Not a Spaceship, a Lightship： One Night’s Sleep in the Innovative AE.1 Atmos

So, I just spent the night in this spaceship. It's not a spaceship. It's actually the Lightship AE-1 Atmos. A very cool design. I like nothing about it. Didn't you like the table going up and down? Sure, that was pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Me and my family spent the night inside this vehicle. I ate dinner, ate breakfast, had a good time. This is from a company out of Colorado that builds this very unique looking, very space-age and futuristic, hardshell pop-up travel trailer. But let's talk a little bit about the specs. It's pretty standard dimensions, just under 27 feet long, about eight and a half feet wide. And I don't know if you can tell, but this entire top section pops up. It's in its camp mode right now, which is about 10 feet tall, one inches. And when you drop it down, it drops to about six feet, 11 inches, which makes it very aerodynamic for towing, helps increase the range. Manufacturer says it also reduces the trailer sway because you're reducing both its frontal area and its area to side drafts. We didn't get to try that. Apparently, it's got some other unique features, very unique features when you're trailering it because this is an all-electric trailer. It's got 77 kilowatts worth of batteries underneath the frame rails. And those batteries help drive the wheels and help give up to 300 miles of range back when you're towing it. Again, we didn't try this out, but apparently when you drive it, it's like you're towing almost nothing, which is pretty unique. There's a lot of features. Let's go check out some more of what the Light Chip A1 has to offer. All right, so first though, let's talk about the power. Yes, all-electric, which is unique within the recreational vehicle space. Again, a 77 kilowatt hour battery underneath the vehicle, sandwiched in the frame rails. As you know from EVs, keeping that battery low really helps with center of gravity in a trailing situation, makes it easier to tow. Also, again, when you're able to reduce the overall cross-section of this vehicle. If you come over here and take a look at how it works, it's a NACS, so North American Charging Standard, Tesla Supercharger plug-in right here, which you just plug into an adapter at your normal RV outlets. Also, it's got 240 watts out and 120 volts out, as well as an ethernet connection, and there's a solar array on the top. So you got all sorts of different ways, both to power this vehicle with the sun, with the standard plug-in. You have different power out, and because there's a Starlink internet connection on board, you can also theoretically get your Wi-Fi, stream your videos wherever you're RVing, wherever you're camping. So very cool features. Here, you also have lots of storage. Storage section fits a surfboard, close to my heart, all the way to the other side. So I guess, theoretically, you can fit a rounded eight-foot surfboard inside, as well as whatever else you wanna keep, camping chairs, sleeping bags, tents, other stuff, tables. And then, you know, you got your traditional RV needs for fresh water, so on and so forth. Again, very unique sort of setup here with the Lightship AE1. This is the Atmos version. Retails about $184,000. There is several trims below, and at least one more above, which was the Cosmos edition, which was the founder's edition, is sold out. But I'm hearing that the company might be changing up the way they're offering the trim levels, allowing for more customization. So more on that later. But why don't we go check out what's going on on the inside? Oh, excuse me. Now, inside this Lightship AE1 Atmos, it's very nice. Very spacious, as you can see. It is one big room, which we'll get to. It has some pros and cons. It's very open. It's very airy. But let's talk about some of the features. This is a pretty large bathroom, as RVs are concerned. It has, of course, a toilet, a sink, and a shower. We didn't use all the features in this Lightship because we're actually situated right next to the campground bathroom. So we did Lightship a solid by not putting any solids in the toilet. I did take a shower, though, and worked pretty nice. We'll talk about some of the things I didn't like, some things I liked about it. But then moving on to the kitchen, a spot very close to my heart, two-burner induction, which worked out really, really great. This really fantastic microwave slash air fryer slash convection oven, super powerful. Knocked out a couple of sweet potatoes in under five minutes. Also baked bread with it and made my kids some corndogs, phenomenal. Very, very large refrigerator. This is quite a bit larger than even your average dorm fridge. Got a freezer side as well. Tons and tons of storage, lots of bins, lots of space to put things. Here's all of your silverware and dishes. And again, quite a large sink, very handy. And I will say, loads of counter space, which is great for prepping dinner, putting stuff. We had our five-year-old here, we had toys everywhere. Everything is really durable. There's lots of great composites. These drawers, the cabinets, they're aluminum. And they have that soft close, but also harder than residential to open because this vehicle is gonna be traveling down the road and you don't want stuff to pop open and all your stuff to spill out. So this stuff is great. I will say the bathroom door, a little on the flimsy side, feels like it might pop off if somebody were to lean on it. But crazy amount of engineering, design and engineering challenge for these doors, including the front door, to have to collapse when this thing drops from camp mode to aero mode. So I appreciate that. I mean, this whole wall has to come down, very slick. So are the windows. Again, not traditional RV slider windows where you can open it and it's pretty easy to do, but like half of your view is blocked. Last night when I was cooking, it was very cool to just be able to pop this thing open. And because it's on gas struts, it just pops right open and we could watch the sunset. And then we noticed because our lights were on, some of the bugs were coming in. So then we put down the sunshade, sorry, the screen. And then this morning when it was too bright, you can also pull down the shade completely to keep the sun out. And then closing it, pretty simple. You just grab the stick, it's got a hook on the end and there's a convenient little hook here and you just pull it closed. Once it's closed, lock it shut and away you go. So very cool, very thoughtfully designed features in the Lightship AU-1. And then of course on this side, this would be like the main bedroom, the main bed. This mattress flips out after you pull out this handy stand, lay it on top. And to be honest, that's where my wife and my son, we slept on the big bed and had a pretty good night. Now, a couple of things. Let's talk about stuff I really liked about this Lightship. It is a very open, it's very airy kind of feel when you first get in. It's kind of like you're being in a fishbowl. It's because they really didn't skimp on the windows. This thing is covered in windows and that's because it is a pop-up. So this whole section comes all the way down to right about here. So all of this, all of these windows provide a lot of light, great view. We had a gorgeous view of the sunset over the Pacific last night. So that's really cool. Also the comfort of this couch, the space. I guess this is, it's kind of an odd shape. It's like a triangle with rounded edges. We slept, my wife is pretty tall. My kid's a five-year-old, no problem while sleeping here. We could have also put them here, which is roughly the size of a full-size, maybe a twin-size bed and quite comfortable, lots of room. And again, a lot of space, great kitchen area, lots of room to prep, lots of room to eat, very open and airy feeling. We had a couple of issues with electrical over the night. One of the things that happened is that the lights came on around 11 o'clock about four times and we couldn't figure out exactly why. Everything in this light ship is controlled via this fancy iPad type device, this tablet. So we had all the controls and we were messing with why the lights kept coming on. And then we realized it might have something to do with the physical controls. So we got it to go off the last time around just before midnight using the physical controls. And so that was one thing. And then just a couple of things and trying to figure out why the water heater didn't heat up as quickly as it should have. I took a semi-warm shower in the shower today. It was totally fine. And now apparently the water's scorching hot. So it might've been operator error. Let me see. Other things, you know, one thing my wife pointed out and she has a lot more experience with recreational vehicles is there's not a ton of storage or stuff, obviously in this section that comes down. So, and it feels kind of very modern, very spare from a design perspective. And she was like, you know, wanting to dress this thing up a little bit, but because these walls have to be, go flush into, you know, aero mode, doesn't seem to be a lot you can do except with maybe wallpaper. And she also thought that these sunshades look a little, not as slick as what's available for these other windows. And I'll say the last thing is because there's so many windows, it gets very bright, very early in this vehicle. If you're like a sleeper sensitive to light, this might not be the vehicle for you. But I think the biggest criticism and something I think the company has heard is it is one big room. So with the three of us, two adults, a small child, not a big problem. But if you were in here with four adults or two larger children and they kind of wanted their own space, you don't have any privacy. There is a suggestion that maybe there'll be a partition that they can build in here or something like that, which I think would be a good idea. But overall, had a great night in the Lightship AE-1. I guess it is on the pricier side, $184,000. This is among the highest spec vehicles with all sorts of really cool features in it. And you can conceivably get into a Lightship in the $125,000, $135,000 range, which is I think on par with what Airstream offers. But if you're looking for something very unique, something that is all electric, you should consider a Lightship Atmos. All right, so that was our stay in the Lightship AE-1 Atmos edition. Again, $184,000, hardtop pop-up, travel trailer, very cool. You know, RV content does really well on MotorTrend.com. If you wanna see more, including maybe us towing this thing and doing a tow test, drop us a note in the comments. And for more on this vehicle and others, you can go to MotorTrend.com.