- Thor Industries built the world’s first hybrid Class A motorhome.
- The Thor Test Vehicle prototype combines a 140.0-kilowatt-hour battery pack with a gasoline range extender.
- The battery has 150 miles of range while the combined setup gets up to 500 miles of range.
One of the big issues with long, cross-country road trips is how many times you need to fill up—and how expensive it can get. Even with massive fuel tanks, the traditional RV or motorhome only gets about 10 miles per gallon at most. But Thor Industries wants to make your road trip more efficient with its plug-in-hybrid RV.
The cleverly named Thor Test Vehicle is just a prototype for now, but the company calls it the world’s first hybrid Class A motorhome. But it's not a traditional hybrid. Thor uses a Harbinger Motors "series hybrid" platform with a 140.0-kilowatt-hour battery pack, a gasoline range extender (as opposed to a traditional gas engine driving the wheels), and a solar roof. The battery alone is capable of 150 miles of range, while the combined setup is good for a whopping 500 miles of range per fill-up.
Thanks to the 800-volt architecture, Thor’s hybrid RV is capable of DC fast charging—although, the company doesn’t say how quickly. It even has V2L bidirectional charging capabilities reverse that can act as a backup power source for your home.
Thor doesn’t specify how large the gasoline range extender is either, but the company promises excellent acceleration and torque from the hybrid setup. It has "twice the torque of a diesel engine," according to Thor. Under the body is a double-wishbone front suspension and a steer-by-wire system, while a bevy of active safety features come standard.
As mentioned, this is just a prototype. But Airstream’s parent company hopes to have its ultra-efficient RV on the road and in production sometime next year.
