This National Day, highways were congested once again. But among the traffic, there was a noticeable increase in a certain type of vehicle—not SUVs, not MPVs, but RVs.

The Ministry of Transport predicts that road travel will account for over 90% of trips during the National Day holiday, with self-driving being the dominant mode. And when it comes to self-drive tourism, RVs take center stage. RV rental outlets are struggling to meet demand, with average rental periods extending to seven days. More critically, the renter demographic has shifted. Previously, RV rentals were primarily dominated by retirees aged 55 and above. This September and October, however, there has been a rapid increase in young families from the post-90s and post-95s generations. Young people are no longer just looking for a brief experience; some are purchasing RVs directly after renting. A sales manager at an RV dealership in Changzhou noted that sales have risen nearly 30% year-on-year, with new energy models accounting for a quarter of the total.

Notably, many newly listed RVs feature new energy chassis, automatic parking, and centralized control of water, electricity, and air conditioning via a single screen, with responsive voice control. Five years ago, such features were virtually unheard of in RVs.

In short, the RV category is being pulled into the wave of intelligence seen in passenger vehicles. But is RV intelligence the same as sedan intelligence? What stage has it reached so far?

What Makes RV Intelligence Challenging?

If you've driven a new energy sedan in the past two years, your perception of 'intelligence' might be something like this: Say 'navigate to the office' upon entering the car, and the system plans the route; flick the gear lever twice on the highway, and the car changes lanes automatically; arrive at the underground parking lot, step out, and the car parks itself.

These functions all share a common prerequisite: The car is a highly standardized industrial product, with its chassis, steering, braking, and computing platform all designed by the OEM from the ground up.

But RVs don't follow this manufacturing logic. Traditional RV production is closer to the home renovation industry than the automotive industry. The chassis often arrives as a bare truck frame, with the upper body handcrafted by RV converters: wood panels, glue, wiring harnesses, water tanks, and inverters are assembled sequentially, with lighting switches, water systems, and air conditioning each having separate circuits and remote controls. There's no unified communication between subsystems, let alone vehicle-level software or OTA updates.

So, when intelligence comes to RVs, the first obstacle isn't algorithms but the primitive state of the chassis and electronic architecture. Intelligent driving in passenger vehicles is built on a by-wire chassis, where steering, braking, and acceleration are all controlled by electrical signals, allowing the computing platform to command them. However, most RV chassis still use mechanical handbrakes and hydraulic power steering, lacking even a single actuator capable of receiving instructions. Technically, enabling automatic parking on such vehicles is a fantasy.

The second difference lies in the vastly different complexity of usage scenarios. The task boundary for sedan intelligence is relatively clear: transport people and objects from point A to point B, with road conditions and traffic participants as the core variables. For RVs, the task boundary is much blurrier. Upon arriving at a campsite, the vehicle must transform into a home: leveling, power supply, water supply, sewage disposal, heating and cooling, and security monitoring are all independent systems, each needing integration into a unified control logic. When a user says 'camping mode' inside the vehicle, they expect the curtains to close, lights to dim, air conditioning to switch to low power, the refrigerator to continue receiving power, and other non-essential devices to shut off. This requires cross-domain collaboration among lighting, energy, and cabin technologies.

Another more practical constraint is the small production volume, making supply chain negotiations difficult. China sells over 20 million passenger vehicles annually, and any Tier 1 supplier is willing to customize chips and domain controllers for them. In contrast, self-propelled RV sales only surpassed 20,000 units for the first time in 2025. Twenty thousand units is less than a month's sales in the passenger vehicle industry. Without scale, no supplier is willing to develop vehicle-grade RV-specific components.

The Xingkong Mengwu team mentioned in an interview that due to the small scale of RVs, many key components lack mature vehicle-grade suppliers. Cameras, controllers, and battery packs all require custom development, with each round of A-sample, B-sample, and C-sample iterations taking at least three to six months. This pace is worlds apart from the monthly updates seen in passenger vehicle autonomous driving.

Given these challenges, has anyone started working on RV intelligence? What stage is it at now?

The Early Stages of a Multi-Player Competition in Intelligence

If we view RV intelligence as a race, it's still in the early stages. The number of players genuinely working on underlying architectures can be counted on one hand, while those shouting 'smart RV' slogans have already filled exhibition stands and e-commerce pages. This is a typical phase where a few are seriously building, while most are just slapping on labels.

Globally, the number of companies truly investing in underlying technologies for RVs is minimal. RV startup Pebble is one of the furthest along. Founder Yang Bingrui spent a decade working on iPhone hardware at Apple before moving to Zoox and Cruise for autonomous driving. He defines RVs as 'large robots' rather than rooms on wheels. Pebble Flow is a pure electric trailer RV with a 45-degree battery and a dual-motor skateboard chassis, giving the trailer its own propulsion for the first time, allowing it to move forward independently. However, even with original features like automatic hitching and remote parking, the vehicle has only delivered a three-digit number of units so far, while popular passenger vehicles sell tens of thousands in the same period.

The closest domestic contender is Xingkong Mengwu, founded in 2024 by Yang Jie, who has over 20 years of product experience at SAIC, Ford, and Changan Mazda. Their approach is similar to Pebble's: developing a passenger vehicle-grade electric trailer skateboard chassis, integrating energy, intelligent driving, and vehicle control natively. Their one-button hitching and unhitching process is reduced from the traditional 30 minutes to 60 seconds, with a 45 to 85-degree lithium iron phosphate battery supporting 14 days of off-grid operation. A single-screen touch control and whole-house voice control replace the traditional two separate sets of physical buttons for the driving and living areas. They secured 80 million yuan in financing in February, received hundreds of millions of yuan in orders from Australia, and plan to launch in Australia, New Zealand, North America, and Europe starting in 2026.

Interestingly, neither company's team comes from the traditional RV industry. Yang Bingrui hails from Apple and autonomous driving companies, while Yang Jie comes from the passenger vehicle sector of traditional automakers. They believe that the 'home renovation' logic of traditional RV companies cannot produce truly intelligent RVs because intelligence requires a native architecture, not just stacking functions during aftermarket modifications.

What about all the 'smart RVs' being heavily promoted online?

Objectively speaking, most are still at the stage of bringing smart home features into the vehicle. A touchscreen controls interior lighting and appliances, a voice assistant turns the air conditioning on and off, and an app remotely checks battery levels and water tanks... These solutions are mostly modifications and additions, not involving the reconstruction of the chassis and energy architecture. As one practitioner put it, this is 'RV plus a tablet,' not software-defined RVs.

Is It a Genuine Concept or Just a Gimmick?

After all this, given the technical difficulties and small consumer base, can RV intelligence really take off? Or is it just another pseudo-concept hyped up by the internet context?

If 'smart RV' refers to adding a screen, a voice assistant, and an app to an existing chassis, then it does have elements of gimmickry. Because these features don't address the most fundamental pain points of RV users. The real pain points for RV users are the difficulty of trailer operation, the fear of running out of power off-grid, the inability to park in campsites, and the difficulty in controlling body sway. A voice assistant clearly can't solve these issues.

But if it refers to redefining RVs from the chassis and electronic architecture upwards, giving the vehicle perception, decision-making, and execution capabilities, then there is genuine industrial logic supporting it.

On the one hand, the spillover from the new energy supply chain provides the necessary technical support. China's passenger vehicle electrification has accumulated the world's most complete battery, motor, and electric control supply chain, and these capabilities are now spilling over into RVs. In the first half of 2026, the penetration rate of new energy RVs in China had already climbed to 18.4%, with camper van registrations increasing by 64.2% year-on-year. New energy chassis are naturally suited for intelligence because the battery pack itself provides a stable energy base, and by-wire chassis are easier for software to control than mechanical chassis. The skateboard chassis solutions from Xingkong Mengwu and Pebble essentially transfer the proven battery, electric drive, and chassis capabilities from passenger vehicles to this new RV category.

On the other hand, changes in user demographics will force the market to accelerate development. Young people are starting to buy and rent RVs for long trips, and their definition of 'user-friendly' differs from that of retirees. Retirees can tolerate manual awnings, mechanical handbrakes, and spending half an hour connecting water and electricity at campsites because they have plenty of time. Young people cannot. They want to settle in quickly upon arrival, preferably with everything in the car controllable via a single screen or voice command, and ideally able to turn on the air conditioning remotely via an app before arriving. These demands are forcing product definitions to change, and the non-standard modification model of traditional RVs struggles to respond systematically.

At the same time, policies are also lending support. In September, ten departments issued the 'Several Measures to Promote RV Consumption,' relaxing regulations on campsite land use, traffic and parking, and vehicle scrappage periods. With more campsites and convenient resupply options, the barriers to RV use are lowering, and intelligence is precisely one of the most effective means of reducing these barriers. Automatic parking encourages novices to drive trailers, large batteries support off-grid operation so users don't have to crowd into campsites, and one-button hitching and unhitching allows a single person to complete tasks that previously required two.

Of course, we shouldn't be overly optimistic. This track (track) is far from safe. Pebble has delivered a three-digit number of units, while Xingkong Mengwu's mass-produced vehicles haven't officially launched yet. Most domestic RV companies' intelligence investments are still limited to purchasing third-party screens and voice modules. The global RV market size is around several hundred billion yuan, not on the same scale as passenger vehicles, so there won't be many players surviving simultaneously. Most industry insiders believe that only two to three leading players will survive in the U.S. market in the end.

But at least, some companies have already entered this category. Among the RVs stuck in highway traffic and parked at lakeside campsites during the National Day holiday, some are no longer just 'iron shells on wheels.' They can level themselves, park automatically, survive a week without campsite power, and turn on the right lights before you even ask. These features might seem taken for granted in a 300,000-yuan sedan, but in an RV, they signify that a category belonging to a previous era is finally being pulled into this one.

As for those RVs that merely slap on a screen and call themselves intelligent, the market will naturally provide its verdict. Young people may not understand chassis and electronic architectures, but they can tell what's truly convenient and what's just for show. After spending an hour struggling to park at a campsite during the seven-day National Day holiday, they might be more cautious when choosing intelligent RVs for their next rental.