CARB Rules Are Making Motorhomes Harder To Get in January, But The Industry Can Go Electric – CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

---

At a recent meeting of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), motorhome manufacturers got some bad news: they would not be getting an exemption from the Advanced Clean Trucks rule. RV companies thought that they’d both have time to adjust and the ability to use emissions credits to keep building gas and diesel-powered motorhomes, but for most manufacturers, that’s not going to be a great option either.

To learn more about what this means, let’s look at a video by the RV Miles YouTube channel and then summarize/discuss how this will affect buyers in at least six states going forward.

Before I get started, let’s talk a bit about campers and motorhomes. They’re not all the same, and they aren’t all going to be affected by the Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) regulations. There are several different kinds of RVs:

• Class A, or RVs that look like a bus.
• Class B, or RVs built inside of a van.
• Class C, or RVs built on top of a van (there’s usually a bed above the cab).
• Travel trailers, or RVs that get towed by a vehicle

The ACT regs won’t affect travel trailers, as they can be towed by a light vehicle in most cases (not a medium or heavy duty truck). Also, most Class B vans fall below the GVW limit to be affected by the ACT rules. Some small Class C RVs will fall below the line, while larger ones won’t. But, most Class A motorhomes are built on medium or heavy duty truck chassis, which means they’ll definitely be affected.

The ACT rules aren’t supposed to force truck manufacturers to go all electric starting in January. The requirements are supposed to phase in over the course of a decade, starting with small percentage requirements and never getting much above half. On top of that, manufacturers can buy their way out of selling electric vehicles themselves by purchasing credits from others so that they can keep building electric trucks.

The problem for motorhome builders is that the platforms upon which Class A and larger Class C motorhomes are built on are now going to be counted as trucks. This means that building these counts against the truck manufacturer’s whole ZEV numbers, which in turn means that they cut into how many gas or diesel trucks they can sell to their bread and butter market: commercial buyers. They’re not going to give away their primary business to make a low-volume recreational market happy in just six states!

There is one manufacturer that’s going to stick it out and keep selling a motorhome chassis to coach builders: Ford. Ford’s position is different because the company already sells a lot of electric vehicles, including cars, pickup trucks, and commercial vans. This puts them in a position where there’s no need to buy expensive credits and there’s room to make all of the customers happy.

Sadly, this won’t help most RV buyers, as Newmar, Spartan, and Freightliner are ditching motorhome chassis sales destined for CARB states. They don’t offer any EV motorhome chassis, so they can’t generate their own EV sales or buy credits.

There will still be some workarounds. Used RVs should still be available even in CARB states. In some cases, it might be possible to buy out of state and still register the vehicles. Another well-known workaround to this rule would be to set up a corporate entity in Montana (usually a simple LLC) that owns the RV and registers it in that state. This strategy is often considered tax evasion and treated as such, though. So, don’t run and get into that without consulting with a lawyer!

A Better Option For The Industry

In a nutshell: It’s time for the motorhome industry to get into EVs. But, I already know what the industry and even many EV fans are going to say about whether it would work.

First off, I know range is going to be a big objection, but that’s an argument from 3 years ago that really no longer holds. If you can buy a Silverado EV and tow a 10,000 lb trailer with it for 200 miles, it’s definitely possible to build a motorhome with that big battery. With some minor aerodynamic tweaking, building the motorhome a little shorter, and increasing the size of the pack a little more, it should be possible to have a 200-mile Class A motorhome, maybe even a 300-mile one if you pack in a second pack the size of a Silverado EV’s pack. With 350 kW charging, this wouldn’t be bad at all for road trips.

Yes, I know this would be expensive. The Silverado EV is a $100,000 truck. Making an RV with an even bigger battery would probably mean the thing costs $300,000 at minimum. But, if you look at the wider market, people are already spending that kind of money on Class A RVs. As the price of batteries continues to fall and charging infrastructure gets better, it should be possible to build them for under $200k, and be not only at cost parity, but cost equity with gas and diesel rigs.

On top of that, the CARB ACT rules don’t require all motorhomes to be electric yet. Chassis manufacturers can offer electric RVs and make them the small required percentage of the time, and then sell gas and diesel motorhomes the rest of the time. This doesn’t have to be a crippling product as much as a niche product in the beginning, eventually growing to be half of sales, and only in CARB states.

There are plenty of advantages that would stimulate demand for this small percentage of production, too.

Fuel savings is a big one. DC fast charging can make this expensive at times, but if you do a good bit of your charging at RV parks and don’t make long, long days, it’s possible to get there for a good chunk less money than the cost of moving a brick across the country on gas or diesel. Maintenance savings would be big, too. Plus, electric motors don’t really have problems when they go unused between trips. Tie them to the grid for stabilization or power your home with the RV’s big battery to get more of your money back, too.

Performance is another big one. Struggling up hills can be a thing of the past! Instead of trying to fight with gears and worry about overrevving an engine, you can just go on up that hill. Acceleration on flat ground is better. Negotiating heavy traffic with regenerative braking is more pleasant. Everything is just a better experience outside of needing to charge.

Boondocking would also be a breeze with a big battery and a bunch of solar on the roof. Instead of having to struggle with the heat or the cold when away from hook-ups, the owner of an electric RV can just power it all with that big battery. Air conditioning? No problem. Heat pump? You got it. Microwave? Go for it. Just be sure to tell the computer to save power for getting to the next charger and plan ahead a bit to have some extra charge for your off-grid adventures.

Featured image: a hybrid motorhome prototype. Image by Thor Industries.