How an incubator helped an electric RV startup set up camp in Detroit

Like countless other side projects (remember all that sourdough?), the inspiration for electric RV startup Grounded came out of the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

CEO and founder Sam Shapiro was living in New York at the time.

“Everything shut down in March,” he recalled. “I ended up building a camper van that was gas-powered. It was a 20-year-old Chevy Express cargo van. I lived in it for six months and traveled all over the country, which was awesome.”

Less awesome? A broken engine that required him to put the van—aka, his home—in a repair shop for days.

“Also, when you’re at a campground, you’re inevitably running the engine or the generator to power all this stuff inside,” he added. “So you’re at the campsite and all the RVs are making a bunch of noise, they’re blowing exhaust. There’s this contradiction, almost, with spending time in nature.”

Shapiro recalled this experience while giving Tech Brew a tour of the G3, Grounded’s newest electric RV. The van was parked outside of Newlab at Michigan Central, the startup incubator that’s helped Grounded sprout into a team of 20 with its own factory, and ambitions to expand further in the next year.

From the ground up: Shapiro, a former SpaceX engineer, started Grounded in 2022 amid a surge in interest in RVs and road trips, and moved to Detroit later that year.

The startup team’s early days were spent in the Newlab facility, which over 100 startups call home and where members have access to shared prototyping and fabrication equipment, among other benefits.

Newlab is part of the broader Michigan Central ecosystem, a 30-acre mobility campus anchored by a historic former train station that reopened last year after Ford invested nearly $1 billion to restore it. The campus hosts myriad initiatives, from teaching students to code to testing wireless EV charging and training EV charging sector workers.

Newlab was helpful, Shapiro said, not only because it provided space and fabrication resources, but also for the broader network it offers. Newlab also became an investor in Grounded (which raised a $3.5 million pre-seed round last year), something it does selectively for member companies.

The facility hosts prototyping work as companies figure out how to get to the point of larger-scale manufacturing—a transition the incubator increasingly is assisting with, Garrett Winther, Newlab’s chief product officer, told Tech Brew. The facility has 3D printing equipment, a robotic arm, an electronics shop, and a whole host of other resources.

Startups at Newlab, which began in Brooklyn and recently opened a location in New Orleans, have benefited from the abundance of design and engineering know-how in the Detroit area, Winther said.

“Basically anything you need to build stuff—especially in this quick, engineering-oriented way—this is the place to do it,” he said.

Growth plans: The Grounded team built its first three vehicles at Newlab before expanding into the company’s own 13,000-square-foot factory on Michigan Central’s campus.

The team can build four vehicles a month in its current space, according to Shapiro. In the next 12 months, he said, the startup could exceed that capacity and require more space.

Grounded unveiled the G3, which is built on General Motors’ BrightDrop EV platform, in July. The vehicle has an estimated range of 286 miles, and features a modular design that allows customers to customize their vehicles. Changes from the second-gen version include replacing wood cabinetry with aluminum frames and 100% recycled materials, the addition of a motorized lift bed, a new insulated rear door, and a reengineered electrical system.

The G3 features a rooftop HVAC system, 1,000 watts of solar, and the ability to access Starlink satellite internet. It’s compatible with CCS fast chargers and comes with a NACS adapter. Various configurations of the vehicle range from $165,000 to $200,000.

Grounded recently expanded beyond recreational customers to offer its vehicles for commercial applications like mobile health, municipal services, and food and beverage businesses.

Shapiro is mostly undeterred by recent federal policy changes under President Donald Trump, such as tariffs on imported vehicles and parts, as well as rollbacks of policies supporting electrification and clean-energy projects (Grounded’s vehicles didn’t qualify for tax credits on EV purchases because they’re too expensive).

“The consensus in the industry is that nobody’s quite sure what will be the case six months from now, policywise. This is especially true on tariffs,” he said. “From that perspective, it’s favorable that we are sourcing a lot of components in the United States,” but “it’s impossible to do 100% today.”