Since seventies we had 3 reasonable quality RVs among some below average ones. 1977 and 1985 Westfalias and 1997 Bigfoot truck camper. My first exposure to NA made RV appliance was an LPG heater (brown louvers) which I installed in 1977 Westfalia in place of the spare tire. This was a disaster, it sounded like 2 years old child learning to play a violin.
With good experience from our Bigfoot we followed with a trailer, and this RV was appalling. Afterwards I learned that original Bigfoot owner with his staff perished in the airplane disaster. The management replacement team had different objectives and experiences and then the financial crash hit them hard. Change of management resulted in different quality attitude permeating the company. I was left with my own repairs such as preventing the awning of becoming a missile.
In my view there is an optimum balance of engineering, manufacturing technologies, and price point to be successful. I don’t think we are at this point in NA. Manufacturing technologies are often old like, my most favored, staple gun. Shops are often too small to hire engineers unless charging high prices. This optimum balance is met by a few companies in EU, large manufacturing sites, molding tools, engineering departments, automation reflecting in decent prices.
My hope was for Hymer to bring their technologies to NA, did not happen.
Methodologies of building RVs are stagnant but there are some new RV appliances such as combining water with space heating by Truma or Webasto, new battery management systems by combining inverters with chargers, or multiple DC source chargers.
And The Lithium, from my perspective a little like this, just change the CAR for Li: