AEONrv technicians use highly detailed process instructions for every step of the assembly process.
Rob Sabo for NNBW
When outdoor enthusiast Jim Ritchie started looking for a camper van to travel to his favorite secret powder stashes in the Lake Tahoe backcountry, he found the offerings from major auto dealerships and RV manufacturers lacked many important features.
The decades-long Silicon Valley engineer and longtime San Francisco resident began designing his own RV at night. Those early CAD drawings from 2020 formed the backbone of AEONrv, which was recently named manufacturing company of the year by Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology.
“I was looking for my own RV; I was thinking maybe I would retire,” Ritchie told NNBW during a tour of the company’s 70,000-square-foot manufacturing facility on Air Center Drive. “I’m a big backcountry skier and hiker and have always liked coming to Tahoe, and I thought it would be cool if I could take my wife and dog.
“I looked at van conversions, but being an engineer, I had problems with them. No matter what you do, you can’t really insulate them the way I wanted, and they just didn’t feel large enough.”
Ritchie found the perfect insulation in FRP — fiberglass reinforced plastic panels that are typically used to insulate refrigerated delivery trucks and shipping containers. He designed an RV using a one-ton Ford Transit cargo van and thought he would be building a single vehicle for personal use. A conversation with longtime friend Lars Severin, also a Silicon Valley software engineer, proved otherwise.
The duo began working on the project at a friend’s airplane hangar in Petaluma, California, and after a few long weekends they had completed the designs for their first RV.
“We were just playing around with ideas, but when we showed a lot of friends our design they said they would buy it,” Ritchie said. “I come from high tech, and so does Lars. I didn't have any preconceived notions of how an RV should be built or the materials that should be used.
“When I looked at building my own van or buying an RV off the shelf, I couldn’t wrap my head around how some of them were built, the materials, the wiring, the quality – I would have to redo everything.”
Ritchie and Severin rented a 2,000-square-foot warehouse in Reno to continue building, and eventually, both were working on the RV project full-time. Severin is AEONrv’s chief technology officer, while Ritchie has been AEONrv’s full-time chief executive officer since March 2021.
After about six months, the duo had a prototype nearly complete and showed their concept at a trade show. The idea resonated, so they created a website and started taking advance orders. To date, AEONrv has delivered more than 70 vehicles and expects to deliver more than 100 camper vans in 2025. AEONrv employs 55 at its corporate headquarters and is focused on scaling manufacturing operations in its current phase of growth.
“It’s really only been three years since we started building units,” Ritchie said.
AEONrv is in its fourth phase of growth and is moving toward its fifth stage of evolution, Ritchie noted. Ideation lasted from October 2020 through March 2021, followed by market validation and market acceptance after delivering its first seven vehicles to customers. As it grew, the company ramped up its physical footprint in Reno to a 4,000-square-foot space on Riggins Court before leasing 35,000 square feet on Air Center Drive.
In October, AEONrv took the second half of its current building and is already eyeing locations for expansion within the market. Its current phase of growth is focused on scaling and perfecting manufacturing processes – and that’s where the founder’s extensive backgrounds in process documentation come into play.
Assembly down to the smallest component has been painstakingly put into detailed process instructions so that AEONrv’s technicians can look at CAD drawings and written documentation that details all the parts and steps necessary to complete any task.
“We have invested uncountable hours creating detailed process instructions that we are always refining through a feedback loop,” Ritchie said. “We are trying to use more high-tech ways of building. Our goal is to build the world’s most high-tech, automated RV manufacturing plant in the world.
“A lot of things are done by hand, but we have manufacturing engineers who are working with our technicians and they are looking at what they do, how they do it, and they are trying to find ways to optimize the way we build things,” he added. “I believe in processes and checklists – they are very powerful in helping us keep quality in repeatable processes.”
Matt Sewell, senior director of manufacturing operations, was AeonRV’s first employee. Sewell graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno with a degree in mechanical engineering and oversees AEONrv’s engineering team.
AEONrv’s camper vans cost about $230,000 with options, which is comparable to the top van RVs on the market, Ritchie said. The RVs are not designed for glamping at RV parks with full hookups; instead, they are geared toward outdoors enthusiasts and people who want to experience the country’s most off-grid and remote locations. The all-wheel drive vans have all-electric cabins with 800-watts of rooftop solar panels recharging lithium-ion batteries supplied by Reno-based Battle Born Batteries.
“We call it a Yeti cooler on wheels – it’s so different from anything else on the market in how well insulated it is, and it’s also airtight,” Ritchie said. “You can camp in the sun in 95 degree weather and be completely comfortable.”
As the company enters its fifth phase of growth, the plan is to build between 20 and 25 RVs each month. Ritchie said AEONrv expects to bring in more than $20 million in revenue in 2025.
“We are in a good place as we scale up,” he said. “We wanted to change the RV industry in terms of the quality of product that is available at a fair price point. We are on the first step of achieving that goal of building a better RV that offers more value and allows people to go off road and off grid in all seasons. That is the big picture of our mission, and we are really happy being in Reno – it has a great environment for hiring the type of people we want.”