This 30 Under 30 Alum Is Helping Save Mileage With A Newly Unveiled Electric RV

This 30 Under 30 Alum Is Helping Save Mileage With A Newly Unveiled Electric RV

Lightship's L1 trailer in its collapsed mode. Last week, Parker's company Lightship, which he cofounded with former Tesla employee Toby Kraus, unveiled the first model of its electric RVs (called the L1) at SXSW and announced that it expects to begin production late next year. Backed by $21 million in funding from investors including Prelude Ventures, Obvious Ventures and Congruent Ventures, the startup is currently taking preorders. Lightship's first model stands at a price of between $125, 000 to $151, 000–above-market for a typical trailer, which costs roughly $50, 000, but on-par with boutique industry leaders like Airstream–though buyers can qualify for the $6, 600 solar ITC tax credit, which isn't applicable to any other RVs on the market. He says the company is aiming to target both families who trek to national parks across the U. S. and people who want to upgrade their work-from-anywhere lifestyle–as the pandemic helped make the "van-life" craze more mainstream. Parker leaned into the zeitgeist on his own three-month RV trip, which would later inform several design decisions that set the Lightship RV apart from the industry standard. The RV market is deceptively constant in the U. S. More than half a million RVs