Welcome back to Inc.’s 1 Smart Business Story! Today, we’re looking at the story behind another Inc. 5000 honoree: AEONrv (No. 66). A few years ago, software engineer Jim Ritchie was thinking about retirement, ski trips, and long weekends outdoors. But he ran into a problem: he didn’t like the RVs on the market.

The models on the market felt outdated, inefficient, and looked like “1980s Vegas.” So instead of buying one, he and a friend started building their own modern version. What they ended up with was an all-electric cabin, solar power, Starlink internet, and a design inspired more by boats than traditional campers.

What started as a weekend project became AEONrv, a Nevada company that now employs about 60 people, has delivered more than 150 vehicles, and expects roughly $20 million in revenue this year. The company grew at an astounding rate of 4,231 percent in just three years.

What’s especially notable is that AEONrv grew while the broader RV industry was shrinking after its pandemic-era boom, Inc. senior editor Rob Verger reports.

In this story you’ll discover:

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Jim Ritchie felt that RVs looked like ‘1980s Vegas.’ His hybrid vehicle company, AEONrv, grew 4,231 percent in three years.

BY ROB VERGER, SENIOR EDITOR

Jim Ritchie started AEONrv, a Nevada-based company that sells a high-tech hybrid RV, because he wanted to create a new kind of vehicle for himself to use. The result is an RV with a modern, all-electric cabin mounted on the chassis of a gas-burning Ford Transit van. 

The company’s growth has been strong enough to land it at No. 66 on the Inc. 5000 list this year, with a three-year growth rate of 4,231 percent. And it has managed to pull off this growth while the overall RV industry has declined from a Covid-era high.

Ritchie, a software engineer, says pondering his own outdoor adventures jump-started the creation of the company. “I’m a big skier, and I was thinking maybe I’ll retire sometime soon, and it’d be cool to have a vehicle to take to go skiing and biking and things I like to do,” he says. “I was looking around at vans. Van life was big, and I didn’t really like what was going on there. They seemed hard to insulate.”

All told, he says, the traditional RV industry “seemed pretty old-school” to him. 

Ritchie designed the vehicle for fun, and to help make it a reality, teamed up with a friend, Lars Severin, who became the company’s CTO (Severin retired earlier this year). What began as a weekend project grew into a business. By the end of 2021, they had published a website and started taking deposits for the vehicles. “We hired our first employee a little over four years ago,” he says, “and the rest is history.” They bootstrapped the company to get it off the ground, and then raised under $2 million of outside capital from investors in 2023 and 2024.

The vehicle boasts a tech-forward design centered on a snugly insulated, all-electric cabin. Solar panels on the roof generate electricity, which is stored in lithium-ion batteries. Starlink provides an internet connection. Ritchie emphasizes that inspiration for the build came from the marine industry, and that the cabin is built out of fiberglass-reinforced insulated panels. “There’s no aluminum or metal in the actual build,” he says. “It’s all composites and fiberglass, and it’s all glued together.” There’s also no propane, which traditional RVs use for appliances like stoves and even historically as a power source for refrigerators. 

The result is an energy-efficient cabin that’s so airtight, Ritchie says, occupants “have to crack a window at night, so you don’t get carbon monoxide poisoning.”

The company, which employs some 60 full-time employees, has delivered more than 150 vehicles in total through its direct-to-consumer approach, the same way EV companies Tesla and Rivian sell their rides. They deliver about eight vehicles each month, with the starting price for the base model at $229,500. Ritchie predicts that the company’s 2026 revenue will land around $20 million; he says the company was profitable as of last year and remains on track to turn a profit this year as well.

AEONrv remains a niche, if tech-forward, player in a $159 billion industry with three big companies: THOR Industries (companies under its umbrella include Airstream and CrossRoads), Forest River, and Winnebago Industries. Those companies “make up the bulk of the RV production in the United States,” says Monika Geraci, a spokesperson for the RV Industry Association. Not only that, 88 percent of RVs last year were made in one state: Indiana. 

RV shipments in the U.S. spiked in 2021 amid the Covid pandemic, hitting a high of 600,241 that year, according to the RV Industry Association. Then they fell. Shipments from manufacturers to dealers last year were 342,220, a drop of about 43 percent from that Covid-era high. Geraci says that current estimates hold that RV production in the U.S. will drop by about 8 percent this year compared with last. 

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