Colorado Teardrops announced earlier this month that it has completed the prototype version of “the world’s first camper trailer designed to extend the towing range of electric vehicles.”

What might sound like a strange product niche could answer a dilemma for some Americans with luxury budgets: While an electric vehicle might work perfectly fine for the vast majority of the year, the annual weeklong camping trip can be the deal-breaker.

As some who have tried to tow with their EVs—Teslas included—can attest, real-world driving range while towing can be abysmal. In the range of 60% to 75% of normal range is to be expected, and some larger travel trailers will cut range in half. 

That’s where the idea for the Boulder, a 12-foot-long electrified teardrop-style camping trailer introduced just over a year ago, comes in. With about 75 kwh of batteries mounted in its lower frame area—within a few kwh of the usable capacity of a number of popular electric crossovers like the Tesla Model Y or Volkswagen ID.4—it’s effectively carrying an extra battery pack along. According to the company, it has the potential to produce a total range while towing that’s greater than the towing EV’s original range.  

Colorado Teardrops Boulder EV camping trailer

With its prototype announcement, Colorado Teardrops announced that it “has partnered with a major automotive manufacturer to advance technology directly relevant to The Boulder.”

The company also confirmed that it’s completed the initial phase of the Boulder’s development. A stage of development allowing Level 2 charging is complete, while it’s now working on the DC fast-charging between the trailer and tow vehicle that will be the enabler for making the idea work. 

For it all to work, that is, the travelers will need to pull over and essentially plug the trailer into the EV, letting it fast-charge the vehicle at up to 60 kw—or potentially a higher power for shorter periods, as the company suggested 100 miles of range returned in 10 minutes. 

Colorado Teardrops - The Boulder electrified travel trailer

At its initial reveal last year, the company suggested that the Boulder’s dry weight would be just 1,950 lb, with a tongue weight of 185 lb. It will sleep a family of four, including a queen-size mattress, bunk beds, a dining area with couches, interior climate control, and a hot-water shower—plus a fold-out kitchen galley, potentially with an induction cooktop.

The Boulder keeps to classic teardrop-camper dimensions, according to the company, but in the meantime it hasn’t shied from trailers that might look more at home towed by a larger vehicle like a Ford F-150 Lightning or Rivian R1T. Two future models, the 17-foot Golden and the 27-foot Denver, don’t keep to the same teardrop look, but they have hard-shell tops that retract into a lower profile when towing. When camping they extend to provide 78-inch head room. It now suggests those models, which appear to only be at the rendering/planning stage, will offer battery packs up to 200 kwh, which would be enough to top out the upcoming Max pack versions of Rivian’s trucks. 

Colorado Teardrops - The Denver 27-foot electrified travel trailer

Like many travel trailers, you’ll need to be in it for the lifestyle, as you could potentially buy a lot of fancy hotel nights—and a lot more EV—for the price. Colorado Teardrops asks for as little as $1,000 down, but a $10,000 down payment secures a lower price starting at $45,000. The company claims that it is accepting reservations for the Boulder for delivery in the first half of 2023, although that already represents a timeline pushed forward.

This isn’t the only firm pursuing electrified travel trailers, and it’s not the first to try the idea. Airstream showed an eStream concept earlier this year, incorporating a system developed with ZF, that could be arriving in the next few years. That system, in a different trailer, managed to get a 240-mile real-world range out of an Audi E-Tron Sportback EPA-rated at 218 miles.

Keeping a big automotive-grade battery pack unused the rest of the year isn’t so great for the environment or the strained supply chain either, so let’s hope the company is thinking big about how this product could be part of the home energy ecosystem, helping households put the battery to use the rest of the year. 

Sign up to get the latest green car and environmental news, delivered to your inbox daily!

I agree to receive emails from Green Car Reports. I understand that I can unsubscribe at any time. Privacy Policy.

Plug-in hybrids aren’t the dollars-and-cents no-brainer vs. hybrids anymore, due to the revamped EV tax credit. Honda provides a closer look at its upcoming electric SUV. And will Tesla Megachargers be popping up everywhere now that the Semi is being delivered? This and more, here at Green Car Reports. Tesla Semi production has started, CEO Elon Musk reported Thursday, with first deliveries expected to Pepsi starting December 1. With the Semi’s long-awaited arrival, however, don’t expect its complementary Megachargers to also arrive soon in significant numbers...

Price hikes and the EV tax credit revamp have stripped away the advantage that plug-in hybrids have had until recently—for some but certainly not all models.

Honda sees drivers of the CR-V Hybrid jumping over to the somewhat larger Prologue EV in a couple years.

The Semi, originally revealed in 2017 and due for production in 2019, has been a long time coming—but it may be just in time to avoid a costly proprietary Megacharger buildout.

Ford F-150 Lightning prices rise, again. Vermont will pay residents to retire gas-guzzlers and switch to EVs. And the IRS is moving fast on sourcing rules for the new EV tax credit. This and more, here at Green Car Reports. Ford has once again hiked the price of the Ford F-150 Lightning. This time...

Treasury Department to meet with "industry, labor unions, climate and environmental justice advocates, and others" as it works out supply-chain and other details.

The base 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning Pro now costs nearly 30% more than it did just over a year ago; Ford says that it's supply-chain related.

The program offers $3,000 to Vermont residents who retire an operational vehicle deemed to be high-polluting that is at least 10 years old, and switch to a new or used EV.

Tesla drops ultrasonic sensors—and some features, for now. An “off the shelf” battery pack could be the ticket for premium EV conversions. And we drive the Ioniq 6 sedan. This and more, here at Green Car Reports. The 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 6 is shaping up to be the first direct...

For a range of driver assistance features, the vehicles will rely solely on the camera-based system that the company terms Tesla Vision.

The liquid-cooled lithium-ion pack is designed to be dropped into projects, and it's built at a facility that used to make F1 race engines. And yes, it's rather pricey.

A low-drag body and high-speed charging vault Hyundai’s new electric Ioniq 6 into the electric-car lead.