If you want to rent an RV in America, your choices are usually pretty boring. Most of the time, your choices end up between various boring white boxes with an unquenchable thirst for fuel. RollAway Hospitality, a company that’s calling itself a “Disruptive Tech-Hospitality Startup,” thinks it has the solution. Before your eyes finish rolling all of the way to the back of your head, there’s actually something cool here. Yes, stop laughing! Starting now, you can rent one of the surprisingly nice RVs offered by the firm, which are converted General Motors BrightDrop vans.
If you’re an American and like to only temporarily dabble in the experience of RVs, you’re probably well aware of rental outfits like Cruise America, Outdoorsy, or RVshare. Cruise America is pretty much the RV equivalent of Enterprise Rent-A-Car while most of the rest are the RV equivalents of Turo. Most of the time you pay a lot of money for a boring RV that may not be in the greatest shape. You then have to keep on shoveling money into the things because gasoline-powered RVs cannot be described as frugal.
What if you want something a bit greener with a dash of that Instagram-ready style? There is a dearth of alternative energy RVs in the marketplace. Nobody has a production hybrid RV and only a handful of small startups are selling all-electric RVs based on van platforms. Buying an all-electric RV is hard enough, forget about renting one.
RollAway Hospitality wants to try to fill that hole by offering all-electric RV rentals to people who want to take a camper van into the woods, and the vans themselves are actually pretty neat.
Silicon Valley Discovers The RV
Now, I must warn you from the jump that RollAway Hospitality does all the same kind of Silicon Valley talking that gets investors energized while making the rest of us laugh. You know what I’m talking about. Every new startup has to “disrupt” something and the product is laden with tech.
Rollaway Hospitality was founded in Silicon Valley in 2021 by Waldy Torres and Wilfred Torres. Waldy spent over a decade in the hotel industry working for names like the Rosewood Hotel Group and the Disney Fort Wilderness Campground Resort. Meanwhile, Wilfred is a serial entrepreneur best known for a vacation rental firm called Elite Vacation Homes.
You might notice that, according to the company’s own press releases, neither of these guys is presenting experience in RVs or interior design. For that, the company has architect and entrepreneur Carla Garcia Pezzotti, who is responsible for RollAway’s distinctive interiors. RollAway does mention having someone with transportation experience on staff and that’s Derrick Tyler. He’s said to have over 25 years working in the transportation sector with Derrick’s most recent experience being the head of the Uber Transportation Program.
RollAway operated in stealth mode until about late 2023 when it first started firing off press releases. Back then, RollAway announced that prospective customers would be able to check out its customized vans. Now, the company says you can rent one.
RollAway’s platform of choice is the General Motors BrightDrop electric delivery van. While these vans were designed around courier services, a couple of startups see them as great RVs. The first to the market with a BrightDrop-based camper was Grounded RV with its G2 camper van.
As is common with techy startups, RollAway makes some bombastic claims. According to Electrek, RollAway CEO Waldy Torres says:
RollAway was built to break the barriers of conventional travel. We envisioned an entirely new way to explore—free from the constraints of location-specific accommodations, multi-step travel planning, or environmental compromises. Our Suite on Wheels blends five-star services, residential comforts, intuitive technology, and an uncompromising commitment to sustainability into a sanctuary on wheels where every mile is an experience, and every destination feels like home.
I don’t want to be mean to the RollAway crew here, but much of the “Suite on Wheels” marketing describes the experience you get in a luxury RV. A really nice RV gives you the comforts of home and the feeling of a sanctuary while maintaining a high level of accommodation regardless of where you park it. I must admit, I also don’t travel with the hope that every destination feels like home.
But, look, that’s just marketing fluff. What matters is the product itself. I think there is something neat here once you sift through all of the hype.
A Delivery Van Becomes A Hotel Room
RollAway is building its RVs out of GM BrightDrop Zevo 600 vans and the company claims its vans will go over 270 miles per charge. This means the vans in question almost certainly have GM’s 173 kWh Max Range battery pack option, which the automaker says is good for around 272 miles of mixed driving.
Otherwise, you’re looking at a van with 24 feet of length and weighing in at a driver shy of 8,000 pounds. Depending on the exact versions of Zevo 600s being converted, you’re either looking at 300 HP and AWD through two motors or just a front motor and 240 HP. In other words, this chunky delivery van isn’t going to light a set of tires on fire, but it’s no slouch, either. It’s actually really awesome to see RVs being made out of these vans now.
Things get pretty cozy inside. RollAway doesn’t say a whole lot about interior materials, but does say you get a rear end with a dinette that transforms into a living room by day and a bedroom by night. RVs have had that sort of feature for decades. The interior itself isn’t reinventing the wheel, but I do adore how it looks.
If you’re looking for what else you get with the RollAway van, the company says:
Enjoy Five-Star onboard services & amenities like Live Virtual Concierge, YETI Amenities, Starlink Satellite Wi-Fi, Farm to Table Breakfast, Housekeeping, Spa-Class toiletries and much more.
If you scroll deeper into RollAway’s website, the company says each van is equipped with a stove, microwave, refrigerator, toaster, coffee machine, cooking utensils, and spices. We’re not told about the exact equipment onboard, but the van is said to have air-conditioning, heat, solar panels, and a functional bathroom.
In other words, RollAway has designed an all-electric camper van to look like a five-star hotel room. Then this van is filled with luxury items like bedding from Parachute Home, toiletries from Malin+Goetz, and breakfast packages prepared by local farms.
All of this is sweet, but anyone who has been RVing for long enough can do this on their own. How RollAway is trying to stand out is with its tech. Your RollAway van will come with a tablet. On the other end of the screen will be a virtual concierge. If you have no idea what you’re doing, you can connect to RollAway’s Concierge Team to have them help you create an itinerary. RollAway also says that curated itineraries will also be available from the tablet. This is supposed to reduce guesswork and maximize your adventure.
In the future, RollAway says, the company will be able to send a cleaning team out to your van to clean it just like they would a hotel room.
All of this is supposed to add up to an experience like sleeping in a five-star resort every night, but in a different location every time. You actually won’t find the term “RV” or “camper” anywhere in RollAway’s marketing. The vans are “Suites on Wheels” and you don’t rent a van but “Book a Stay.” The company continues by saying “It’s not a hotel, not an AirBnB, but the ultimate stay on wheels” on its website. But, as someone who has been an RVer for pretty much all of her life, most of this is just what luxury RVing is. It’s glamping!
I think what RollAway unintentionally did here was create two cool separate products that are being marketed as a single experience. The BrightDrop RV that the company made looks fantastic and I bet it would be a great way to enjoy some emissions-free camping. I’d love to see them as rentals on their own without the tablet stuff or for sale for people who want to do their own thing.
The tablet thing is also really cool. Lifetime RVers like me don’t need to be told where to go exploring. We just point our wheels in a direction and go where the road takes us. However, there are still lots of people who have no idea what they’re doing. Having that trip curation and the concierge sounds pretty neat for those people. I could even see people interested in that proposed RV room service.
Really, the whole hospitality part of this venture sounds like it would be a cool app.
According to the company, this is already working. RollAway launched in the San Francisco Bay Area featuring an itinerary just to Big Sur and, according to the company, the van rentals are already booked through most of next year. The company hopes to expand to other cities at a later date. If you’re interested, RollAway says you can head over to its site and see if you can find a date to book.
While the hospitality stuff is not for me, I really love the interior work with the RV itself. It looks like a delivery van on the outside and a cozy cabin on the inside. I’d love to see more RV interior designs like this.
(Images: Rollaway Hospitality/Kelsey Bumsted)
My only suggestion would be a propane powered Generator on that somewhere. not because anyone would want to have to use it, but in the event that you go out into the great wide open and cannot find a plugin at a campsite, or a plug in on the route, you at least have a slow option to get you back on the road in a pinch. also Propane gen sets are environmentally cleaner I hear.
8,000 lbs — will need a heavy goods vehicle licence in Europe. And not many people have them.
After the last Great Leap Forward, what (watt) was it six years ago when range went up across the board by 30%, battery and EV tech seems to have stalled. In fact if I understand right, most of the cheaper new EVS have heavier batteries than the first generation because they are cheaper.
Went to the website and no days are available until October 8. And it’s in SF only for now. It’s a cool idea, so hopefully they can get more vans out there. $400 a night with no extras.
I love the Brightdrop vans. I wish they’d have come to Chevrolet when I was still working at a Chevy franchise store. This would be a perfect “getting shit done” vehicle for me.
Pretty nice. Those protruding rod cabinet handles were put there buy a designer who has never spent lots of time in a confined space. They will catch on your clothing as you go by.
Gotta say, I really like the looks of that. Very clean, minimalist setup with just the things you need for a vacation. I could live out of that easily for a week or two at a time. The 200ish mile range would be fine, IMHO. Plenty of state and national park campsites would be in range of a charger.
For the nit-picking, that shower looks pretty uncomfortable for anyone with a bit of height – even my class A has a bubble skylight over the shower so someone can stand up. I also see a suspicious lack of storage given how much of that cabinet space would have to be for mechanicals.
I wonder if any of those BrightDrop units will ever make it to the used market like current delivery vans do. It would be interesting to see if people pick them up for DIY conversions and what they come up with.
This is exactly the kind of vehicle I expect from some Bay Area d-bags whose idea of camping is to drive their Tesla to a spa retreat in some Napa vineyard. Maybe there are enough soft-skulled techbros to keep these rentals moving.
I like EV part and this is a beautiful interior but one thing that always stands out is charging them. This shows Level 2 charging and RV hook up at the same time. I’ve yet to see a campground with this feature. Not to say it doesn’t exist but I think this is a long way from typical as it requires a large investment from the campground to add that capacity. In fact all of them around me have signs saying not to charge EVs. So with that you could have a very limited range or options for campgrounds that would be actual options.
I’ve never rented an RV site, but at a lot of places around me it just entails an accessible site with power (though there are a couple with water too that I’ve seen as well), which seems perfect for this. But I’ve heard people mention before that the amount of power is lacking at a lot of campgrounds and they couldn’t possibly handle 30+ amps being pulled at ever RV site (which makes sense when you think about where a lot of them are), which is a disappointment because even modest level 2 charging capabilities at a camp site would make the range of this van very capable.
It looks like it has level 3, so I can get pretty much anywhere I’ve taken our camper van with a quick plug-in during a lunch break, but getting back without it being fully charged leaving the campground is a no-go.
I like EVs. I’m trying to understand why I would be inclined to rent one of these for a week or three vs an ICE RV.
If it gets to the point where these are cost / range competitive…sure, I’m all for it.
I scrolled down just to check for the obligatory “rear door open, facing away, and opening into a forest or beach” pic, where the weather is always nice and mosquitoes are never around.Why does eveything pretend to be disruptive? This is incremental improvement. They should just called themselves Incremental AF, LLC.Yes, cool ideas, and I hate to be That Guy — the rare times I’m on vacation, I want it to be a little wasteful. I can be environmentally frugal ~350 days a year at home. Not picking on Rollaway specifically, but it all started when hotels started putting Zombie Lights in their rooms (you know, the 4000K+ CFL bulbs) and touting themselves as saving the world. Cool, but I’m on vacation. I want a couple days of easy decadence sometimes, and Tru by Hilton just won’t allow that. And the irony is laid even more bare if you’ve just FLOWN on a JET for thousands of miles to a place. Drops in the bucket.
Why does eveything pretend to be disruptive? This is incremental improvement.
Because startups need venture capital to start up, and venture capital doesn’t fund incremental improvement.
I checked into a hotel in Ireland that required a room key inserted into a slot inside the door to keep the lights on.
I did not know this. Dragged my suitcase and backpack into the tine room and dropped them. Walked into the bathroom and then all the lights went out. I couldn’t see anything in the unfamiliar room and smashed my shin on a low piece of furniture that was less than 2 feet from the end of the bed.
This was a US branded hotel near the airport, so everyone in there had traveled at least 3000 miles by jet.
Yeah, it’s confusing, but the EU also has a lot of restrictions that might be beyond the hotel’s control (unlike the US, which does it for LEED certification or just to save money while burdening the customer). I’ll clarify that we usually stay in AirBNBs and in those places, we do make an effort live more like locals, especially if staying more than a couple days. You waste less when you’re doing your own laundry and dishes 🙂
Joke’s on them. I’m not the one who had to mop up that bathroom.
RollAway Hospitality, a company that’s calling itself a “Disruptive Tech-Hospitality Startup,”
That is all I needed to read. F these guys.
RVs are definitely something where a range-extended hybrid makes more sense than a “pure” EV. I’m not criticizing GM for making the Brightdrop one – they designed it for city delivery, an ideal use case for full electric if there ever was one – but it seems like the most logical upfit would be a shuttle bus.