Here’s Everything You Need To Know About The Futuristic New Camper That’s Unlike Any RV You’ve Ever Seen

This summer, a new and innovative RV is hitting the market that is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. The Lightship AE.1 is a new built from the ground-up take on an old concept. It promises to be three times more aerodynamic than a typical travel trailer while its onboard drive system helps carry the RV’s weight, reducing the mileage loss on an ICE tow vehicle and restoring lost range in an electric tow vehicle. But, many of you have questions and I got answers to them.

In December, I flew out to Lightship in Colorado to get a peek at the RV that wants to be among the first trailers to help steer the RV industry in a different direction. The Lightship AE.1 is real and it’s one of the coolest modern RVs I’ve seen.

(Full Disclosure: Lightship Energy invited me out to Denver, Colorado to interview the company’s engineers as well as to check out the Lightship AE.1 Cosmos debut trailer. Lightship paid for my travel, lodging, and good eating.)

Understandably, lots of people are skeptical about a venture like this. If I had a nickel for every time a startup from California claimed to have something revolutionary I probably wouldn’t need to work anymore. Many of these companies never produce anything more than some renders before disappearing into the night.

Lightship was founded in 2020 by former Tesla engineers Ben Parker and Toby Kraus with the mission of bringing innovation to the RV industry. (You can read both their stories in my previous coverage.) The short version of the story is that Parker’s adventure started with the food trucks parked near Tesla’s facilities in California. Many of these trucks were using generators for electrical power and Parker wasn’t fond of the noise or the fumes. He found more of those loud generators providing mobile power around the Bay area.

Initially, Parker wanted to make an all-electric food truck. Then, he left Tesla in 2020 and embarked on a cross-country road trip in a borrowed Winnebago. It was during this trip he discovered the less glamorous parts of RVing. If you park your RV somewhere that doesn’t have shore power, so you’re likely firing up a loud generator, which ruins otherwise quiet scenic vistas and calm forests. Get enough generators together, such as the tens of thousands of campers who come to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh each year, and you can even smell the fumes in the air outside of the deafening roar.

This motivated Parker to ask RV owners what they thought the worst pain points of RV ownership were. Those RVers responded that they hated how their trucks guzzled fuel while towing, and they really disliked having to run a loud generator when they were boondocking [Ed note: that’s when you’re camping without access to water, sewer, or electrical hookups]. Suddenly, a light bulb illuminated above Parker’s head: Forget about food trucks, what if he electrified the RV experience?

Not Vaporware

The Lightship AE.1 is the result of this work. I’ve now written about this a couple of times before, so I’m going to quote myself:

The AE.1 is supposed to do several things differently than your typical travel trailer. For starters, The AE.1’s design is sort of a futuristic version of what is known as a Hi-Lo camper. These clever trailers try to combine the aerodynamics of a pop-up trailer while retaining the hard walls and safety of a traditional travel trailer. Like a pop-up, a Hi-Lo compacts into itself. When you tow it down the road it’s not like hauling a brick through wind. When you get to your campsite, push the button and you have an instant typical travel trailer.

The Lightship AE.1 is just that, but with the optimization cranked up to 11. Parker and Kraus told us in 2023 that when the Lightship trailer is in travel mode, it is three times as aerodynamic as your typical travel trailer. We still don’t know the coefficient of drag of the unit, but we’ve been told that the trailer’s shape was created after thousands of hours of real-world towing testing with several different vehicles. The profile of the trailer is meant to work with as many trucks and SUVs as possible.

The real party trick of the Lightship AE.1 is the drive system, which Lightship is now calling the TrekDrive. In the L1, this consisted of an electric motor and a battery. The base trailer would have a 40 kWh battery with an option to upgrade to an 80 kWh unit. When equipped with the 80 kWh pack, the trailer is able to help pull itself up to 300 miles per charge. Lightship gave no further details about the exact components of this system. The latest release tells us you get a NACS connector, the top battery is now 77 kWh, and the trailer can fast charge from completely dead to full in an hour. The goal, Lightship told us, is that if you hitch up to a 300-mile EV, it should still get pretty close to 300 miles. This benefit extends to ICE vehicles, too. If you hitch up to a fancy F-250 Power Stroke that gets 20 mpg unloaded, it should get pretty darn close to 20 mpg when pulling a Lightship.

Let’s start this with a tour of the Lightship AE.1. Until now, you’ve seen nothing but renders of the Lightship campers. The Lightship team told me that this wasn’t intentional. They just didn’t know how to accurately convey scale or show off the slick features with photos. The ceiling in this camper stands 7.5 feet tall, but photos don’t really convey that. The team hoped that maybe renders would.

However, as some of you have pointed out, renders make the trailer seem like it doesn’t actually exist. Thankfully, it’s the exact opposite. Lightship still has its original L1 concept trailer around, but since then the company has built several mules and fully-functional prototypes. These trailers have gone camping and endured lots of hard testing as the company paves a path to series production. If you live in Colorado, there’s a chance you’ve seen one of these going down the highway and wondered what the heck you were looking at.

Here’s the old L1 for reference:

The AE.1 Cosmos Edition that I saw in the Lightship factory was a fully functional prototype and it represented what the production design is going to look like. The trailer looks very similar to the old L1, but Lightship made a slew of important changes.The first change I noticed was the entry door. This door was thick and rather gigantic; wider than most RV doors I’ve ever stepped through. An engineer informed me that this choice was made so that someone with a wheelchair will be able to get their wheelchair through the door.

Walking around the exterior, I also immediately noticed that in renders, the Lightship AE.1 appears to have a canopy that’s mostly glass. In reality, most of the roof is a thick composite material covered in solar panels. There’s a lot of panoramic glass, but the glass stops just outside of the clear portion.

In-person, the AE.1 has an imposing presence. It looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before and the big, glossy trailers stand out wherever they sit. Remember, the typical RV is a boring and flat white box. Lightship’s commitment to aerodynamics has resulted in a trailer that looks like a spaceship has landed at the campground.

I’m not the only one. Lightship’s engineers told me that when they take these out on the road they see people practically breaking their necks to see what’s going down the highway. In other words, this trailer will probably get you more attention than an Airstream polished to a mirror-like shine.

Ben Parker took me for a tour of the exterior. Up front is a box containing pieces of gear like the HVAC system compressor as well as an electrical panel to charge the trailer or to use the trailer to power something use. Parker said that part of this box’s existence is to take the loud equipment that would normally be in a trailer or attached to the roof and move it outside. Indeed, when you’re sitting in the trailer it’s whisper quiet, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Walking around the trailer, the trailer looks to be pretty great with what appears to be lots of care taken in getting seals to fit just right. Toward the rear, you’ll find the trailer’s tank outlets just like you’d find in other campers. Here, Parker told me that the Lightship team wanted to solve another pain point in RVing, dumping your load.

Evacuating tanks really sucks. If you’ve owned an RV before you know that these tanks are dirty, smelly, full of actual crap, and sometimes even leak. It’s sometimes disgusting to mount the hose to the valve before sticking the other end into the dump station’s hole. The people of Lightship get it because they’re lifelong RVers, too. Their solution involves a hose that’s always attached to the valve. You just connect the other end to a hole of your choice and then let the tanks dump.

When the dumping process is over, the trailer will then use a freshwater spraying system to clean out its own tanks and the hose so the next time you dump it won’t be so crappy.

As you look around the trailer, take a look at the tapers at the corners. Not only do these help give the trailer a distinctive look, but they also help immensely with the aero. When the trailer is in travel mode, the roof of the trailer sits about level with the roof of the tow vehicle. The trailer’s front end also tapers pretty much into the rear end of the truck, too. The result is a trailer that looks almost tailor-made to be hauled by a truck.

I will note that the prototype did have some imperfections here and there. The hatch covering the tank valves didn’t want to close flush and there were a couple of globs of stray sealant here and there. However, keep in mind that this is a prototype and this is common. Even the prototypes from big names like Ford have loose parts here and there. I’m told these issues have already been fixed for the production trailer.

So Much Room

Inside is where things get quite interesting.

The first thing I noticed is a lack of household outlets. That alone made the trailer look sort of fake in the renders. Sure enough, Lightship’s engineers pointed out that the outlets are actually there, but they’re hidden from immediate view. You’ll find outlets inside of the cabinets, nestled in the furniture, and right there in the kitchen. That seems to be some of that Tesla design philosophy breaking in.

The interior materials were surprisingly great. Lightship went for a utilitarian approach here, so there are a lot of metals and plastics. The cabinetry is all made out of hefty metal while the kitchen uses a vast expanse of laminated countertop.

The bathroom vanity is also something pretty sweet as it’s made out of recycled plastic. See those little dots of different colors? Yeah, those dots come from whatever that part of the plastic was in its previous life.

Lightship’s engineers told me that sustainability and durability were major focuses for this interior. So there’s a lot of sturdy metal in here, but also those neat plastics. Even the fabrics, which felt rather substantial, were made from a percentage of recycled material.

Something that was honestly surprising was how well everything was put together. The person who installed the kitchen sink put great care into laying down a consistent bead for the sealant. The cabinets all have equal panel gaps and are held closed with force so they won’t come open when you’re going down the road. The few knobs and other surfaces you can touch have heft to them and don’t feel like you can break them by looking at them the wrong way.

This all sounds silly, but remember that not even the big RV brands are good at this. Look at the sealant on a typical new travel trailer and you’ll see that it looks like a 5-year-old applied it. Parts don’t line up and surfaces are flimsy. Someone, or multiple people, went through this trailer to make sure that yeah, that part seems like it should belong there.

A particular highlight for me was the bathroom, which features a shower that sits right there at floor level. You just walk in and enjoy the entire ceiling of headroom and enough space for a bigger person like me to shower without having to forgo washing my legs because I can’t bend over.

Then there are lots of really small, but nice details. See that line in the shower? It’s a drain. The shower has almost an imperceptible incline so that the water feeds into the hidden drain rather than elsewhere. We turned on the water, too, and it works.

While we’re talking about the water, the Lightship engineers noted that the water pump system uses an accumulator of sorts to build up water for each use. This allows the trailer to use its water supply without forcing the pump to run non-stop, but also meters water pressure. Not only does this keep the trailer quieter, but the stream of water coming out of the sinks and the shower is constant and strong, rather than pulsating like you’d get running the electric pump in a typical travel trailer. I tested this feature with the prototype trailer and sure enough, the onboard pump and the accumulator build pressure like you’re connected to city water.

Another small, but neat change is the HVAC vents. You might have noticed that you don’t see any. That’s because the HVAC vents are hidden behind other surfaces. For example, the backrest for the couch is just one huge duct with countless outlets. As a result, when the air-conditioner or heater is running, you get air blowing out of a huge tube running around the entire living space up front.

This is different than, say, my family’s 2022 Heartland Mallard M33 where the heat and air come out of only specific tiny vents. Sadly, while Lightship is considering building a four-season version, the company admits that this trailer is just a three-season unit. It has a strong HVAC system, but doesn’t have floor radiant heat or a way to keep the tanks from freezing.

As for sleeping, the AE.1 offers two options. The main couch folds into a bed. Then you take the kitchen table, push it down (it has a telescoping stand), and then that turns into a bed as well. The trailer is said to comfortably sleep four. Ideally, you’d have a family where the parents are in the main bed and the kids take the table bed.

Some readers expressed concerns about the windows and heat. Parker explained that the windows have a deep tint like what you get in an SUV. The trailer also has a strong HVAC system and cross-flow ventilation. But if the cooling isn’t enough, the windows also have blackout shades.

Parker then showed me how the roof extending and lowering system works. There are four actuators and motors cleverly located behind pillars that raise and lower the canopy. Parker tells me that the entire system on a corner can fail and the remaining three corners will continue to operate the canopy. With that said, Lightship is also looking into a mechanical backup system for the rare event that you get more than one failed corner.

On the subject of the canopy, like a Hi-Lo the canopy is slightly larger than the bottom tub. Lightship seals out the two sections with thick rubber seals. Having the canopy work like a cap means that you shouldn’t get water intrusion through the rubber seal.

Parker mentioned that a huge inspiration for the Lightship project was the Hi-Lo trailer. When he determined that an aerodynamic electric trailer was the path forward, he started searching for any mass-market trailers that had a telescoping roof. That’s when he found the Hi-Lo trailers. However, while those trailers had brilliant telescoping roofs, they were still bricks going through the wind. Personally, I’ve always also found Hi-Lo interiors to look a bit weird when accommodating the telescoping roof. That isn’t a thing here. When the AE.1’s canopy is open you aren’t constantly reminded that the trailer is half its height when you aren’t sleeping in it.

Parker noted that the Hi-Lo design was very inefficient with walls that were too thick and basically no aero work, but it was inspirational anyway because it proved to Parker that there is a market for a trailer that collapses on itself. But it was also more than just looking at a Hi-Lo and thinking it was a great idea. Parker took a Tesla Model X and attached a Hi-Low onto the back, driving the consist from California to Colorado. He found that the Hi-Lo dramatically improved efficiency compared to a typical travel trailer, but the Tesla still needed about 550 Wh/mi to pull the camper. This meant 80, maybe 90 miles between charging stops to be safe.

It’s at this moment I really noticed just how tall the AE.1 is in Camp Mode. Parker told me the ceiling is 7.5 feet from the floor and that Andre from TFL Truck, a notable tall guy, stopped by and noted that he could actually fit in the AE.1’s shower. It’s common for RV showers to force tall people like Andre into slumping over to fit. That’s not a problem in the AE.1 as you get the full height of the roof even in the shower. Parker remarked that he wants basketball players to be able to use this camper and feel comfortable.

The Interview

To get the scoop on everything you need to know about the Lightship AE.1, I spoke with Lightship co-founders Ben Parker and Toby Kraus as well as various engineers around the Lightship facility. Let’s begin with Parker:

Mercedes Streeter: What happened with the name? Why is the camper now the AE.1 instead of the L1?

Ben Parker: So L1 was related to the company name, Lightship, which has its own fun story behind it [MS note: click here to read that story]. So we went to AE.1 because we wanted something that was closer to…basically what makes the product so unique. Closer to the product, less the company name. We’re using the term Aero-Electric. Those words are hyphenated because both are essential to making a long-distance towable all-electric RV.

MS: I love how you’re really leaning into space themes with the new naming scheme.

BP: The naming schemes for the product trims are actually based on distance from Earth. Cosmos [the most expensive trim] is the farthest out there, Atmos is the next down, Panos for the panoramic vistas, and then there’s Terros for the floor. Basically, what we wanted to highlight [with the AE.1 name] what makes the product so unique with Aero-Electric. It’s the most aerodynamic travel trailer you will find and it has the Trek Drive propulsion system which makes it special.

After this, I mentioned to Parker how Airstream is no longer going to make the eStream self-propelled trailer, which would have been a competitor to the Lightship AE.1. This leaves just Lightship and Pebble in the running to make a self-propelled travel trailer. Parker noted that Thor Industries, the parent of Airstream, became a strategic investor in Lightship. While Airstream’s reps didn’t have an explanation for the change of course in eStream development, this could be as close to a reason why as we can get.

This is pretty neat. This investment, as well as Thor’s investment in Harbinger, shows that the big RV industry is interested in change. As Parker points out, it’s also nice to have one of the biggest RV giants on your side.

MS: This segues into the next question. So, you’ve told me about that inspiring story about how you wanted to make fully-electric food trucks before going on a journey in a borrowed RV where you learned that everyone hates loud generators. I’m totally with you there. I go to EAA Airventure Oshkosh every year and the campground has very few electric hookups. That means every summer, you sit out front of your camper in chairs as airplanes fly above. But you’re stuck in an inescapable thunder of generators and gas fumes. Sure, you can buy quiet generators, but those are expensive so many people don’t buy them. Even my campsite neighbors, guys with a Rivian R1T and a Tesla Cybertruck, had a loud generator.

So, you know everyone hates loud generators and spending too much money on fuel. How did you land on an electric self-propelled trailer as opposed to a fully-electric motorhome or perhaps a hybrid like Harbinger is doing?

BP: There are a couple of reasons we went with a towable. One is market-based. Roughly 9 out of 10 of RVs sold each year are towable. It’s a roughly half-million unit market in the United States. The other side of it is just thinking about what is ready electrify — what product topology is ready to electrify. To do something like an electrified motorhome you have to do kinda what Harbinger has done and make it hybridized system. Even then, it requires a lot of battery.

MS: Yes, Harbinger started with an all-electric motorhome and now we have the hybrid. There’s a lot of engineering going on over there for sure.

BP: Definitely. That’s the thing, it’s a complicated system. It’s a great solution and like any hybrid — I built hybrid electric racecars in college — and they’re beasts to pull together because there’s just so many interactions between everything. So I was pretty convinced that battery-electric is the future just because of the simplicity around it. It’s really a battery cost and weight problem that we need to keep advancing on for battery-electric to be the right solution across the board. So, thinking about, if I was convinced of that, which I am. Then you think about the trajectory of a motorhome. If [an American] motorhome is going to be full battery-electric it needs somewhere around 500 kWh to 1mW of storage to have a 300 or 400-mile range and with today’s battery costs that means the batteries alone would crest $100,000.

I thought alright, drivable RVs are a small fraction of the market and the fundamental technology is not really there to enable an all-electric motorhome, so a towable is clearly the way to go. By contrast, a towable, especially when you do it the Aero-Electric way, and make it a ground-up design that goes for efficiency and thus minimizes the size of the battery you need to carry onboard. It makes total sense. You can get a 300-mile range from a trailer like this even towing with an EV truck.

As for why Lightship didn’t go with a teardrop design: Well, the company wanted to give families an RV they can stand up in and spread out in. While a teardrop may be the ultimate in aero, it’s not the ultimate camper if you enjoy such luxuries as standing up and taking the whole family on a trip. Obviously, that means some compromises had to be made. The Lightship AE.1 is more aerodynamic than any traditional RV on the market, but it’s not the most aerodynamic object it could possibly be.

Returning to the questions, I mentioned how a design like the AE.1 has promise for ICE vehicles. In the past, my parents had a Ford Expedition EL and when you lashed the family camper up to it you got a whopping 5.5 mpg. You could watch the fuel gauge move right before your eyes as that V8 sucked the tank dry.

Parker continued: That’s a key element of the Trek Drive system. It’s supposed to work agnostic of tow vehicle type, including traditional gas and new electric. The main difference, I think, is that for electric tow vehicles you’re looking at rescuing the range while gas and diesel trucks it’s all about fuel economy and saving at the pump.

MS: To shift gears a little bit, what materials are used in the body? To clarify, it’s common for the RV builders in Indiana to use wood framing, plywood-infused walls, and thin fiberglass sheets for the exterior skin.

BP: I think the core starting point in terms of construction of the vehicle is that we do not build this like a home. A home is not designed to go down the highway for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of miles. The body is in two parts: The canopy and the tub. Both the canopy and the tub are a hand-laid composite design. It’s built a lot like a glider aircraft with a foam core with two composite skins.

There are also thermoformed plastic trim panels. They’re basically service panels. They cover up wires that go up into the canopy. But the majority of what you see around [the camper] is an A-class surface from a fiberglass structure.

In my inspection of the Lightship design, the company’s composites, which Parker tells me are bonded together, are thick and the paint on the trailer is rich. The coating almost reminds me of what you’d see on a Smart Fortwo’s panels or perhaps a boat.

MS: You mentioned service panels. Does that mean this trailer will be user-serviceable?

BP: Maybe. A lot of [the user serviceability] is like if you had a connector fail, sure, you can go in there and reconnect it as a user. There’s some stuff, like a lot of the automotive components like the high voltage system that we don’t want people messing with. Some of it is built like a house or a nice yacht. If a hinge goes out of tune or something like that, a lot of that stuff is easily serviceable.

First off, the goal is that we get to an automotive standard of durability which is the gold standard. I mean, think of how many times you had to tune the trim panel on a car, it’s almost never. [The AE.1] should get to that, that’s our goal. Really, that service throughout the life of the vehicle on these lower components is not a thing. But, we’re still getting this thing out the door, we’ll make sure that stuff’s accessible. It’s great for us, too, because you want good accessibility for our service team, too, so they can come in and quickly swap out components.

MS: An all-composite construction is a great start to reducing the chances of water leaks, but is there any wood or anything like that to get wrecked if a water leak did occur?

BP: You won’t have rot in the same ways you’d find in a traditional camper. For example, the floor is also a fiberglass composite sandwich material. Under the flooring itself is a custom woven vinyl flooring. Beneath that flooring is a fiberglass sandwich with rigid foam urethane to give it some structure and insulation value.

All of the plumbing is PEX and uses press-fit joints. It works well on the road as well as vibration and changing temperatures.

MS: So with all of these good ideas and the great fit and finish I see here, did you get engineers from the RV industry? Or are you all from Tesla, Rivian, and the like?

BP: We might have over-emphasized that part of the company. That’s definitely a big part of the heritage is folks coming from the origins of the modern EV industry. We have folks from everywhere. Our head interior engineer built aircraft for many years so there’s some aircraft interior design techniques here. We have a lot of people who build trailers. A lot of our production team came from another local trailer manufacturer, Colorado Teardrops. Unfortunately, they went out of business. But they’re really great folks who know how to build trailers well.

We have people from all over. Some of our people are from consumer electronics. To build a house that’s also an EV and as a residential solar system requires many many different disciplines to pull this together. We also do a lot of RVing as a company. Many of us are RVing diehards. We have a cool company program called the Light Trip where we give each employee a stipend every year to use on RV trips. It feeds the mission because you want the people building the product to experience what’s out there and see what can be improved.

When I noted how well things were put together and how much thought the RV equipment had into it, Parker noted that a number of Lightship’s engineers are engineers from the Indiana RV companies who wanted to join in on the mission of making an innovative camper. That makes a lot of sense.

I then asked Parker about the company’s pay structure. Over in Indiana, RV manufacturers often pay their production floor workers by the piece, so they have the incentive to build RVs as fast as physically possible. It’s believed the pay structure is part of why the traditional RV has such poor quality.

Lightship works like inTech. The production team isn’t paid by the piece. Instead, they get salaries and profit sharing. Lightship wants its workers to take their time getting the quality right rather than racing the RVs out of the door.

The interview continued.

MS: A lot of our readers have taken note that RVs spend a lot of their time just sitting around doing nothing. Many people have their trailers parked at home just taking up 30 feet of space and doing nothing. Your RV has a giant 77 kWh battery pack. Will you be able to use the battery as home energy storage when the RV isn’t being used for camping?

BP: I think that’s a must-have. One of the big challenges to address with RVs is that they’re very under-utilized. Cars are utilized, RVs are rarely utilized. Problem one for us to solve is the electrification and modernization of this type of vehicle. The second problem is this utilization issue. How do we turn a low-utilized and thus kind of low value asset into a high-utilized and thus high-value asset. [The Lightship AE.1] is really like a good home solar system and energy storage system masquerading as an RV.

Parker explained that the Lightship can provide up to 3 kW of home solar and that 77 kWh battery will basically work like a giant Tesla Powerwall when it’s parked at home. In other words, you can use this as home solar and as a backup “generator” as well. The Lightship AE.1 will also charge your EV. How much power are we talking about here? The trailer has an outlet that can punch out 10 kW.

Afterward, I mentioned that the big news from Airstream last year was that you could now get 600 Watts of solar on the company’s new trailer. Parker explained to me that once you commit to going fully electric, you cannot do half-measures. Thus, the AE.1’s roof is covered in solar panels where it doesn’t have windows. You need electricity to power-hungry appliances like heaters and cooktops. I mean, the AE.1 has everything, including a hidden dishwasher under the microwave.

MS: Do you have any plans for a more affordable model that still has the drive motor?

BP: We do. I think a fun but also tough part about starting a new OEM is that you have a lot of cost limitations when you’re just starting out because you’re building at such low volumes to begin with. We also wanted to establish ourselves as a really exciting brand to look at the future with.

MS: Sounds a lot like Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, and other newer OEMs that started by offering a flagship before moving to more affordable products.

BP: The playbook is clear and also sort of necessary that to get a business like this going and make it financially sustainable. This flagship is so exciting but it’s definitely not the stopping point. It’s a high price point, but within the AE.1 we will have lower-priced trim levels. We’re definitely not going to stop there. We want to make an AE.2, an AE.3, subsequent products that will push into higher volume and lower price points. The big point here is that we want to be one of the big reasons RV goes electric and does so quickly. I think the only way you can do that is build RVs at different price points and for different types of RVing styles.

Certainly, the trajectory is toward different kinds of form factors and different types of Lightships at different price points.

Parker explained that the company landed on the 27-foot length after interviewing prospective customers. Through the feedback, they learned that a lot of people wanted a trailer that was large enough for a family of four to sleep in, but not so large as to be ungainly. Pushing the size larger was adding in luxuries like a real bathroom and a sizable kitchen. Pushing the camper smaller was making sure you could park it in most places. Lightship’s research found that a trailer of about this size is in the sweet spot for many people. Indeed, Airstream’s most popular floorplan, the 25FB, is about the size of a Lightship.

Specific dimensions from my previous piece:

At any rate, you get all of this in a trailer measuring 27-feet long, 6 feet, 11 inches tall when in road mode, and 10 feet tall when in camp mode. The trailer is said to have a ground clearance of a foot and a departure angle of just 9 degrees, so don’t take it off-road. Fully loaded, it weighs in at 8,300 pounds (dry weight is 7,450 pounds) and it sleeps 4 to 6 people depending on the configuration.

Lightship co-founder Toby Kraus told me that the Colorado facility can produce about 500 units a year and the team expects demand to outstrip this supply. That being said, Lightship will build as many campers as it can, so this is not a limited product, well, outside of the limited edition shown here, of course.

Another question readers have is what happens when the battery dies. Parker told me that you can set a battery charge floor, which can help you arrive at camp with some juice left to use for camping. When you hit that floor or just completely exhaust the battery, the trailer free-wheels. Thus, the camper becomes just a really large aerodynamic camper.

The motor powers just the rear axle and produces 20 kW (27 HP) continuous 75 kW (100 HP) peak. The peak is for accelerating and climbing but it was determined that 20 kW was perfect for just cruising behind the tow vehicle. Parker explained that Lightship prefers making the trailer underpowered for safety. There is a suite of sensors that measure the movements of the truck. This combines with the software that works a lot like the traction control and stability control of your car to keep the trailer perfectly tensioned and in control behind your truck. But, at the same time, Parker considers the underpowered motor to be a safety feature as it the 8,000-pound trailer will never have enough power to cause havoc.

Parker explained that the team even took a test AE.1 out on the road with the motor permanently cranked up to its 100 HP peak and the worst the trailer could do was make the driver feel like something pat the truck on the butt. Otherwise, it remained stable. How is all of this legal? The Lightship team told me that while there are some legal challenges in a design like this, it’s legally considered to be the same as any other travel trailer.

Of course, having a drive system introduces its own problems. If you have an EV tow vehicle you now have to charge (and pay to charge) two battery packs at the same time. If you have an ICE tow vehicle you’ll have to fill up your truck and then drive somewhere else to find a charger. Pull-through gas station-style chargers will make this a little easier, but I think some people might be turned off by this idea. As it is, public EV chargers can get expensive, which will cut into the money you save from not having to fuel up or charge as often.

Finally, we have the RV show problem. You might notice that a lot of new futuristic RVs end up at shows like CES and smaller RV shows, but they never really show up at places like the Florida RV SuperShow. To some, that seems odd. The reality is that these companies do want to get into the big RV shows, but have found access to be difficult. So they get into the shows that they can.

That’s a shame, because I bet if Lightship got into the Florida show the public would go bananas. My experience mirrors Parker’s. A lot of folks have been asking for something like this. However, they may never end up seeing it because Lightship isn’t at the bigger RV shows.

It’s Pricy, But Hopefully Only For Now

At any rate, I walked away from touring the AE.1 impressed. It seemed like the folks at Lightship did their homework and produced something that’s actually pretty cool. Even if you take the motor out of the equation (which you can do by buying the base model) it’s a slick design that in the company’s testing has returned better fuel economy and range just on aerodynamics alone. The Lightship AE.1 looks like nothing else and takes that old Hi-Lo idea and supercharges it into a camper for the modern day.

Unfortunately, the trailer’s launch model is a very expensive piece of kit. The flagship trim level is so expensive that Lightship’s first customers are going to have to be well-off people who believe in this mission. The Lightship team recognizes that it’s not the greatest position to be in. However, that is not their intent. The hope is that enough rich people will buy these expensive ones and that battery tech gets better enough that Lightship can produce a far more accessible version for the Average Joe.

The launch edition of the trailer is the Cosmos Edition, which is what you see pictured here. Lightship wants to sell 50 of these units for $250,000 and says they’ll be hitting the road in summer 2025, going out to early reservation holders.

“With the limited-edition Lightship AE.1 Cosmos, we’re delivering a dream travel experience for sustainable travelers, tech lovers and EV enthusiasts,” said Ben Parker, Lightship Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer. “Our mission is to bring RVs into the electric age with the AE.1. The Cosmos Edition is the first premium realization, and we have other trims to fit travelers’ needs coming quickly down the road.”

Once the Cosmos Edition sells out, the AE.1 will be sold in Atmos, Panos, and Terros trim levels with varying price points to fit the needs of different RV buyers. The Atmos is $184,000, the Panos will cost $151,000 and the Terros is the entry-level model at $125,000. The Panos, with its smaller battery, will go only 140 miles. The Terros doesn’t have a drive system at all. All of these are slated for release in late 2025 to 2026.

For now, this is pretty much strictly a luxury product. While that will turn some people off, I think the people who do put their money into a Lightship will like what they get. Will Lightship be the future? I’m not sure, but I can’t wait to sleep in one for myself. This is what a lot of people have been waiting for, even if the price isn’t just yet.