From camping to energy storage, South City firm making RVs more versatile

Founders Ben Parker and Toby Kraus both hailed from Tesla, one a former battery engineer and the other a former finance director, respectively. The two started the South San Francisco-based firm about five years ago, with a production location in Colorado, when RV sales were skyrocketing due to more pandemic-induced outdoor travel. Parker, who also traveled throughout the country in an RV during that time, felt his EV background could improve the experience. 

“In terms of camping, going fully electric is awesome. Today you are hamstrung by having to use gasoline or propane generators, which means you’re holding liquid propane on board, and there’s a whole bunch of issues with that,” Parker said, adding that unlike the standard 12-volt batteries, high-voltage EV batteries can last more than a week off grid.

And even though charging infrastructure has slowed traditional EV adoption, most RV campgrounds already have 240-volt plugs built in. 

“A lot of the slowing of the growth of the electrification movement is either because of the price or charging infrastructure, but that’s a pre-solved problem in RVing because most RV campgrounds already have 240-volt plugs that are already built in, and they’ve been there for decades,” Parker said. 

With most RVs sitting idle for a majority of the year, the Lightship RV — outfitted with a battery equivalent to about six Tesla Powerwalls and 2,000 watts of solar panels — can​​ be used as a back-up energy source for owners’ homes as well. 

“There is a big opportunity to treat it as an extension of your home solar system,” Parker said.

Lightship still has some time before it can offer more financially accessible options and a high-volume operation. Price tags range from $150,000 to $190,000 — roughly three times the cost of a traditional RV and, because towing is required, it currently caters to a segment of the market that either already has a truck or is willing to purchase one. But most customers see it more as a small home, rather than vehicle purchase. 

“[About] three-quarters think of it like an Airstream or like a small vacation home, a bungalow that you’ll use on the road,” Parker said. 

The company plans to roll out more models in the near future, however, it just recently started shipping out its current models to customers last year. The team also designs and manufactures everything domestically, and in addition to tariff fluctuations, the process hasn’t gotten much easier or cheaper over the past year. Before starting Lightship, Parker and Kraus tried to start a company electrifying food trucks, though it quickly became clear that, barring some sort of large-scale legislative mandate, demand would not reach high enough to justify the cost. 

But due to the nontraditional components of electric RVs, showcasing the Lightship RV’s versatility is the main focus.

“It goes from a pretty disparate, unreliable set of fuel sources and experience around that to something that is clean, seamless, single fuel source, always recharging.”