One of the the great joy of peaceful camping. There’s nothing worse than going out into the wilderness, far from society, and hearing someone at one of the campsites start a loud, smelly gas generator.
Pebble, a California-based company that develops a new travel trailer, hopes that the electric RV is just the thing to bring peace to the sparkling life.
The Pebble Flow is a travel trailer with a large battery on the ground. It can power lights, showers, heating, air-conditioning, and anything else you might want to use for electricity in the forest. The battery also powers the tow assist feature, so the Flow can give itself extra power when you tow it down the road, lightening the load on the vehicle you’re using to tow the camper.
Pebble first announced the Flow in 2023, but didn’t reveal the full list of features it plans to include in the camper until today. In an announcement scheduled for CES week, Pebble says it will assemble and deliver its first campers in the first half of 2025. Available for pre-order now, they start at $109,000, but go up to $135,500 if you’re curious. control its features with a companion mobile app.
In the flow
The Flow has the same aesthetic as many current EV models, with large windows and soft, curved features intended to make it aerodynamic. It looks like a luxury spaceship of the future, or a really big toaster, depending on how romantic you want to get with it. CEO Bingrui Yang is very passionate about it: He chose the name Pebble for the company because naturally occurring smooth stones tend to bring people joy, and he wants an electric camping machine to promote that sense of calm.
I got a chance to walk around the cramped space of a Pebble Flow demo unit at Pebble headquarters in Fremont, California. It has just about everything you could want for outdoor RV’ing. Inside is a kitchen with an induction stove, convection oven, sink, microwave, and refrigerator. The cabinets have ample storage space, and there are hidden spots on the floor for extra storage. Many windows open if you need to let in a breeze. In the back is a queen-sized Murphy bed that pulls back against the wall to create space. The dining table can be split into a second bed on the other side of the trailer. The bathroom and shower are located in the middle of the ground floor. A glass wall separates it from the rest of the interior, but the person in the bathroom can press a button to electronically swing the glass if they need to poo.
To the experienced RV enthusiast, this all seems like standard fare for a trailer costing over a hundred. Well, you’re right, but Pebble is confident that its EV-like additions make the Flow special.
The Flow is powered by a 45-kWh lithium-ion battery built into the base of the camper. That’s slightly smaller than the batteries built into compact EVs currently on the market, and about half the size of the largest EV batteries in the automotive industry. Pebble says the battery can power internal systems for up to seven days on a full charge. A set of 1-kW solar panels built into the roof can recharge part of the battery back while you’re on the move, and regenerative charging kicks in during towing. It has car charging technology too, so you can plug into the Flow to use it as a backup power source or EV charger.
The Pebble Flow is not actually an E-RV in the sense that it can function as a stand-alone vehicle. You’ll need something else to drag it anywhere. Pebble says that while towing a hybrid or gas engine car will probably get you ahead, you can tow it with another EV. The 25-foot trailer weighs 6,200 pounds loaded with all the options, so it will take some muscle to move it. Pebble’s website shows the flow being pulled by Cybertruck. (When I was at the company’s headquarters, I saw a black Cybertruck in the parking lot. It belonged to Pebble’s CTO, who you talked about a lot while I was there.)
The powerful suction feature can be switched on when the Flow is moving. While the motors provide decent thrust behind the actual car, they’re powerful enough to spin the Flow around a bit using a smartphone app, even though it only goes 1 mile per hour on its own. That’s enough to spin you in a very slow circle, but not anywhere near enough to drop the block. What it does is allow you to steer the trailer around the campsite without having to push and pull it with your vehicle. Just turn on Flow, grab your iPad, and steer it like a giant RC car, to the right place. Using the towing assist mode or driving it around the campsite will definitely reduce the trailer’s battery life in actual camping activities, as you can imagine.
Pebble has a feature it calls Magic Hitch (not really magic) that allows you to use an app to connect the Flow up to trailer hitch on your tow vehicle. Simply guide it through the on-screen controls, and when the Flow is close enough, hold down the button and the hitch will use its attached camera to find the perfect spot for you to hook up. Another feature, called InstaCamp, allows you to park the trailer on an uneven surface and press a button to have the camper level itself automatically.
Source link
