Towing is the one thing that humbles an electric truck. Hook up a normal travel trailer and an EV pickup can lose roughly half its range, dropping to around one mile per kilowatt-hour. Miss GoElectric set out to test the trailer built specifically to fix that, the production Lightship AE.1, towed behind a Rivian. The AE.1 carries its own battery and a roughly 80-kilowatt electric motor, and its Trek Drive system uses load pins in the hitch to measure exactly how hard the trailer is pulling on the truck, then spins its own motor to cancel that force out. The goal is a trailer that feels like it is floating behind the tow vehicle, taking its own weight off the truck's range almost entirely.
This addresses a problem that has dogged every electric pickup since the first ones shipped. Independent tow tests have repeatedly shown EV trucks giving up close to half their rated range when pulling a boxy trailer, because aerodynamic drag, not weight, is what eats the battery at highway speed. That is why a self-propelled trailer is a genuinely different idea rather than a gimmick. It attacks both halves of the problem, smoothing the air with a profile no taller than the truck and then adding its own propulsion so the truck barely registers the load. The category is still tiny, and Lightship is a startup rather than an established RV brand, so the open questions are price, service network, and whether the electronics hold up over years of road vibration, none of which a short tow test can answer.
The experience details round it out. Trek Drive only engages above 15 miles per hour, cuts power the instant the truck brakes, and regenerates back into the trailer's pack on lift-off or downhill, with the motor soaking up as much as 80 kilowatts. The host describes the handover at speed as the trailer going from a dead weight on takeoff to feeling like it is gently pushing the truck along, and notes the AE.1 sits within two inches of the Rivian's roofline, which cuts the crosswind shove and the low-bridge anxiety that come with a tall box trailer. The trailer's solar stays on while driving, adding around 30 miles, and its rear cameras stream to the in-cab tablet, the kind of awareness aid that is easy to take for granted until you are reversing something this long.
The numbers from the drive are the draw. With Trek Drive off, the Rivian felt the trailer's full weight, about 8,000 pounds loaded, and efficiency fell to roughly 1.7 to 1.9 miles per kilowatt-hour, already better than the rough 1.0 of a conventional trailer thanks to the shape. Switch Trek Drive on and Lightship says you land within about 5 to 10% of your unladen range. For a gas truck, the company pegs the swing from 9 or 10 miles per gallon with a box trailer to above 20 with Trek Drive engaged. The trailer offers roughly 77 kilowatt-hours gross, about 72 usable, and can be set to stop assisting near a chosen reserve so there is power left for camping. Most owners, Lightship reckons, will run the assist for 200 to 250 miles and then switch it off.
Bottom line: Of all the ways to make EV towing workable, putting a motor in the trailer is the one that actually attacks the physics instead of asking the truck to do more. The drive impressions back up the pitch: 8,000 pounds that feels like a featherweight, stable in crosswinds, normal-feeling brakes. The catch is everything a tow test cannot show you, starting with the sticker price Lightship has not made the centerpiece here. If you tow with an EV and the half-range hit has kept you parked, this is the most convincing answer yet, with the bill still to come.