Winnebago unveils electric RV

TAMPA, Fla. (WNDU) - The Florida RV Super Show in Tampa opened with an industry “first.”

The first all-electric, zero emission motor home from a major RV manufacturer was revealed.

The Winnebago “E” RV is a concept vehicle that was made at the company’s plant in Iowa over the past couple of years.

Perhaps the pandemic showed that some folks who work from home, still want to get away from home.

“It’s completely fitted out with air conditioner, hot water heater, you know, plumbing, infotainment,” said Winnebago’s Ashis Bhattacharya from the show floor in Tampa.

There’s no propane, no generator, no fossil fuels onboard. The ERV is a converted Ford Transit that gets 125-miles on a charge. “We ordered this chassis a couple of years back because we needed to lock down the specs of the chassis to start working. If I ordered the same chassis today, the range would be 175 miles,” said Bhattacharya. “And you know, when we were developing this, we also looked at some RV industry data that says about 54 percent of RV owners travel less than 200-miles on their trips.”

The Winnebago ERV is a concept car. It is not up for sale, but it is up for public scrutiny. “We’ve been working on the project for two years, and we think that it’s time that we bring it to the open because what we really want to do with our customers and dealers is to go through a process of co-creation. We want to say look, we’ve taken this so far, what do you think?”

While any mass production of E-RV’S would likely require additional worker training, it’s believed that it would also require additional workers.

“With the EV’S, many of our customers are using these as their everyday use vehicles, as their primary vehicle, so once the transition to EV’S really comes in, I think that the addressable market is going to be much bigger than the core RV market, and it’s going to bring in different people than traditional RV customers so I really think that market is going to expand.”

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