Evotrex raises $30M to build an RV that doesn’t need a charging station

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, targeting around 1,000 units a year.

To that end, Evotrex closed a $30 million Series A funding round, bringing its total to $46 million. Much of that came from a consortium of investment firms based in China and Hong Kong, such as GSR United Capital, Forebright Concerto Capital, TTGG Ventures, and Pegasus Capital, among others. Anker, a consumer electronics company, is among its seed investors.

The LA-based startup will need that building to cash in and test its RV, which it unveiled at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show after coming out of stealth mode last year.

It will also need to hold its own in a field full of startups. Legacy producers have been slow to move forward. Thor’s first electric vehicle will be leased instead of sold, and Winnebago’s eRV2 has been in testing since 2023 without reaching consumers. That gap has drawn 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 using his experience as a product manager at Anker to help differentiate Evotrex.

“We are not afraid of competition, competition is a good thing. We educate the market together, we grow the market together,” he said. “I think in the long run strong companies will have a lot of things – you have to be very good at product definition, R&D, and supply chain. You also have to be very good at distribution. [and] service. Many things together. It is a very difficult business.”

Other RV startups like Lightship and Pebble are pushing all-electric travel trailers. Evotrex is one of the few that make up a mixed system. Specifically, an RV powered by a battery pack that can be recharged with an internal gas engine — a technique often referred to as an “extended range electric vehicle,” or EREV.

The goal, Xiao said, is to build an RV that can allow people to live off the grid for long periods of time — something that’s difficult to accomplish with an all-electric power source, or a gas engine that still needs to be plugged into electricity.

This seems to be popular. Evotrex said 90% of its existing order book is for the “fully loaded Premium trim” of its PG5 RV, priced at around $160,000.

Xiao said Evotrex has finished validating a working version of its first RV, but needs the next 10 to 12 months to fully test the durability of the PG5. Industry known vulnerability. 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 out that the company’s first customer service employee arrived half a year ago, while its first sales employee only joined this past month, suggesting that Evotrex prioritizes its ability to support customers over its ability to sell to them.

Evotrex still plans to make its RVs in China and complete final assembly in California, and Xiao said he 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 are useful for testing.

Xiao said he relied on another lesson from Anker, which helped that company grow in popularity: focusing on the right customers, and getting them to evangelize the product.

“The first thing you need to find out is the real need of the customers,” he said. “The second is that you need to deliver a really good product, and the third is: the customer will tell you the story.”