Setting the Lightship Standard

Spring is here, and the Broomfield factory is humming.

Five years ago, when Ben and I founded Lightship, an "electric RV" was a concept. We set out to do something ambitious: create a towable vehicle that utilized automotive-grade aerodynamics and electric propulsion to double a traveler's range. We wanted to kill the generator and replace it with silence.

Our customers responded. Unsurprisingly, so did the market. In the last few years, we’ve seen a rush of new entrants—at least half a dozen "electric" towable companies have emerged. As the market matures, two real distinctions have become clear:

1) There is a massive difference between building a prototype and an actual production vehicle.

2) Marketing a vehicle as “designed in” or “created in” the USA is *literally* a world apart from actually manufacturing in the United States.

As of today, Lightship is the only company shipping production vehicles that are actually designed, sourced and manufactured in the United States. It takes A LOT to get a complex hardware product from prototype to production and even more to control manufacturing yourself, but we believe the hard way is the only way. Here’s why:

Setting the Standard for American Innovation

As with all new markets, transparency and accountability are paramount to building consumer trust. Many of these new towable RV companies are using marketing phrases like "Designed in the USA" or "Created in California," that obscure overseas manufacturing and supply chains. At Lightship, we believe that designed in, created in or assembled in are not substitutes for manufactured in. We remain the only company in this space shipping vehicles that are manufactured in the United States. Behind that manufacturing, over 80% of our vehicle’s components (by cost) come from suppliers in the United States. To us, American innovation isn’t just marketing, it’s a commitment to a domestic workforce, a resilient local supply chain, and a superior product and customer experience.

There are No Substitutes for Reps

An electric RV is essentially a car, a house and a bunch of consumer electronics wrapped together with software. You are putting thousands of components together and the goal is for them to work seamlessly. This takes time—in design, engineering, test, supply chain and quality before you ever reach production. It requires tight feedback loops: your test team breaks something, your design and engineering team develop a fix, your supply chain team sources new parts and your quality team makes sure that all was done well. It takes even more time if all of these teams are spread out across the globe. We feel like we’ve moved pretty fast and still Lightship has been five years in the making and it's taken us 14 different vehicle level prototypes across four program phases to reach the level of rigor required to ship.

You may be thinking, “that sounds like a good process to make sure a product is ready for prime time, but why not manufacture overseas to save cost?”

Manufacturing is the Product

At Tesla, Ben and I learned that controlling your manufacturing isn't an ancillary objective to building a great product. It is precisely how you build a great product. While our development was rigorous, it takes even more effort to build a Lightship to an exceptional standard. We also believe that a great product must continue to get better as customers take it into the world in an expanding set of use cases and provide feedback. This is only possible because our team from designers all the way to the management team are 8 feet away from the factory, not 8,000 miles. If we don’t like the fit of a drawer or a trim panel, we don't send an email to a third-party factory overseas and hope for a change in the next production cycle—we walk across the floor and fix it.

Authenticity Makes the Brand

Our customers aren’t just buying a product; they are buying who we are and what we stand for. RVing is a pastime that is fundamental to the American spirit—it’s how millions of us explore our country. Ben and I were inspired by the idea that camping is one of the last great places where Americans of all stripes can come together; campfires have a unique way of letting us set aside our differences. Anything short of building this product in America's backyard, by Americans and for Americans, wouldn't meet our bar.

The One Question for Every RVer

We’re excited to see innovation in this sector, but while there is significant noise in these early innings, we encourage every buyer to demand clarity. Don't settle for a slick website or a prototype demo. Ask tough questions:

• What testing have you done?
• Where is this vehicle actually built?
• Where do the subcomponents come from?

And the most important question: Can I visit the factory to see my vehicle being made?

If a company can show you a vehicle but not the factory that built it, that company probably has only one vehicle they paid someone else to build. If you can’t see how the product comes together step by step on a manufacturing line alongside many other vehicles, then it probably wasn’t built there and it’s probably not ready for prime time.

Experience the Lightship Standard

We invite you to see the difference firsthand. If you are in Colorado, join us for a factory tour to witness the engineering and craftsmanship that define our vehicles. And on the subject of our manufacturing footprint, stay tuned—we've got some exciting news coming.