Evotrex may only be two years old, but it’s already planning to build and sell its first hybrid RV travel trailer next year, targeting about 1,000 units per year.
To achieve this, Evotrex closed a $30 million Series A funding round, bringing its total raised to $46 million. Most of them came from a consortium of China and Hong Kong-based investment firms such as GSR United Capital, Forebright Concerto Capital, TTGG Ventures and Pegasus Capital. Consumer electronics company Anker is one of the seed investors.
The LA-based startup will need capital to finish building and testing the RV, which it unveiled at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show after coming out of stealth mode last year.
You also need to establish yourself in the crowded startup field. Existing manufacturers have been slow to advance. Thor’s first electric vehicle will go to rental fleets rather than dealerships, while Winnebago’s eRV2 has been field testing without reaching consumers since 2023. That gap has spawned a slew of startups, and Evotrex is racing to be the first to fill that gap.
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 are not afraid of competition. Competition is good. Together we educate the market and together we grow the market,” he said. “I think the strongest companies over the long term are going to have a lot of things. They have to be very good at product definition, R&D, supply chain. They also have to be very good at distribution (and) services. There’s a lot of things coming together. It’s a very complex business.”
Some RV startups, like Lightship and Pebble, are pushing fully electric travel trailers. Evotrex is one of the few companies building hybrid systems. Specifically, this is an RV powered by a battery pack that can be recharged by an onboard gas engine. This is an approach commonly referred to as “extended range electric vehicles,” or EREVs.
Xiao’s goal is to create RVs that allow people to live off the grid for long periods of time. This is difficult to achieve with full-power sources or gas engines that still require an electrical connection.
This has clearly proven to be popular. Evotrex said 90% of existing orders are for the “fully loaded premium trim” of the PG5 RV, which costs about $160,000.
Xiao said Evotrex has completed verification of a functional version of the first RV, but needs the next 10 to 12 months to thoroughly test the durability of the PG5. This is a known vulnerability in the industry. RVs have so many moving parts that mechanical integrity isn’t always guaranteed, and Xiao said Evotrex is taking this seriously. As evidence, he pointed to the fact that the company’s first service staff joined half a year ago, while its first sales staff only joined last month, suggesting that Evotrex is prioritizing customer support capabilities over sales capabilities.
Evotrex still plans to manufacture RVs in China and complete final assembly in California, and Xiao said it is still closing both locations. But he believes the Los Angeles base will give Evotrex access to its target market as well as a variety of nearby climates that would be useful for testing.
Xiao said he’s leaning on another lesson from Anker that helped the company soar in popularity. It’s about focusing on the right customers and encouraging them to promote your products.
“First you have to find actual customer demand,” he said. “The second is that you have to offer a really good product, and the third is that your customers will tell the story for you.”
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