Electric hub motor driven caravans coming

Question #1: What will we call a caravan park in 15-20 years’ time?

Answer: A mini power station.

Question #2: What will turn on the lights in your home?

Answer: Your caravan.

Utopian, or perhaps dystopian? Either way, big changes are coming in the way we harvest and store energy and your caravan, camper trailer and holiday park could all be playing a pivotal role.

That’s the vision of Andrew Huett, the co-founder of OzXcorp, a disruptive, 11-person, Campbellfield, Victoria-based tech company dedicated to, among other things, weaning us completely off gas in our travelling RVs.

To do this, OzXcorp is moving with the times, creating what it calls the first ‘smart RV’ – a digital architecture for your mobile holiday home that promises increased safety, lower fuel consumption and an uncompromised off-the-grid domestic living experience like never before.

Step one last year was to create a smart chassis, incorporating a 14.1kW flat, automotive grade lithium battery storing the power equivalent of 2033AH in regular AGM lead-acid batteries, between its rails yet weighing a fraction of these batteries’ total at 125kg.

To prove the system’s sustainability, OzXcorp spent six months and covered 20,088km last year in a caravan equipped with one of their ‘flat’ lithium 14. kW batteries and 1500W in solar panels on the roof, running air conditioning and other high-drawing household appliances daily to replicate domestic living.

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Retreat caravans is now using an AL-KO chassis designed to accept OzXcorp’s battery and power management system in special ERV-branded models and Andrew Huett is confident that other caravan, motorhome and camper trailer manufacturers will soon do likewise, with AL-KO ready to supply chassis with appropriate mounting points to suit different batteries.

Even more interesting is that OzXCorp expects up to three major Australian caravan manufacturers to fit its in-house designed electric hub motors this year, providing another source of energy regeneration for their battery.

Each hub motor weighs about the same as a regular 12-inch caravan drum brake, but has the power to retard the caravan or trailer sufficiently in most driving situations without the need to call on the smaller disc brakes that replace them in most hub motor applications.

The power generated by the hub motor when either travelling or braking is then fed back into the system’s main lithium battery and can be called on to assist in traction in off-road situations, or can be harnessed via a remote control or phone App to drive each wheel independently to turn the system into a caravan mover.

“Basically, the primary purpose of the hub motor is to counteract the weight of the caravan, so it can achieve the car manufacturer’s normal fuel range and can rely on its own regeneration and range as though the trailer wasn’t there,” Huett said.

“On the other hand, when you need it, you could effectively have the traction of an eight-wheel-drive vehicle off-road if you had hub motors driving each wheel in a tandem set-up.”

By harnessing the energy from the hub motors, the caravan would be less reliant on solar power and in theory could then be plugged into your home to run its lighting if you have the correct electrical switchgear installed.

“Personally, at the speed this new technology is moving, I’d rather invest in a caravan battery system than a Tesla power wall!” he said.

The same applies to caravan parks, where he says sites should be orientated to maximise their exposure to the sun between 10am and 3pm each day.

This technology could then disconnect them from the grid during these hours and reconnect them again during peak times after 3pm, reducing the park’s power demands.

OzXCorp’s batteries and hub motors are manufactured in central China, with Hewitt saying the company could easily ramp up production to meet demand from even Australia’s largest caravan manufacturers, if required.

Watch this space!