Evotrex has only been around for two years, but the startup already plans to build and sell its first hybrid RV travel trailers next year, aiming for about 1,000 units a year.
To get there, Evotrex closed a $30 million Series A funding round, bringing its total to $46 million. Many of these came from a consortium of China- and Hong Kong-based investment firms including GSR United Capital, Forebright Concerto Capital, TTGG Ventures and Pegasus Capital, among others. Anker, the consumer electronics company, is among its investors.
The Los Angeles-based startup will need that capital to finish building and testing its RV, which it unveiled at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show after coming out of stealth last year.
It will also need it to hold its own in a crowded startup field. Legacy manufacturers were slow to get started. Thor’s first electric vehicle is going to fleet rentals instead of dealerships, and Winnebago’s eRV2 is in field tests from 2023 without reaching consumers. This void has spawned a wave of startups, and Evotrex is racing to fill it first.
Co-founder Alex Xiao told TechCrunch that he’s excited about the competition and is leveraging his experience as a product manager at Anker to help differentiate Evotrex.
“We’re not afraid of competition, competition is a good thing. We’re educating the market together, growing the market together,” he said. “I think in the long run the strongest companies will have a lot of things — you have to be very good at product definition, R&D and supply chain. You also need to be very good at distribution [and] service. Many things together. It’s a very complicated business.”
Some RV startups, like Lightship and Pebble, are promoting all-electric travel trailers. Evotrex is one of the few that make a hybrid system. Specifically, it’s an RV powered by a rechargeable battery with an onboard gas engine — an approach commonly referred to as an “extended range electric vehicle,” or EREV.
The goal, Xiao said, is to create an RV that can actually let people live off the grid for extended periods of time—something that’s difficult to achieve with an all-electric power source or a gas engine that still requires an electrical connection.
This has apparently proved popular. Evotrex said 90% of its existing order book is for the “fully loaded Premium trim” of the PG5 RV, which costs about $160,000.
Xiao said Evotrex has completed validating a working version of its first RV, but needs the next 10 to 12 months to thoroughly test the PG5’s durability. It is a known vulnerability in the industry. RVs have so many moving parts that mechanical integrity isn’t always a guarantee, and Xiao said Evotrex takes that seriously. As evidence, he pointed to the fact that the company’s first service employee came on board half a year ago, while its first sales employee joined just last month, suggesting that Evotrex prioritizes its ability to support customers over its ability to sell to them.
Evotrex still plans to build its RVs in China and complete final assembly in California, and Xiao said he is still locking down locations for both. But he believes a base in Los Angeles will give Evotrex access to its target market, as well as a number of nearby climates useful for testing.
Xiao said he’s drawing on another lesson from Anker, one that helped that company soar in popularity: focus on the right customers and get them to evangelize the product.
“The first thing is you have to find the real customer demand,” he said. “The second is that you have to deliver a really good product, and the third is: The customer will tell the story about you.”
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