Thor’s hybrid-electric RV is a prototype class “A” motorhome, that suggest a quiet revolution is coming for the RV industry. Starts with an electric motor, big battery, big torque, and tiny engine! Thor estimates its RV will have a travel range of 500 miles. Once the battery goes flat, it can plug in, park it to let the gas engine charge the battery or continue driving with a sub-50 miles per hour speed.
The arrival of the first plug-in hybrid motorhome, next year, RV manufacturer Thor Industries and commercial EV startup Harbinger, plan to launch a production Class A motorhome driven by an electric motor drawing power from one ton of lithium-ion batteries and a gas-burning four-cylinder spinning a generator. That powertrain is in a medium-duty chassis that Harbinger designed from a clean sheet. Which gave engineers the opportunity to rethink the steering, suspension, and brakes, too. Having driven the prototype pictured here, it is hard to overstate the transformative effect of all this. Harbinger and Thor have created an RV that is like driving a car.
