I Visited Lightship’s AE.1 EV Travel Trailer, and Now I Want to Take an Off-the-Grid Road Trip
I’m approaching the age where I’m supposed to start desiring RV life. I’m not planning to retire anytime soon, but the older I get, the more appealing the idea of abandoning yard work, home repairs and geographic permanence for a life on the open road in a big old house on wheels becomes. My neighbors have an RV they park in the space between our houses, keeping both a permanent location and a home they can travel in; they still have yard work and house repairs, but few complaints.
So it was with some curiosity that I visited a pop-up for Lightship, a Colorado company making EV trailers for RV enthusiasts, outside the flagship Yeti outdoor-recreation store in Austin, Texas. The company’s eye-catching AE.1 trailer was parked and open to the public. (AE.1 refers to Aero-Electric 1.)
Lightship staffers handed out brochures, stickers and pins to visitors who climbed into the trailer, some of whom seemed surprised by the sleek, air-conditioned interior. The demo model boasted a cushioned lounge area, appliances including a hideaway dishwasher, microwave, full sink and stovetop, a full bathroom and shower area, and plenty of storage. It can sleep up to six.
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The selling point of the highly customizable AE.1, which starts at $157,500, is that it offers a more modern design than most RVs and trailers. It includes thoughtful design touches and an electric-powered motor called TrekDrive that kicks in when in motion to lighten the load on whatever’s pulling the trailer. If it’s an EV truck or SUV, that could significantly extend the range between charges.
Pushing back on decades of RV design
Ben Parker, Lightship’s co-founder and chief product officer, worked at Tesla in California as a battery engineer and was inspired while traveling in an RV during the pandemic. Parker started the company with Toby Krauss, another former Tesla employee who worked in finance and product management and serves as Lightspeed’s CEO.
Parker said there’s a gigantic market of Americans who want to travel in camper RVs, but their options have been limited to a few highly consolidated manufacturers offering unchanging designs. So far, he said, customers interested in Lightship are a mix of EV owners and longtime enthusiasts who want “greater capacity, comfort and independence.”
“Our customers are people who love spending time outdoors and want more freedom in how they travel,” Parker said.
The AE.1’s most notable design feature is that it compresses from a 10-foot-tall Camp Mode with lots of windows and headroom to a Road Mode that lowers the roof to under 7 feet, making the AE.1 more aerodynamic in motion. Most of the trailer’s features, from the lighting to extras like an auto-leveling system and a motorized awning, are controlled by an app. A solar array on the trailer’s roof helps keep power flowing.
If you limit your A/C and power use, the AE.1 can last for about a week off the grid before it needs additional charging, Parker said. The AE.1 has hookups for EV charging as well as the kind of 220-volt hookups found at RV parks. It can hook up to external devices with vehicle-to-load power capabilities.
Some of the more interesting option features include a pull-down bed that attaches to the trailer’s ceiling and a setup for a 4K video projector that can be mounted inside the trailer for viewing on a pull-down screen.
“The demand we’ve seen reflects a broader appetite for innovation in the RV space,” Parker said. “Customers are excited by the idea of an RV that combines modern technology, energy independence and a dramatically improved towing experience in a single product.”
The co-founder said his company wants the buying and using experience of an AE.1 to wow customers enough for Lightship to gain a foothold in a market that’s not very open to newcomers.
“Breaking into any established industry requires earning trust,” he said. “We’ve focused on building a high-quality product that solves real customer pain points and delivering an experience that people can immediately appreciate once they see it and use it for themselves.”
New trailer players
Lightship is headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. It’s expanding its manufacturing center there to accommodate additional trailer production, as well as production of a carriage-minus-trailer product called PowerSled, which it’s been selling to businesses like movie productions that need a mobile platform with electric power.
Lightship’s mission to disrupt the RV market is not unlike that of another company, Pebble, that has also been making EV trailers in California.
Parker said the main difference between Lightship and Pebble is that Lightship is sourcing more of its materials domestically. Parker estimates that about 75% of the materials used to make an AE.1 are sourced domestically, and all assembly is done in-house.
Pebble, however, is undercutting Lightship on price. Lightship originally planned to offer a lower-priced $125,000 base model without the self-propelled TrekDrive motor. However, the company has since changed its strategy, moving to a single standard base price with a standard 77 kWh battery and various add-on options and upgrades.
Possible retirement plans
For me, a non-RV person, the AE.1 feels design-forward and includes features like a built-in auto-hitch, an auto-leveler, and lots of charging ports and stations, all of which appeal to someone like me who has no idea what they’re doing. The interior feels spacious, but not so much that it makes the exterior look oversized. The ability to shrink down to a smaller size — the AE.1 performs safety checks before compressing to ensure windows aren’t open and nothing will break — brings the wow factor.
It doesn’t take much time in the trailer to imagine traveling in it and using Lightspeed’s trailer as a mobile workstation (satellite internet service is not included, but it can be hooked up).
The AE.1 isn’t cheap, but it might be worth putting on the retirement wish list. You will still have to wait: the company’s waitlist for delivery is currently about a year long.
Lightspeed began shipping AE.1 trailers last year and said it’s producing about 30 per month for the rest of this year. By sometime in 2027, with its expanded factory floor, it plans to ramp that up to 40 per month.
If you want to check out the AE.1 for yourself, the company maintains showrooms north of Denver and in San Francisco and will host a pop-up event in Las Vegas in late November.
Omar Gallaga has covered technology, digital culture and other topics for outlets including CNET, NPR, WIRED, Texas Monthly, MSNBC, Consumer Reports, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic and the Austin American-Statesman, where he was a longtime tech reporter, editor and podcaster. He lives in the Texas Hill Country. See full bio
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