BMW i3 are all-electric for the vast majority of their owners’ daily driving, and only burn gasoline when it’s time to drive further than that.
Applying this logic to travel trailers should be promising. Countless camping trips happen within only a couple of hundred miles from home, and, depending on how big the battery is inside the Evotrex, maybe the trailer could handle that drive entirely on electric power alone. Then, when you do take the trailer on a longer journey, or want to stay off-grid for a while, you aren’t pulling your hair out worrying about finding a pull-through charging station. When the battery dies, just let the generator fire up until you can find a charger. And like the Pebble and the Lightship, the electric motor should be able to recover lost MPG or range.
There Will Be Hurdles
Now, I don’t think the Evotrex will be a perfect solution. Putting an EREV system in a camper means having to maintain and fuel both an ICE system and an EV system, in addition to maintaining the camper portion and your tow vehicle. That’s two gas tanks to fill and/or two batteries to recharge. If you’re the kind of person who likes the idea of a simple teardrop, this probably isn’t for you. But if you’re invested in the idea of all-electric self-propelled travel trailers, the Evotrex could be compelling.
Another issue that the Evotrex team says they’re dealing with is the fact that most of the trailer will be built in China with final assembly in California. This means that, if nothing changes or conditions worsen between now and the launch date, Evotrex will be hit hard by America’s tariffs.
Either way, we’re going to have to wait to learn more. The Evotrex will debut at the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show, and the company says it’s on track for a late 2026 launch.
Top graphic image: Evotrex
Mmmmm – Anyone need a refill on their vaporware?
This really feels like a hybrid tow vehicle with extra steps. The existing Ford hybrid pickups with pro-power are great for boondocking without a generator as it is, and the next generation of EREV pickups and SUVs will be even better.
The madness of adding a drivetrain and engine to a vehicle that that can’t fit into a normal auto shop is incomprehensible to me.
I see the tech bros have arrived to disrupt an industry they know absolutely nothing about again. Hint: You didn’t invent the onboard generator for RVs. All you did was make it massively more complex by adding a drivetrain.
This feels like a solution in search of a problem. If you’re fine burning gas, just buy a gas tow rig. Then you don’t have 10s of thousands of dollars of battery, engine, and drivetrain wasting away in your trailer the 355 days a year that you’re not using it.
Although if I were going to use one of these, I would want the gas engine to run on the way to the campground to keep the battery topped up, then run it entirely on silent electric power once I’m at the site. Of course, that’s exactly what I do with my current (much cheaper, much less complex) setup – the gas truck keeps the lithium battery charged so when I get to my site I have a full charge. And my solar panel replaces whatever I use during the day. This is a whole lot of complexity for little to no gain.
The more I see of these expensive, complicated trailer solutions to range issues, the more the F-150 hybrid seems like a good idea. No range anxiety because it runs off regular gas, and when you get to your site it can function as a 7.4 kW generator if you need it to. And in day-to-day use it has ridiculous amounts of power and gets surprisingly good mileage. Mercedes should see if Ford will loan her one for the EAA outing next year.
Here in the Midwest, RVs are mostly a seasonal thing that gets “put away for the winter”, aka “winterized”. I’m not sure how well/how many seasons those battery packs will work until they need to be replaced (like aging tires and/or rubber roofs). Mostly, I just see a bigger money pit with a faster depreciation curve.
I’ll set aside the snark about how this can’t be THAT much of a problem, considering that one of the coldest countries in the world has the highest rate of EV adoption.
Instead, I’ll simply point out that we know how to store lithium batteries long-term (keep the charge at 50% + 10%), and how to avoid cold-weather damage (don’t quick-charge lithium iron phosphate batteries below freezing). Between thermal management hardware and software, a 120V trickle charger would probably be enough.
It’s interesting for sure. I’m curious to see if they can actually MAKE them. The whole idea of a giant “off grid” camper though, doesn’t make much sense to me. Just how far into the wilderness can one tow a giant travel trailer?
If you use a Raptor R I’m pretty sure you can drag one of these really deep into the wilderness. No comment on how much of it will be left when you get there, though. lol
You would probably be surprised by the number of giant trailers parked in a grassy field out in Wyoming where we camp every summer. I assume they must buy a new one every few years since driving on those “roads” has to just wreck them, but they do it.