What It’s Like To Drive The World’s First Hybrid RV

I think it’s safe to say that one of the worst driving experiences one can have today is behind the wheel of a large motorhome, like a Class A. I’m not saying this to just be a jerk, that’s just how it is: you can’t have something that is essentially a wheeled mansion and expect it to handle like a wheeled cottage. Motorhomes are also some of the least efficient vehicles you can buy, thanks to the fact that you’re driving around a house on wheels, complete with beds, a kitchen, and, yes, a toilet. They guzzle gas like with all the grace and restraint that a puppy would show if dropped it into a bowl of taco meat. There’s definitely room for improvement, and I’m happy to say that I think I actually experienced some of that improvement a few weeks back when I got a chance to drive the imaginatively named THOR Test Vehicle.

Okay, yes, it was almost a month ago that I went out to the Home of Studebaker, South Bend, Indiana, on the invitation of THOR and EV delivery truck maker Harbinger to try out a new idea that, in hindsight, seems kind of obvious: a Motorhome with a hybrid drivetrain. Yes, yes, it’s been weeks and I haven’t written it up yet, but I’m doing it now! I’ve been busy!

Anyway, let’s talk about this concept in broad strokes just for a moment. Your conventional modern gas-powered Class A (or even a Class C, really) motorhome gets about 5 to 10 mpg, and more than 10 is only possible in pretty much ideal circumstances that you’ll likely only see when you notice the unicorns flying all about you in the sapphire sky.

The Idea

The idea of adapting an electric drivetrain to such a platform has considerable appeal; the inherent torque of an electric motor would help a motorhome’s normally sub-glacial acceleration substantially, and the greater efficiency afforded by an electric drivetrain can’t be ignored.

However, there is an Achilles’ heel here: batteries. Modern battery tech, as advanced as it is, just doesn’t have the energy density to allow for a battery that can give an RV appreciable range. There’s just so much mass involved, and tests of Winnebago’s prototype electric RV have found that a real-world range is about 80 to 90 miles, and for every hour and a half driven, you’ll need to spend at least 45 minutes charging. It’s not great.

The whole point of a motorhome is to go places, and being limited to driving only an hour and a half or so just before having to stop and charge for an extended time doesn’t meet that requirement. An all-electric motorhome is just not a viable solution, at least not yet.

But! There’s a compromise, and that’s a hybrid. A hybrid – in this case a series hybrid, where only the electric drivetrain moves the vehicle and the combustion engine is just used to generate electricity – incorporates the efficiency and high torque of an EV drivetrain with the flexibility and energy density of gasoline.

If you want a walk-through of the THOR Test Vehicle’s chassis and drivetrain, adapted from Harbinger’s electric delivery vehicle chassis, I’d like to invite you to listen to Harbinger co-founder and CEO John Harris explain it all to me:

 

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Driving A Gas-Powered Motorhome

It’s fascinating stuff, but at the moment we’re here to talk about what the THOR Test Vehicle was like to drive, which I promise, I’m getting to. To get a real sense of the context, arrangements were made for me to drive a new, conventional gas-powered Class A motorhome, an Entrgra Coach Vision:

This elegant beast was, I believe, somewhere around 30 feet, built on a Ford F53 chassis, driven by a 7.3L V8 335 hp gasoline engine making 468 foot-pounds of torque. This is a big, heavy machine, weighing probably somewhere around 20,000 pounds. I mean, you can’t be shocked by that when you realize this thing has a kitchen with marble countertops and tile:

It’s a house on the back of that thing, which is the primary reason why driving one of these things is so, well, terrible. This one I drove is one of the best ones out there, but driving it still feels like you’re trying to guide a hippopotamus on rollerblades by yanking on its ears.

Keeping it in its lane is tricky, because the thing just about fills up an entire lane of traffic completely. If you’re on a road with a prominent crown, keeping the thing tracking straight takes real work. It’s slow to accelerate, slow to stop, and is incredibly top-heavy. Driving a motorhome is something you just have to white-knuckle and endure until you get to your destination, where you can finally relax and enjoy your motorhome.

Incredibly, the driving experience isn’t appreciably better than what driving my old 1977 Class C Dodge Tioga motorhome was like. All of the shittiness felt very familiar – the slowness, the top-heaviness, the nervous lane-keeping, the ponderousness, the constant sub-surface fear that you’re one wrong arm motion away from being upside-down or creating massive rooster tails of sparks as you get too close to a Jersey barrier or something, it’s all still there.

Let’s just say that driving a big RV is no picnic.

Driving The World’s First Hybrid RV

Okay, now the whole point of why I’m here: to drive the first hybrid motorhome. At first glance, it’s not all that different than the gasoline one; the scale and shape are about the same, but there are some big clues that we’re looking at a prototype machine: the interior is only partially built-out, but there is furniture and stuff inside there – this isn’t some empty cargo van, after all.

Also, if you look carefully, you can see the grille is 3D printed, which is a clever solution:

So what does it feel like to drive? Well, I should qualify first that I didn’t get to drive it on real streets, just a little track delineated by traffic cones in a parking lot. I was a little disappointed by this, but I did find that the key elements of what this hybrid RV is like to drive still came out even on this tiny track.

The first thing you notice is the acceleration, which is shockingly decent considering the massive bulk of everything. It’s not whip-your-head-back sports car fast, but it’s still surprisingly quick, given the context. You’re just not used to a whole furnished apartment moving with such urgency.

The bigger difference, though, has to do with weight, or, really, where the weight is. Electrified vehicles are always heavy, because batteries are heavy as hell, and while RVs are already absurdly heavy, in the case of the THOR Test Vehicle, the bulk of that weight is in dense packs of batteries way down low, in the chassis.

This changes the dynamic of how these big beasts drive, because the unsettling top heaviness, that always makes driving a motorhome feel like running with a stack of books or a large vase full of chili on your head, is pretty much eliminated. The hybrid motorhome felt planted, I could take sharp turns without encustardizing my pants, and overall the driving experience was significantly and viscerally better.

Here, watch some video of me driving it, which should give a good idea of what I mean, especially since they let me do some donuts, which I’d never attempt in a conventional motorhome:

 

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I don’t yet know what sort of fuel economy advantages the hybrid will offer, but I suspect it should be significant. If this can return numbers in, say, the mid-teens, that would be stellar, for a motorhome.

Then, there’s also the considerable advantage of a hybrid in that all that electricity stored in those big, heavy batteries should eliminate the need for a noisy, smelly generator. That’s a huge deal! When you’re out in the middle of beautiful nowhere you want to be able to have electrical power for making margaritas and your various massagers, but who wants to break the numinous silence with the rattle of a diesel generator? Not you! You don’t want to scare away all the sasquatches!

There’s plenty of power in those batteries for all the household needs, and with integrated rooftop solar panels, there’s the possibility of getting some free energy back into the system. Solar is generally useless for actually adding range, but for topping up power from household demands, it can be helpful.

The idea of a hybrid motorhome just makes sense. The advantages to fuel economy and eliminating the need for a generator are incredibly compelling alone, and the driving dynamics improvements are a massive added bonus. I think this needs to happen, and should be one of the most significant and meaningful changes to the otherwise (let’s be honest) pretty stagnant motorhome industry.

I’m impressed. I’ll be curious to see these come to market, and get a better idea of the advantages they bring.

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