Enlarge / This looks much like any other of Airstream’s “silver bullet” travel trailers, but the eStream is a new battery-powered concept. (credit: Airstream)
Concepts—mocked up products of the future—aren’t unique to the car industry. Today’s vision of an electrified future comes from a car-adjacent manufacturer: the travel trailer and coach builder Airstream. Together with its parent company, THOR Industries, it has developed the eStream, an electrified version of one of its classic aluminum travel trailers.
Under the eStream’s floor you’ll find slabs of lithium-ion battery modules—up to 80 kWh in total. As you might imagine, these can power the trailer while it’s parked. This runs electric heating and air conditioning as well as all the other ancillaries, doing away with the need for propane tanks, usually found near the hitch.
But the trailer’s powertrain, developed in partnership with ZF, also features a pair of electric motors that can drive the eStream’s wheels while being towed. This should boost the range of a towing EV by between 50-75 percent, Airstream thinks. The trailer even has an electronic stability-control function that can add torque to an individual wheel to combat any swaying or side movements while towing. This also does away with the need for a weight-distribution hitch, Airstream says.
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