This New All-Electric Camper Van Goes Nearly 300 Miles On A Charge

As much of the auto industry has been converting to practical all-electric power, the RV industry has been lagging behind. All-electric camper vans and motorhomes have been around for a while, but going all-electric usually meant sacrificing range, which doesn’t make much sense for a vehicle designed for road trips. RV startup Grounded has announced its newest all-electric motorhome, the G3, and with a range knocking on the door of 300 miles, this is an electric camper you can actually take on a trip.

Let me paint you a picture of what all-electric camper vans and motorhomes looked like until recently. Back in January 2023, I got to drive what was supposed to be Winnebago’s future electric camper, the eRV2. This van was a prototype to test the waters for a future production vehicle. It was great, from the silent drivetrain to the snap of instant electric torque. But Winnebago learned that pretty much nobody wanted a camper van that had only 108 miles of range.

We’ve seen camper vans built out of the Ford E-Transit and the Mercedes-Benz eSprinter before. There are also companies that will convert a gasoline-powered van into an electric camper van. Many of those vans go under 200 miles on a charge, while a rare few companies advertise an estimated range of around 250 miles. There are also developments from Harbinger and Thor Industries. Thor’s new prototype hybrid Class A motorhome goes 500 miles on a charge!

Sadly, you still can’t buy a coach like that yet, but there’s a new coach on the block with a claimed 286 miles of range. This is the Grounded G3, and it’s a big step up from Grounded’s last van.

Based On GM’s Work Van

If the Grounded G3 looks familiar, don’t worry, you’re not crazy. This camper van looks almost exactly like Grounded’s previous generation van, the G2. However, despite the visuals, Grounded says that this new camper has important updates.

One of the biggest limiting factors in the advancement of electric motorhomes is that RV manufacturers are largely limited to whatever range their donor vehicles have. It doesn’t matter if Winnebago wants to make a van with 300 miles of range if it’s hamstrung by a platform with far less range than that.

Grounded knows this, too, so its strategy has been to base its campers on the van with the best range that it could find. At the end of 2023, Grounded announced that it moved away from its 108-mile range Ford E-Transit-based G1, and what was its then-new camper van, rode on the General Motors BrightDrop platform. Grounded said that moving to this platform cranked the range up to 250 miles, a significant improvement from the old E-Transit. Now, Grounded’s latest camper van has even better range.

Grounded’s newest RV, the G3, rides on the current Chevrolet BrightDrop Zevo 400 or 600 chassis, which measures 20 feet long and 24 feet long, respectively. Grounded’s press materials note “270+ Miles Of Range” and 286 miles of combined range. This is the range that GM quotes for these funky work vans. The G3 also has fast charging. The native plug is CCS, but Grounded tosses in a CCS-to-NACS adaptor so you could use the Tesla Supercharger network.

The platform is a cool one, too. Grounded’s version of the Zevo 400 and 600 vans sport dual-motor AWD with 300 HP and 390 lb-ft of torque. These camper vans come with Chevy’s Max Range 172 kWh 20-module battery, which kicks range up to 286 miles combined. Now, you may wonder why Grounded is boasting about the inclusion of AWD when the vans have a low ground clearance of 7.51 inches and a poor breakover angle of around 9 degrees. Clearly, nobody is going to be using this for off-roading.

The addition of AWD is a function of how the BrightDrop vans are configured. Currently, equipping the Max Range battery option requires having AWD. Besides, as far as Grounded is concerned, AWD helps enable all-season driving, anyway.

The Grounded G3 Camper Van

The G3’s interior is also vastly different than the G2 and G1, and Grounded founder Sam Shapiro says that’s due to customer feedback, from Grounded:

“The G3 is a next-gen offering for travelers who want to live, work, and roam in comfort, grounded in what matters. The G3 builds on everything we learned from our customers and from the G2. It’s a ground-up reimagining of our smart, fully-electric RV that’s based on real-world use. We replaced wood cabinetry with durable aluminum frames and 100% recycled tree-free materials, refined every wall panel and furniture module to deliver designer-grade aesthetics with pro-functionality, added a motorized lift bed that transforms into a California King, and designed a new insulated rear door that improves energy efficiency without sacrificing the view.”

“We also reengineered the electrical system for 1,400W vehicle-to-house charging and added self-heating batteries to enable four-season travel. Every improvement from materials to layout was shaped by feedback from G2 owners. The G3 is smarter, stronger, and more adaptable than any other offering on the market today.”

This is good news! Back in 2023, Grounded marketed its interior concept as being modular. The twist was that if you wanted to change your interior layout, you had to send the van to Grounded so the company could make your desired changes. The original van did not work like other modular RVs, where you could change the interior yourself on the fly.

The G2 updated the concept to allow the end user to change the interior. But, in my observations checking units parked at auto shows, the G2’s fit and finish weren’t quite where I would have expected them to be. I also wasn’t a huge fan of all of the exposed furniture tracks everywhere. It looks like I wasn’t alone in thinking that Grounded could do better. As a result, the Grounded team went back to the drawing board and produced this:

The most obvious change is that there are no longer obvious tracks lining the walls to attach the furniture to. What’s awesome is that Grounded says that you can still swap out modular interior modules, but the setup now looks much cleaner. A lot of the other changes have been noted above, where the thin plywood is gone, replaced with recycled materials backed by aluminum frames.

Other bits of equipment include 1kW of roof solar, a Starlink dish, and up to a 20 kWh LiFePO house battery. The G3 is also better for cold weather, with Grounded saying that it layered the van in 2-inch-thick EPS foam in addition to beefing up the insulation on the rear door and the self-heating batteries. As a result, Grounded says, the camper should keep working just fine even in 0-degree weather.

Not As Expensive As I Expected

All of this is great! What also sounds reasonable-ish is the price. The Grounded G3 starts at $165,000 for the G3 Form. This sounds pretty awesome, right? It’s cheaper than a Wingamm and much cheaper than many of Airstream’s camper vans. One of Grounded’s original goals was to put a camper van on the market that’s cheaper than a comparable one with an ICE. The G1 sort of met that goal, but the G2 did not. Now, Grounded is returning to its roots.

However, there is a catch. Going for the G3 Form highly limits your options. You get only a fixed queen bed, a kitchen without a dishwasher, and no bathroom facilities. You also can’t get it with a television or a computer monitor. If you want a shower, you’ll have to upgrade to the $180,000 G3 Function, but that also adds options like a dinette, a toilet, and a dishwasher.

If you want the headline feature of a raisable bed, that’s available only with the $200,000 G3 Freedom. This model has every single option unlocked for you to pick. Among the additional options you can get are an awning, a bike rack, and more. In terms of other equipment, there’s a 16-gallon fresh water tank, a 22-gallon gray water tank, a Bosch electric water heater, and an app to control the van’s systems.

There are also a couple of quirks here. One of them is that since this camper is based on a vehicle primarily for commercial use, there isn’t really any integration between the cab and the camper. A Ram ProMaster camper or a Ford Transit camper will feature seats that swivel to add to living room space, but that can’t happen here because the BrightDrop is more of a delivery van with a divider wall.

The commercial van bones are also apparent in the fact that there are no side doors to enter the camper portion. You either enter only through the rear door, or filter your way through the front end first. Oh, and despite how large this camper van is, there are seatbelts only for the driver and the front passenger. Grounded hopes to solve that sometime this fall.

There are several upgrades across the board here. Grounded has improved the interior materials, doubled the house battery capacity, and finally, now there’s an option for a shower inside of the camper. A combined range of 286 miles is also pretty decent. While it’s not very impressive in a world full of Lucids and Teslas, this van should be able to hurtle down the highway for at least a few hours at a time before needing to charge again. Even better is that, as charging infrastructure improves for large vehicles, it should get even easier to charge this thing.

If you’re interested, you can start your ordering process by playing around in Grounded’s 3D configurator tool. Once you submit your design, Grounded will contact you with next steps. The company says that Grounded G3 production begins this month.

I won’t lie, this camper van is still very expensive. But we have seen so much worse lately, including camper vans that cost over $500,000. It’s sad that $160,000 is “cheap” in comparison to what some companies try to sell. At the very least, it does look like Grounded is committed to improving, which is pretty neat. Maybe one day I’ll get to take one of these for a spin.