14 September 2026
America built an electric camper van. Then it killed it.
We wrote this week that the electric camper boom is happening without America, and blamed a 1964 tariff. That's true but incomplete, and the counterexample is worth sitting with — because America had a perfectly good electric van, exempt from every tariff, and buried it.
The van
Built in Ontario, no tariff attached
BrightDrop started as a General Motors venture and ended up badged as a Chevrolet — a large electric delivery van built at GM's CAMI plant in Ingersoll, Ontario. Because it was assembled in North America, the 25% chicken tax that keeps European vans out simply didn't apply.
It was also, quietly, an excellent camper base. Enormous cargo volume, standing room, all-wheel drive, and a 165 kWh battery — nearly double what's under an ID. Buzz. Which is why the RV industry noticed before most consumers did.
What got built on it
The best electric camper nobody bought
Grounded RV, a Detroit startup, put its G3 on the BrightDrop chassis — 286 miles of range, from about $165,000, first deliveries July 2025. Swappable interior modules, a kilowatt of solar, Starlink, a 15,000 BTU heating and cooling system, exterior outlets. Compared with a mattress laid over folded seats, it's from a different decade.
Coachmen selected the same van as the base for an electrified motorhome line. Colorado Camper Van fitted one with a pop-top. An American electric camper ecosystem was forming around an American van, with no tariff and no import friction.
Then, in October 2025, General Motors ended the programme. Production had been paused since May. It will not move elsewhere.
Why
Three thousand, nine hundred and seventy-six
That's how many BrightDrops Chevrolet sold through the first three quarters of 2025. Unsold vans accumulated on both sides of the border. GM cited slow commercial EV demand, a changing regulatory environment, and the end of the US electric vehicle tax credit.
It's the same number-shaped problem as the ID. Buzz, which sold around six thousand units in America in 2025 before Volkswagen skipped a model year. Two very different electric vans, two enthusiastic press receptions, two sets of sales figures that didn't support the programme.
So the honest version of our tariff argument is this: the chicken tax explains why foreign electric campers don't come here. It doesn't explain BrightDrop. That one was ours, it was exempt, it was being converted into exactly the vehicle people say they want, and it still didn't work.
What the builders did
The chassis stopped mattering
Losing your base vehicle should be fatal for a conversion company. Grounded's response was to stop depending on one. Chief executive Sam Shapiro put it plainly: "We build the smart, high-tech, modular workspace or living space on top of the chassis."
Their lineup now spans the remaining BrightDrops, the Ford e-Transit, and chassis from Harbinger, an American electric commercial vehicle startup, in both battery and hybrid form. The camper became platform-agnostic.
That may turn out to be the American model, and it's genuinely different from the European one. Volkswagen sells you a California: one manufacturer, one vehicle, one integrated product. America gets builders who put a modular living space on whatever chassis is available this year — and who survive when a manufacturer changes its mind.
What it means if you're shopping
Buy the conversion, not the platform
There's a practical lesson here for anyone spending real money on an electric camper in the United States.
The chassis under your conversion can be discontinued. People who bought a BrightDrop-based RV in early 2025 owned a vehicle whose manufacturer exited the business within months. Parts and service for a cancelled commercial EV are a genuine long-term question, and no conversion shop can answer it for you.
Which argues, mildly, for building on the least exotic thing available. A Ford Transit will be supported for decades. An ID. Buzz is a passenger vehicle Volkswagen has now recommitted to for 2027. A niche electric delivery van from a manufacturer testing the market is a better vehicle and a worse bet.
And it reframes the grievance. The problem isn't only that America can't import the good electric campers. It's that when America builds one, not enough people buy it.