A slew of new companies have emerged in recent years offering fresh takes on RVs, like Lightship, Pebble, and Grounded. Now another startup called Evotrex is coming out of stealth with its own twist: a hybrid RV travel trailer with an integrated gas engine.
The new RV will have an onboard battery pack that will power the living quarters and onboard electronics, but the gas engine will recharge that battery pack and extend its range for far longer than a full charge — potentially making Evotrex’s trailer attractive for longer camping trips.
The Evotrex RV will debut at the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show, but the company detailed some of its plans ahead of that reveal in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch.
Using a gas engine to get more out of a big battery pack has become a trendy idea in the automotive world, as carmakers and customers hesitate to transition to fully-electric vehicles. In fact, the CEO of startup automaker Scout Motors recently revealed that 80% of the customers who preordered its upcoming vehicles have chosen the hybrid “extended range” powertrain option over the all-electric ones.
Evotrex co-founder Alex Xiao, a former product manager for consumer electronics company Anker, believes the idea will appeal to RV customers and dealers alike.
Xiao told TechCrunch that he and co-founder Stella Qin (another Anker alum) spent seven months researching the RV market before they started building anything. What they found was a customer base that was getting much younger and had the desire to take these kinds of vehicles further out in the world, far beyond the typical plug-and-stay campsites and RV parks.
These customers “want to bring their gadgets and other equipment on skiing, hunting, fishing, and other activities, and stay in the wild for like four or five days, which is different,” Xiao said. “They’re off-grid — off-grid living was not supported before within the RV life.”
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To do all that, you need power.
RV owners are no strangers to gas generators, but Xiao and Qin believe the way they’ve integrated their engine into the Evotrex trailer offers a number of benefits. They claim it’s quieter and more efficient, and they say they’re even using the excess heat created to help keep the cabin warm.
Xiao said Evotrex plans to ship the first of its RV trailers by the end of 2026, and it’s raised $16 million in seed funding so far from his former employer Anker, as well as Chinese early-stage venture firms Unity Ventures, Kylinhall Partners, and Vision Plus Capital.
Evotrex has about 40 employees so far, Xiao said, with some in China and some in the U.S. Evotrex’s CTO formerly led automotive R&D at Chinese automaker Geely Group, and the startup’s COO (and a third co-founder) has held supply chain leadership positions at IBM, Lenovo, and Anker.
Xiao said the plan is to do most of the production in China with final assembly in California. Combined with the fact that much of the supply chain for RVs remains in China, he said he’s aware that there will be challenges due to the Trump’s administrations trade policies.
Solving those problems won’t be easy, Xiao said. But neither is making a successful RV company from scratch, he added.
“The purpose of this company is to bring those kinds of new experiences to the customer,” Xiao said.
