Winnebago Electric Motorhome on a F-53 chassis

DrewE wrote:

valhalla360 wrote:

Biggest issue is manufacturers aren't going to build just for the RV market...one option for MH would be a lot of city buses have gone hybrid If they could put the drivetrain in a MH that might work...only problem is those drivetrains are significantly more expensive than a standard diesel...it works for a city bus running 16hr per day every day where they can justify it based on fuel savings but for a MH that might do 5000miles per year mostly freeway (where hybrid doesn't gain you much), I suspect it would be a tough sell outside of those who just want to prove how green they are.

Hybrids are much more useful for city busses than motorhomes primarily because city busses spend all their life in stop and go driving, with unusually many stops and starts. The main reason a hybrid setup increases efficiency is that it recaptures a good portion of the energy lost when braking and can use that later to accelerate, rather than just dissipating it all as heat. Steady highway driving produces far more limited improvements.

In some areas, all electric city busses have been used for decades, albeit powered by overhead trolly cables rather than a battery. Of course that is only practical where you have the trolly wire infrastructure in place over all the roads you might need to traverse.

Not only do you get brake regeneration, a city bus might average less than 25mph which doesn't take much HP but hard acceleration does, so they wind up with much bigger engines to compensate. By using a hybrid, you can downsize the engine and keep it running close to ideal efficiency regardless of acceleration.

But yes, as I indicated, your average MH does most of it's miles on freeways where the big diesel is fairly close to it's ideal efficiency.

There have been some recent tests for semi's using cantenary electric power. If it was ever implemented on a wide scale, RV's could certainly take advantage of it but even if the govt went whole hog on it, it would still take a few decades to get enough coverage to make it viable for RV's. Trucking companies could implement as soon as a few key routes are covered as they often have trucks repeatedly running the same route...RV's tend to wander a lot more so it would be very limiting.