Late last year, Harbinger, makers of electric commercial truck chassis, and Thor Industries, one of the largest RV conglomerates, announced a partnership to create advanced motorhomes. That press release was awfully thin on actual details. I got to speak with Harbinger’s CEO as well as Thor’s team on their future of RVs and I’m loving what I see. How about a coach that goes 250 miles on a charge and drives closer to a pickup truck than a bus? Let’s dig into this.
Harbinger first appeared on our radar back in September 2022 at the Detroit Auto Show. Back then, Harbinger had a snazzy display showing off its scalable stripped chassis commercial truck platform and an example of a complete delivery truck with Harbinger bones. When our Jason Torchinsky wrote about Harbinger, he noted that motorhomes sometimes ride on chassis like this and figured that could be a possible application for Harbinger’s tech. As it turns out, Thor Industries was thinking the same thing!
(Full Disclosure: Harbinger and Thor Industries invited me to the Indiana RV Open House to have dinner with Harbinger’s leadership before exploring Harbinger’s chassis and the latest tech on hand from Thor. Harbinger paid for my lodging and food, I paid for my own fuel.)
Harbinger Motors
Harbinger Motors was founded in 2021 in Southern California with a mission to change the game for medium-duty vehicles. Its co-founders start with CEO John Harris, a man with a resume that includes Anduril Industries, Boeing, Faraday Future, and Xos Trucks. The company’s CTO is Phillip Weicker, who brings experience from Canoo, Faraday Future, QuantumScape, Coda Automotive, and EnergyCS. The final co-founder is COO Will Eberts, who brings experience from Anduril Industries, Canoo, Faraday Future, Moog Inc., and General Atomics ASI.
I also spoke with General Counsel & Head of Corporate Development Michael Fielkow. In the past, Fielkow was deputy general counsel and VP of global strategy over at Canoo. Fielkow also has a brilliant idea for how to solve the problems surrounding charging large electric motorhomes and electric travel trailers. We’ll get to that later in this story!
If you go to Harbinger’s website, you’ll find a quote from Harris:
“We are building the future of electric mobility. There are a huge variety of vehicles built on medium-duty platforms, and by taking on electrification in this segment, we are delivering a better solution for the backbone of an entire industry.”
Indeed, medium-duty trucks seem like a great segment to electrify. These are trucks that don’t need to drive across a country but work within a city or a region. These are trucks that do local deliveries, haul equipment for landscapers, or pick up refuse from suburban curbs. Medium-duty commercial trucks carry loads to job sites, move earth, help repair infrastructure, keep the lights on, tow disabled vehicles, and so much more. If a business has something that needs to be moved somewhere nearby, chances are you might find a medium-duty vehicle doing the job.
Harris and Fielkow tell me that the great thing about medium-duty trucks is that the demand is already there. Firms looking to replace their trucks are interested in cleaner technology and possibly finding ways to reduce their costs. It won’t be a surprise to anyone here, but it’s not cheap to run a diesel commercial truck. You have to pay for fuel, routine maintenance, filters, engine repairs, and more. An electric powertrain means no more diesel exhaust fluid, no more fuel filters, no more oil changes, and no more being at the whim of the price of diesel. A number of the medium-duty trucks out there also run and return to the same place every night, so operators don’t have to worry much about America’s questionable charging network.
Of course, I recently got to test out the Bollinger B4 medium-duty truck, so I bet you’re wondering how these two companies compare. While both companies are in the commercial truck space, both companies are taking a different approach.
Bollinger has decided to take the path of least resistance. Its trucks use as many outsourced parts as possible. Bollinger’s axles are from Dana, its cabs come from China, and its batteries from ONE. Bollinger is keeping things simple, sticking with Class 4 (14,001–16,000 pounds), with a Class 5 (16,001–19,500 pounds) on the horizon.
On the other side, we have Harbinger. This company isn’t building a truck with a cab, but a scalable chassis that you can put anything you want on top. As of now, Harbinger is targeting Class 4 to Class 7 (26,001–33,000 pounds) and Harris tells me a chassis cab will be in its future as well.
Harbinger’s approach to technology is also very different than Bollinger’s. While Bollinger uses third-party parts, Harbinger’s platform is developed in-house. Check out this graphic:
Harris and Fielkow tell me their trucks will be able to last the long haul. Medium-duty commercial trucks often see a good two decades and a few hundred thousand miles of service before retirement, so the EV trucks will have to do the same. Even my RTS bus drove for 20 years and 400,000 miles before Texas A&M finally decided to call it quits.
Making an EV last that long is a challenge and I think Harbinger has some interesting ideas. Harbinger’s batteries use 2170 cylindrical cells and the cells are packed into large aluminum cases offering up to 35 kWh of power and 40 miles of range each. This 800-volt architecture is scalable, so if you want more range, just toss in more of the 35 kWh packs. These trucks need to last 20 years and 450,000 miles, so Harbinger took a look at what aged EVs look like and decided to go a different direction. When Harris spoke with Ars Technica, he mentioned that old Tesla batteries would have good cells, but enclosures that rusted out from over a decade of exposure. This is because, as Harris says, typical EV car packs are constructed from stamped steel components that are sealed together with body sealer. Harbinger uses a casting press to encase its batteries in single-piece aluminum boxes. This eliminates those aforementioned failure points.
Going with 800 V isn’t really for fast charging, either. After all, many of these trucks will be charging overnight at depots. Instead, it’s for efficiency and weight. Harbinger doesn’t need to use as much copper and the motor can be much smaller as well. However, Harbinger does note that the trucks could fast charge in about an hour.
It’s not super easy to see in photos, but Harbinger’s chassis rides lower to the ground than what you’d find in a diesel. So, while Harbinger’s batteries don’t hang low like a Bollinger, a Harbinger should still be a far better drive than a typical diesel truck. A low chassis also means when the truck is upfitted as a delivery vehicle, the floor is 28 inches off of the ground. That’s less work for a driver who will be stepping in and out of their vehicle all day.
All of this is developed in-house from the eAxle, the battery packs, and even Harbinger’s steer-by-wire system. Oh yeah, the steering wheel is not physically connected to the front wheels. This allows for even greater flexibility, but also for a much better drive.
If you’ve ever driven a commercial vehicle, you’re well aware that steering is often far from an enjoyable experience. That steering also changes as you load down the vehicle. In going with a steer-by-wire system, Harbinger says it can offer an easy driving experience at all times. Using software, the chassis could effectively change ratios on the fly, you get easy and nimble steering in the city and tight handling at speed. Harbinger’s steering also accounts for weight, so a loaded truck feels similar to an unloaded truck. The idea is that you can get a commercial truck (or an RV) that drives better than a commercial truck.
This steer-by-wire system is also backed up by redundancies. There are two steering motors, two controllers, and two sets of every component used to make the steering work. If a component fails, there’s a second to take over.
How All Of This Works As A Motorhome
Back in November 2022, Harbinger and Thor announced a partnership to create a new electrified motorhome. At first, this will be a Class 6 (19,501–26,000 pounds) rig with a Class A motorhome body. For those of you not aware of how these classes work, this means a transit bus-style coach. Thor and Harbinger are aiming to create an aerodynamic motorhome that will get about 250 miles of range on a charge. If they’re able to pull this off, the pair will not only have a larger electric motorhome than Winnebago and Grounded, but one that will go more than twice the range. Currently, Grounded and Winnebago are building camper vans out of Ford E-Transits, which go about 108 miles on a charge.
Just days ago, Harbinger announced it has received $60 million in Series A funding from investors including Ridgeline, a venture capital firm, and Thor Industries. Harbinger will be sending its chassis to Thor next year. Then, its brands will take the chassis and build motorhomes out of them. Thor was not able to tell me which brands will be using Harbinger’s platform. As Harris explained to me, Thor’s brands have a ton of autonomy, so any of the brands can choose to have a Harbinger Class A coach. Personally, I could totally see Airstream bringing back a Class A coach using Harbinger’s chassis. Thor Motor Coach and Entegra Coach also seem to be obvious fits as well. I am told that Thor will be encouraging its brands to innovate using Harbinger’s chassis, too.
What should come out of the other side would be pretty awesome. Since Harbinger is providing a bare chassis, the sky is the limit. You can put a low-floor aerodynamic body on top of that chassis. Harris tells me that something great about the Harbinger chassis is the fact that none of its batteries or powertrain will conflict with holding tanks or RV gear. So, the brands won’t need to do anything crazy to make it work.
Also, those Harbinger batteries will also do double-duty as the RV’s house battery. This not only eliminates the problem of finding a house battery (something both Grounded and Winnebago have to deal with) but means you have tons of juice for boondocking as well as running multiple hungry appliances at the same time.
In theory, Harbinger’s approach means better integration than what Grounded and Winnebago are doing. Those latter companies are essentially converting existing electric vans, with the low range that they currently come with.
Harbinger is giving Thor’s brands a blank canvas that they can use to adapt as they please. Harbinger is working with Thor so that the completed coaches should feel like they were built for the purpose of RVing. Both Harris and Fielkow feel that offering customers a bare chassis offers far more flexibility than offering them a van.
Over at Thor, I was shown different bits and pieces that could be included in travel trailers and motorhomes one day. I was not allowed to take pictures of these objects, so you’ll have to live with me describing them.
One of Thor’s innovations is a thick foam core roof reinforced with glass fibers. As Thor’s engineers showed me, you could puncture this material and the damage will be isolated. Giving a specific example, an engineer told me a tree branch could punch partly through the roof, and while water would pool in the damaged area, it would not spread to the walls or the rest of the roof. The roof material was lightweight enough for me to lift with one hand and it apparently has good insulation properties as well. If the roof material is half as good as what was shown to me, I would say that Thor should ditch the wood-framed roofs today.
Next, Thor showed me a flexible solar panel awning. It does exactly what it says on the tin and you get an awning that provides shade while also helping to juice up your batteries. Thor didn’t really reinvent the wheel here. Instead, you get rectangular panels that are solid. What folds is the fabric space between those panels. When folded, the awning is a rectangle rather than a circle like a typical awning. The panels themselves are made so that damage to one panel keeps energy flowing. An engineer showed me a solar panel that had taken a bullet but was still working, albeit with reduced capacity [Ed note: where are you camping? MH].
The next biggest innovation I saw was metal-reinforced composite counters, cabinets, and benches. If you’ve been in a camper before, you know how nasty the plywood and particle board interior bits can be. Making all of it plastic (with hidden metal poles for support) is actually a vast improvement. Thor showed me plastic interior parts that are apparently already in production in Europe and will be coming to America soon. They’re stronger than what we already have, they feel better to touch, and they are lighter. Sure, that means fake plastic woodgrain, but I dig it.
Other tech bits from Thor’s display include Starlink and a vehicle software system that allows you and service technicians to interact with your vehicle with ease. Say you get some error screen. Thor’s vehicle system will allow you to pull out your phone, report the issue, and get support from your dealer. It’s basically the kind of tech support you could get for your computer but for a coach.
Charging An Electric Motorhome
Of course, none of this solves the problem with charging. As of right now, you’ll find that many, if not most public chargers are stalls, not pull-through spaces. This is bad news for those going camping with electrified vehicles. Say you have a Rivian R1T and you’re towing a Lightship L1. Because the Lightship L1 has its own battery and its own traction motors, you can tow that trailer with minimal range loss to your Rivian. That’s great! But what happens when both the truck and the trailer run low on battery? Right now, you’ll have to back the trailer into a charging spot, decouple the Rivian, and then park it into a charging spot. It’s convoluted and would probably get annoying very fast. Not to mention, you’ll be hogging two charging spots. That’s assuming you can get the Lightship into a position that the public charger can plug into.
None of the companies I’ve interviewed thus far have a solution to this problem. Turning the electric camper into a Class A motorhome doesn’t really help. Now you’re trying to shove a camper into a space meant to park something no larger than perhaps a Ford E-Transit.
My proposal would be the installation of pull-through spaces. We’re going to need them, anyway, if the trucking industry will be expected to go EV.
Fielkow explained to me that motorhomes are in an interesting spot. Research from the Thor and Harbinger partnership suggests that a ton of RV trips actually happen within that 250-mile range from home. A lot of RV owners don’t go very far and for them, the 250-mile range will be great. When the owner of a Harbinger-based RV parks at a campground with shore power, the existing shore power infrastructure at the campground will be enough to charge the motorhome overnight. Just plug in and use the camper as you normally would and the campsite will top up the battery.
Those wanting to go across the country might find themselves in a tougher spot. Again, America’s charging infrastructure isn’t really built for motorhomes. Fielkow told me that he thinks RV chargers at campgrounds could be a solution to that. So, when a motorhome owner runs low, they could just pull into chargers at the local KOA or similar, top up, and then get back on the road. You get a charge, the campground gets some business, and everyone wins. Of course, Harbinger is not in the business of building chargers, so the solution to this will be from somewhere else.
At any rate, some or all of the aforementioned Thor technology developments could show up in a Harbinger-based motorhome. While neither Harbinger nor Thor could give me a timeline, I’m told that we could expect to see a Harbinger-based Thor motorhome soon. This should be within the next few years, not 10 years and beyond. If so, Thor might leapfrog itself ahead of the competition. We’ll be monitoring the progress of this project, as we are with Winnebago’s development.
(Images: Author, unless otherwise noted.)
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Reading this makes me wonder how big of a generator you would need to include to make it effectively a plug in hybrid? If it’s reasonably small and wouldn’t affect packaging too much it could potentially be a fantastic application even if the fuel tank was small!
So many issues here.
Many campgrounds have electric systems that can barely keep up when everyone is running ACs on a hot day. They will never keep up with the load that these would introduce.
Boondocking would become impossible. No infrastructure to charge for the return trip home.
So much waste to have a battery this large just sitting 90% of the year as most RVs are not used very much.
Some campgrounds already charge extra for 50 amp sites or want to meter electric. I can see this becoming more common if EVs become commonplace.I am not sure a standard 50 amp plug would provide the juice needed to fully charge the RV overnight with other electrical demands.
I have said it before and will say it again. EVs have a use case. PHEVs have an even broader use case. With current battery technology, not everything needs to be an EV!!
If the environment/climate change is the reason for EVs, then make affordable EVs that actually help reduce the strain on the environment. As with most things, I feel the push for electrification is more about lining someones pockets that saving the environment.
Now if they would have just partnered with a better manufacture. Thor is so bad and has so many issues and lawsuits against them. Quality and Quality Control are just dismal.
Steer by wire? That’s a hard no
250 miles might be sufficient for a lot of people, but I wonder if they’re overestimating the usefulness of a campground electrical setup for charging. A lot of campgrounds struggle on hot days when everyone is running AC. I can’t imagine adding the load of charging a massive battery on top of that is going to have anything but a seriously negative effect.
Also, if my math is correct, even a 50 amp outlet at a campground is going to max out around 12 kW of charging. That’s a far cry from the hundreds of kW you get from a dedicated car charger these days. You’re certainly not going to pop in to the local KOA and top your battery off in an hour or even two. Try 8 or 10, at which point you’re probably staying the night.
Finally, the fact that so many people involved in this have Faraday Future on their resume is a big old red flag. I’ll believe this when I can drive it.
I wonder if the batteries can charge on solar and shore power at the same time. Since 30A 120v is much more common but not enough to get you going.
People I know that use RV’s travel 700+ miles and do it in a day. There is no way they could possibly go that far in the time they do charging 3 or more times just trying to get to their destination. Once they get to their destination how would they charge it? the place they go to doesn’t have 220v power hookups and most RV parks don’t have that capability…
It is very simple. In the future they will no longer do that.
Yeah, exactly. When I had an RV, I’d do 800 or so miles in a travel day, then have a ton of time to chill at the destination. Or if I was doing a cross country bomb, I could do it in a few days, then take my time meandering on the way back. There doesn’t seem to be any way to do this with current electric tech.
Really? 700+ in a day? I’ve usually heard rules of thumb for planning on the order of 200-400 miles per day, and doing >600 a couple days in a row was exhausting for me. I think over 500 is pretty unusual.
On the charging side, at the destination there’s usually a 50A@240V hookup, or at the very least 30A@120V (though 30A only is becoming more and more rare). The RV parks might be in for an upgrade on their main feed though, and will have to start charging an extra fee or metering power.
Call me paranoid, but I’m not exactly sold on the steer-by-wire system on a commercial vehicle. If it has two of those systems I still don’t think it can truly be called a redundancy.
Because the steering wheel is not physically connected to the front wheels.
I’m not a fan of a shitty over-the-air software update borking my ability to steer.
Yep, because even if the hardware is 100% redundant, a software bug can still brick both of them.
What I want to know is, how is the Tesla Semi getting 400 miles on a charge? I know they use 1 megawatt chargers and I’m sure huge batteries, but honestly, motorcoaches often start at $200K and easily cross $1M. Where is the company building an architecture that can do 400 miles on a charge?
I think the future of RV’ing is lots of batteries and solar and more lightweight building techniques as well as features that lower the coefficient of drag while driving–like being able to lower the roof while driving, etc.
In any case, given that people finance these things with 15 – 20 year loans, I’m surprised we haven’t seen bus architectures targeting that high end of the market where you can option up batteries to increase range up to that magic 400 mile number.
This is a good idea. Sadly it’ll be expensive and limited in the sites it can access to charge at. Not every site has 50 amp 240v electric. 30 amp 120v is more common but it’ll still only just make up for the house load. That leaves the RV with the same charge it entered the campground at.
I fully expect to see one of these hooked onto a tow truck when the owners don’t pay attention to what kind of electric service is available and run the battery flat. Some RV owners have way more money than sense.
I don’t understand the reasoning here. Neither company can produce high volume. Yet they are watering down capability to be mediocre in all things. As for RVs range of 250 still only gets you there or takes care of you while you’re there. So nothing new. BUT commercial local delivery is ideal. Daily trips that bring you home cuts DOT REquirements. I opine if you can put thin battery packs between an inner and outer wall in the winter ice cold keeps the batteries cool and heated batteries heat the vehicle. In the summer air flow on the outer skin would cool down the batteries in summer but need additional cooling. Considering just Ford built millions of these using build the motor, frame and drivers cab let aftermarket buy and resell has to still work and keep costs down from designing and building trucks, vans, ambulances, fire trucks, etc is the way to go. If you get interest in many self built vehicles you can’t keep up people leave, competition copies and you die
“Just plug in and use the camper as you normally would and the campsite will top up the battery.”
Now if they can just extend that to ALL the campsites so those with generators won’t feel the need to fire up their noise maker at all hours.
I guess it depends on how much power is hooked up the campsite and how much appliances each camper / party is uasing.
Never seen a camping site with electric unless rv so expensive.
This is a bit of a nit-pick not really related to the article, but I HATE auto-play videos, and utterly DESPISE ones that will automatically start playing the next one even after you’ve tried to pause it. As starting a new video initializes various codecs in the GPU this means that I can not open a tab in the morning, and as time permits at work read the article or parts of it as it can interfere with other things I’m doing that use GPU acceleration.
Other reason you may want to rethink this is I quit reading the old lighting site about a year before everything went downhill on every device except my windows workstation with 74 layers of ad-blocking. It would run an iphone out of battery in about an hour, and would cause heaps of issues with both the nvidia and amd drivers on Linux.
I have not seen multiple reloading ads. Just one and done. Gotta pay the bills. What level autopian membership did you buy? You don’t get content for free.
Not referring to ads, but the auto play videos in the autopian tv section in the articles. Even after pausing the video, a minute or two later you’ll see another video started playing. It can be a killer if 3 hours into a 12 hour project your gpu croaks because there’s something it doesn’t like about a codec. This also mainly happens on non-windows and non-macos operating systems, which is what 3 of 4 pc’s I use for work are.
Yeah, I do deserve a bit of grief for not being a member yet, but I do avoid using ad blockers on sites I frequent.
Okay I’ll admit not an expert at the replay situation you experienced .maybe set ad blockers because I haven’t seen it. I have found you scroll past the screen the video stops.
An example to add at least as far as this website on windows… if you’re trying to record something in a different app on your screen, such as how to use a feature in a gui you’re writing, each time a new video starts playing the recording gets interrupted and needs to be started all over.
Send these notes to Matt (matt@TheAutopian.com), we may be able to make some adjustments!
Agreed. I’m fine having the videos in line as an option, but having them auto-play (even if they’re muted) is really distracting and awful.
Here is my question, Some RV enthusiasts buy an RV find a campground and it just sits there. Would the lithium-ion batteries of the drivetrain rot or deteriorate? It’s a common issue with tires, I wanted to see if it’s one more thing that can go wrong.
LFP battery can probably last decades.. it is the temperature management system for the batteries that one would have to worry about rotting.
Almost certainly, although to be fair the same applies to gas or diesel powertrains too. Leave them sit for five years and good luck getting them to start afterward. After five years the EV is probably fine, especially if you’ve kept it plugged in so the batteries can be maintained. It’s a waste to use a motorhome in this way no matter how you implement it. Seasonal sites should be towables.
Would a regular old campsite style generator provide enough juice to meaningfully charge one if these if you were, say, in a roadside picnic area?
It depends on the consumption. I mean one good thing about electricity is number of Wh you put in the battery has much less loss than fossils. Tesla Superchargers can do 72, 150, 250kWh.. assuming the EV RV has the onboard electronics to accept the charge it can be meaningful.
Probably not. A 2000W generator is a pretty common size, which means to recharge a 100 kWh battery (to use a round number) would take somewhere around two days of running continuously. You’re not going to get a useful boost just from charging it while you stop for lunch.
Any chance we could see some photos of the cool stuff mentioned like the PV awning, plastic interior, etc etc?
You could sort of see the plastic interior in the background of the 3/4 shots of the Harbinger chassis. Thor prohibited all photography of its upcoming tech as it’s worried about the competition stealing its ideas. Only the Harbinger chassis and the Starlink dish were approved for photos.
Which, yes, it is a bit funny that I could share what I saw, but not show you pictures of it.
Well,a picture is worth a thousand words…
Maybe they thought you were a stereotypical millennial and would just send a tweet or two about your visit. They must have had no idea that you are the world’s leading “RV/motorcycle/Smartcar/train/plane” enthusiast-blogger!
Sidenote, who else hates the new “X” symbol on tweets (Xes?) that looks like a close window button.
There are many use cases for RVs, including campground parkers, continuous tourers, event visitors, and off-the-gridders. While I love the idea of having built-in battery power, I think there are limited situations where this is the best solution for what will be a very premium price.
Campground parkers don’t need electric but it would be fine once they get there. EV just adds nothing to the experience since they have hook-ups.
Continuous cruisers would probably hate the limited range but at least they would be able to recharge at campgrounds along the way.
Event visitors might be the sweet spot. Go a short distance and park with power for a short time.
Obviously off-the-gridders won’t be buying one.
250 will not cut it for a motorhome, and I’m a hearty proponent of EVs. At this rate, the only thing that will make economic sense for a vehicle that doesn’t have a real ROI (e.g. trucking) is potentially hydrogen or some sort of bio-diesel hybrid. This is a waste of batteries IMO
My usual limit for driving the motorhome is around 300km per day so this would work but the upfront costs and only using it for a bit each year will be astronomical
I know several people who own them and they drive 700 miles or a little more a day in theirs. It would be a horrible experience having to stop every 250 miles for however long it takes to charge when they usually go 400 miles on a tank of Diesel and refill in 10 minutes.
Motorhomes have to be one of the worst uses for batteries currently. They spend most of their lives sitting in someones yard not doing anything, a few days a year doing a lot of miles driving to a campsite or just driving around sightseeing. Maybe when it’s not being used owners could use vehicle-to-grid to use the massive battery to store excess day solar power from a home solar array and use it overnight. A hybrid would be a much better system, improved MPGs and easy refueling when going places and a battery that still large enough to run equipment without a generator when parked.
Are KOAs and Good Sam sites still around?