Evotrex has been around for just two years, but the startup is already planning to build and sell its first hybrid RV travel trailers next year, targeting around 1,000 units annually.
To get there, Evotrex has closed a $30 million Series A funding round, bringing its total raised to $46 million. Much of that came from a consortium of Chinese and Hong Kong-based investment firms, like GSR United Capital, Forebright Concerto Capital, TTGG Ventures, and Pegasus Capital, among others. Anker, the consumer electronics company, is among its seed investors.
The LA-based startup will need that capital to finish building and testing its RV, which it revealed at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show after emerging from stealth mode last year.
It will also need it to hold its ground in a crowded field of startups. Legacy manufacturers have been slow to get going. Thor’s first electric vehicle is going to rental fleets rather than dealerships, and Winnebago’s eRV2 has been in field 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 is excited about the competition, and is drawing on 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 term the strongest companies will have many things — you must 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 pushing all-electric travel trailers. Evotrex is one of the few that is building a hybrid system. Specifically, it’s an RV powered by a battery pack that can be recharged 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 really let people live off the grid for extended periods of time — something that’s hard to accomplish with an all-electric power source, or a gas engine that still requires an electric hookup.
This has apparently proven popular. Evotrex said that 90% of its existing order book is for the “fully loaded Premium trim” of its PG5 RV, which is priced at around $160,000.
Xiao said Evotrex has finished validating a functional version of its first RV, but needs the next 10 to 12 months to thoroughly test the PG5’s durability. It’s a known vulnerability in the industry. RVs have so many moving parts that mechanical integrity isn’t always a guarantee, and Xiao said Evotrex is taking it 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 only joined this past month, suggesting that Evotrex is prioritizing its ability to support customers over the ability to sell to them.
Evotrex still plans to manufacture its RVs in China and complete final assembly in California, and Xiao said he’s still locking down locations for both. But he believes a Los Angeles base will give Evotrex access to its target market, as well as a range of nearby climates that are useful for testing.
Xiao said he’s leaning on another lesson from Anker, one that helped that company skyrocket in popularity: focusing on the right customers, and getting them to evangelize the product.
“The first thing is you need to find the real customer demand,” he said. “The second is you need to deliver a really good product, and third is: The customer will say the story for you.”
