Harbinger
It seems that every time Ars writes about a new commercial electric vehicle, about half the comments are along the lines of “great, now make me a camper out of that.” Well, we have some good news for you on that front. The RV manufacturer Thor has just taken delivery of the first customer chassis from EV truck maker Harbinger.
“Harbinger believes in enabling the electrification of RVs, along with the wide variety of medium-duty e-commerce delivery vehicles you see every day,” said Harbinger CEO John Harris. “Our strategy is focused on empowering companies to transform their fleets with sustainable options, tapping into a significant market opportunity that drives towards a greener, more innovative future in transportation.”
You may remember Harbinger from our coverage last year. To briefly recap, it’s targeting the medium-duty truck market—classes 4–7, to use the correct lingo. There’s some interesting engineering at play too—the 800 V modular battery is made up of multiple 35 kWh packs using 2170 cylindrical cells, each in a gigacast aluminum enclosure.
It also designed and builds its own electric motor drive units, which, like the battery packs, are sized to fit between the truck’s chassis frame rails, which keeps the center of gravity down low, where you want it to be. Harbinger began production of its truck chassis in Q4 of last year.
Now that Harbinger has delivered its chassis to Thor’s R&D lab in Indiana, the RV maker can start the process of designing and building an RV “top hat” to ride atop that chassis. (Thor was also a lead investor in Harbinger’s Series A round.) The plan is to create a Class A motorhome—the biggest type of motorhome—using a class 6 truck chassis, with a range of around 250 miles on a single charge.
“Thor Industries is at the forefront of transforming recreational travel, exploring electrification with partners like Harbinger to be the first to introduce innovative, sustainable RV technologies,” stated McKay Featherstone, Thor’s SVP of global innovation. “Our investment in electrification reflects the Thor family of companies’ commitment to leading with advanced solutions for future RVers,” Featherstone said.