Photo: Thor Industries
The global pandemic from a couple of years ago meant an incredible boom for the TV and motorhome industries. Sales exploded, the roads got flooded with such vehicles, and the general feeling was the on-the-road lifestyle was here to stay.
That feeling is still around, but as the automotive industry moves towards a broader electrification, some hurdles lie ahead. Among them, the literal impossibility of charging your mobile home or the vehicle that tows it from conventional hubs.
The reason for that is simple. Most charging locations have been designed with passenger vehicles in mind, and that means RVs or trailers simply don’t have enough room to get their juice in public. Luckily, someone has thought of ways to overcome that as well.
That someone is Thor Industries, the company that owns some of the world's largest RV brands, including Airstream, Heartland RV, Jayco, or Livin Lite RV. The group presented earlier this week the concept of a charging hub for EVs, and I must say, it looks amazing.
The station is for the moment only at a rendering stage, but we might soon come across such places in locations that are most popular with electric RV (eRV) owners.
As per Thor, the design is a “station ecosystem that can accommodate eRVs and the use of EV as tow vehicles,” meaning no matter the type of electric vehicle one uses to take their home on the road, there will be a place for it there.
The RV charging station will not address one of the main issues with refilling the batteries of an electric vehicle, which is the time spent plugged in, so a workaround was devised to encourage people to spend their waiting times outside, and not in their RVs.
What that means is that, unlike the traditional gas station where you get the pumps and a store of some kind, these locations have been envisioned with natural landscaping, berms, trees and green spaces.
The design you can see in the attached gallery is partially based on ideas coming from engineering firm Black & Veatch. Yes, it's the same company that works with Tesla to “construct the largest contiguous electric vehicle charging system in the world” - that would be the so-called Tesla Supercharger U.S. build-out project. Black & Veatch is also involved, together with Honda, in the creation of the Autonomous Work Vehicle line of machines.
Back to the RV charging hub, when and if deployed across the U.S. it will be capable of accommodating anything from small travel trailers to Class A motorhomes. That's because each and every single one of them will come with wide aisles between the pull-through charger islands and more than enough room to maneuver.
The locations will be equipped with restrooms, play and picnic areas recycling containers, a rain harvesting system, and solar panels.
For the idea to be put into practice though states have to get involved at an official level, as there's a need to tap into the $7.5 billion federal EV funding available for such projects. At the time of writing we know of no such charging station being put together in the U.S. But they will get here, and they’ll definitely make gas stations look like the very distant and very poor cousin.
The reason for that is simple. Most charging locations have been designed with passenger vehicles in mind, and that means RVs or trailers simply don’t have enough room to get their juice in public. Luckily, someone has thought of ways to overcome that as well.
That someone is Thor Industries, the company that owns some of the world's largest RV brands, including Airstream, Heartland RV, Jayco, or Livin Lite RV. The group presented earlier this week the concept of a charging hub for EVs, and I must say, it looks amazing.
The station is for the moment only at a rendering stage, but we might soon come across such places in locations that are most popular with electric RV (eRV) owners.
As per Thor, the design is a “station ecosystem that can accommodate eRVs and the use of EV as tow vehicles,” meaning no matter the type of electric vehicle one uses to take their home on the road, there will be a place for it there.
The RV charging station will not address one of the main issues with refilling the batteries of an electric vehicle, which is the time spent plugged in, so a workaround was devised to encourage people to spend their waiting times outside, and not in their RVs.
What that means is that, unlike the traditional gas station where you get the pumps and a store of some kind, these locations have been envisioned with natural landscaping, berms, trees and green spaces.
The design you can see in the attached gallery is partially based on ideas coming from engineering firm Black & Veatch. Yes, it's the same company that works with Tesla to “construct the largest contiguous electric vehicle charging system in the world” - that would be the so-called Tesla Supercharger U.S. build-out project. Black & Veatch is also involved, together with Honda, in the creation of the Autonomous Work Vehicle line of machines.
Back to the RV charging hub, when and if deployed across the U.S. it will be capable of accommodating anything from small travel trailers to Class A motorhomes. That's because each and every single one of them will come with wide aisles between the pull-through charger islands and more than enough room to maneuver.
The locations will be equipped with restrooms, play and picnic areas recycling containers, a rain harvesting system, and solar panels.
For the idea to be put into practice though states have to get involved at an official level, as there's a need to tap into the $7.5 billion federal EV funding available for such projects. At the time of writing we know of no such charging station being put together in the U.S. But they will get here, and they’ll definitely make gas stations look like the very distant and very poor cousin.
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