The End of Kilowatt Anxiety

[turbopilot]

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I have owned every type of RV generally based in the SouthWest US. The one thing they all shared was noisy, inefficient air conditioners and little tiny batteries. I mostly RV in the Summer. So with last century RV's I was always in quest of a power pedestal to stay cool. I've spent most of this year with a datalogger plugged into the truck, chasing fuel numbers and charging efficiency on a LightShip AE.1 behind an F-150 PowerBoost. Plenty of spreadsheets. But the thing I actually want to talk about isn't on any of them, and I didn't see it coming.

First, the battery, because the size of it is hard to get your head around until you put it next to what we're all used to. 77 kilowatts under the floor.

A nicely equipped conventional trailer might carry 5 kWh of house battery — call it two or three 100 Ah lithiums. Older rigs with a pair of group-27 lead-acids are working with maybe 1.2 kWh you can actually use before you start killing the batteries. The LightShip has 77 kWh under the floor. That's roughly 15x the good lithium setup and something like 60x the lead-acid one. It is 5 Tesla PowerWalls.

Now put an air conditioner on that. A rooftop unit pulls somewhere around 1.2–1.5 kW while it's running. Run that math on the old trailer and you get why battery kilowatt anxiety was just part of the deal — an hour of AC, maybe two if you were careful. That's not air conditioning, that's a gesture. It's also why a legacy RV owner is permanently hunting for a pedestal in the Summer. The pole wasn't a nice-to-have, it was life support at many destinations across America

What it actually costs to stay cool — one real day​

This Summer I have been on the road for 3 weeks in the LightShip successfully finding every heat dome in the country. I finally have a number for this instead of a guess, so here it is.

Daytime highs near 100°F, overnight lows in the 70s. Climate system left to do its job for a full 24 hours with a set point of 75F, living in the trailer normally. Over a typical 24 hour period I lost 22% of state of charge in those temperatures — about 17 kWh off a 77 kWh pack.

Not all of that was air conditioning. Best I can tell roughly 8 kWh of it was base load — fridge, pumps, controls, all the stuff that runs whether you're paying attention or not — leaving something like 9 kWh for a full day and night of cooling in near-100°F heat. That base-load figure lines up with what I've measured elsewhere on this trailer, which floats somewhere between 200 and 900 W depending mostly on how hard the thermal system is working.

Straight-line that and you're at roughly four days before the pack is empty at those very high temperatures, and call it three to three and a half to a floor you'd actually be comfortable stopping at. In a heat dome. With the AC on the whole time.

I want to be clear that this is one observation, read off the Atlas display by eye at each end, not logged data — the trailer doesn't export SOC and I can't record it. The pack reads in whole percent, so there's a point of slop at each end. Cool nights in the 70s also do a lot of work here; a night that stays in the 90s would be a different number. And the roof solar was contributing across the day, so 17 kWh is the net drain — which is the right basis for "how many days can I sit here," but it isn't the gross load.

Still. One data point beats zero, and the shape of the answer is days, not hours.

Pulling in at 10 PM​

The other place the size shows up is a small thing that turns out to be a big thing when you are tired and been driving all day.

You get into the park late, you're beat. Old way: find the pedestal in the dark, dig out the adapter, sort out whatever 30/50 amp surprise is waiting, hope the breaker holds. New way: go to bed. If there's power and you feel like plugging in tomorrow, great. If not, also fine. The trailer genuinely does not care.

And that's before the towing side. With V2V in-motion charging, the truck's ProPower inverter feeds the trailer through the umbilical the whole time you're rolling. I've measured a steady 5.8 kW at the connection across seven separate legs, and the rate never sagged no matter how hot it got. So the drive isn't draining the house battery — the drive is a charging session that happens to cover 400 miles. AC ran all day too, so you open the door to a cool trailer instead of a 120°F oven that needs an hour to recover.

Put those two together and you can see why the pedestal stops mattering much. A day's driving puts back more than a day at camp takes out. Three weeks on the road and I plugged into a pedestal less than half the nights, and most of those nights I really did not have to.

OK, but here's the actual best part​

Sleeping. I'm serious.

Quick description of the system, because it isn't built like anything I've owned before. LightShip calls it AirRight — 20,000 BTU of cooling, 16,000 BTU of heat, 500 CFM of airflow, all running off the high-voltage pack and set from the Atlas screen. The equipment lives up in the AeroHub, not in a box screwed to the roof over your head. From there the cabin ducting runs a semicircle around the bed, about three feet off the floor, and discharges at the top of that loop, so the cool air drifts down over you in a roughly 270-degree arc while you sleep. Once the system reaches the set point, you can't hear it running. This alone is a miracle compared to the days that Dometic AC cycling on and off as it was rattling over head all night.

For the curious: poking around the fuse panel, it's two interior blower fans, three coolant pumps, two radiator fans, plus reversing valves, expansion valves and four pressure transducers. That reads like a reversible refrigerant loop — a heat pump, not a one-way AC — which lines up with the 16,000 BTU heat rating. I'll flag that as my read of the hardware list rather than something LightShip documents. The practical upshot is that it moves a lot of air slowly, from a long way away, instead of a little air fast from directly above your face. That's the whole reason it's quiet.

What it feels like: 95°F and humid outside, and you're in a cocoon of cool air moving silently around the perimeter of the bed. No compressor drone six feet above your head. No cycling thump that wakes you at 2 AM. The fan is always running, it never stops it just changes speed. Like sleeping outside on a cold winter night. I've spent a lot of nights in RVs and I have never slept like that in one.

None of it works without the battery. You could build the same beautifully ducted system into any trailer you like — if the house bank runs it for 90 minutes, it's a party trick. 77 kWh at 22% a day is what turns it into something you just leave on. And not just sleeping. The air conditioner is running all day while the LightShip is in motion. That is baked into the 24 hour kilowatt use above.

Cool, quiet comfort, great sleep and no kilowatt anxiety. There is no way to make this happen in an RV without a big ass battery.

 

[d23haynes57]

Some of this technology will become more available, mainstream. What is the long-term cost of ownership? You have an approximate $300K investment truck and trailer. The trailer is still a bit limited use, single person or couple. I saw the sleeper option for children or guest. This is really cool. The "engineered" climate system is a real game changer. Thank you for sharing this with us.

 

[turbopilot]

Thanks — and you've put your finger on the two things that actually matter.

Your number's about right. AE.1 starts around $150K and mine came in near $210K as configured; add the truck and you're in the neighborhood you named. I won't pretend that's not real money. What I'd add is that only part of it is an RV expense — the F-150 is my daily driver and works for a living the other eleven months. The higher trim F-150 PowerBoost is a great long distance travel machine without the LightShip. Compare that to a Class A or a diesel pusher, where the whole purchase sits idle between trips, and the effective RV-only cost is lower than the sticker suggests. Not cheap. Just accounted for differently.

Long-term ownership is the better question, and the answer is different in kind, not just degree.

What's gone: engine, transmission, chassis, generator, propane system, and everything that comes with them. No oil changes on a coach you drive six weeks a year, no fuel stabilizer, no generator that won't start in April, no LP inspection, no exhaust work, no coach brakes. On a Class A that list is most of your service budget and most of your unplanned downtime.

There's a related point that gets underweighted until you need it: the part of this system that makes it move is an F-150. Every town of any size has a Ford dealer, parts are on the shelf, and any competent shop has seen a PowerBoost. Break down on a Tuesday in western Kansas and you're back on the road that week. Compare that to a diesel pusher — chassis service networks are thin, the qualified shops cluster around a handful of metros, and a mid-trip failure can mean a tow of a hundred-plus miles followed by a two-week wait for parts. Same story for the Class A gas chassis and the medium-duty tow rigs. When you're 1,500 miles from home, the breadth of the service network matters more than the spec sheet, and it's the single thing that most reliably turns a good trip into a ruined one. Cross-country in this rig, I'm never far from support for the half of the system that has to keep running.

What replaces the old maintenance list is basically two items. The high-voltage battery is the big one — it degrades on both cycle count and calendar time, and eventually it's a planned replacement rather than a repair. That's the number to understand before buying, and the warranty language around capacity retention matters more than the headline warranty length. Pack prices have fallen steadily and I'd expect a replacement a decade out to cost considerably less in real terms, but I wouldn't build a spreadsheet on that. The second is the thermal system, which is doing more work than a conventional propane furnace plus rooftop A/C, because it's one heat pump handling both ends and it's integrated with the battery rather than bolted on. Nobody has fifteen-year data on any of this yet. Anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing.

Net: you trade a long list of moderate mechanical costs for a short list of large electrical ones, with much less scheduled service in between — and the half of the system you can't finish a trip without is the half that's supported everywhere. For a trip-taker I think that's a favorable trade. For a full-timer running climate control nine months a year, the calculus is tighter.

You're right about capacity, too. It's a couple's trailer with a bunk option, not a family coach. That's a real constraint and I won't pretend otherwise — but it's the constraint that buys everything else: the length, the pull-through fuel stops, the parking, the park roads a 40-footer can't attempt.

And I agree completely on the climate system. It's the piece I expected to be a compromise, and it turned out to be the best part of the trailer.

But to your point about the size. There are two ways to use an RV, and they want almost opposite equipment. Destination camping means you tow once, park, and live in it — square footage is the currency. Touring means you're on the move most days, in a different place most nights, and the RV is mostly where you sleep between the things you came to see. For that, length and maneuverability are the currency, and every foot you add costs you access.

The PowerBoost/LightShip system is a touring rig, not a parking rig.

 

[d23haynes57]

Just having some discussion. Not being argumentative. Your points are well founded. Your truck choice has some increased cost both for purchasing and future maintenance costs for the turbo engine, hybrid power system. Part of what you are using for the trailer support. Take away the advanced climate control and battery system, and a $35K Casita will do the trailer job. There really is no direct comparison trailer to motorhome. Drastically different traveling and living style. Me? I am a motorhome person. I use mine often even for weekend and local trips. Using it more being retired from primary job. AC the power draw that says generator or park power. Also have heat pumps. Winter use without park power the Oasis is put to work.

 

[turbopilot]

The PowerBoost/LightShip system is a touring rig, not a parking rig.

No argument on your points. As I said at the end of the post my use case is centered around touring. I just completed a 4,000 mile tour of the United States over 3 weeks. I really enjoy cruising the country. But that is not for everyone. The concerns about reliability are minimal if your use case is as you said: "I use mine often even for weekend and local trips." You have found a good solution for that use case. The further you venture from home base the more central the concern about system reliability and recovery from major mechanical events.

 

[d23haynes57]

Touring traveling, VW Camper 1988. First motorhome 1997. From 1997 until after parents' health issues and the economy, work demands leading to 2010 we were doing a consistent 12K to 15K miles a year. Thus, the transition from 1992 27' class C, 1999 new 34' gasser, 2004, new 39' Deisel pusher. Travel was family of four plus often the in-laws. Needed the space. Cost of ownership and reliability the 1999 gasser with the V-10 was the clear winner. As for tows, the class C had a fuel pump failure weekend before Christmas. The gasser never and it had a spare tire for those days. For the DP there was the exhaust failure and resulting fire. Towed in, exhaust fixed, back on rad next day. Then there was the front tire blow out. Another tow, needing a tire and wheel. 29 years not a bad towing record. I will admit that the exhaust fire was a maintenance fail. Fortunately, the damage was minimal as insurance denied the claim. For the rig I have now, a bit over years I have put 15,000 miles on it and I think near 300 hours on the generator. Mostly for AC.