Just over a decade ago, one of the oldest names in aluminum travel trailers was revived. Bowlus makes trailers more beautiful than an Airstream and usually with a price higher than many houses. Times are changing at Bowlus as its trailers are getting better tech while also getting more affordable. The all-electric 2025 Bowlus Rivet is a refinement of the bullet-shaped Bowlus concept. This trailer has a decent lithium battery for off-grid capability, a lift kit to tackle rough roads, and it appears to be the first travel trailer to market with a working self-parking functionality. Let’s check it out!
Over the past couple of years, a handful of companies have been promising travel trailers that are easier to hitch up and park through the use of onboard motors and remote control functions. Europe’s Dethleffs successfully tested its E.Home travel trailer with this feature. Likewise, Airstream, Pebble, and Lightship are all developing travel trailers with their own drive systems. All of those trailers are also seeking to make towing easier by having the trailer’s drive system assist the tow vehicle.
Bowlus has decided to go a different route. The Rivet has a drive system, but it’s not going to try to help the tow vehicle. Instead, it’s there specifically to make hitching and parking a cinch. For some people, that may be better than a trailer that tries to tow itself.
Bowlus Predated Airstream
William Hawley Bowlus constructed the first Bowlus Road Chief trailer in 1934, before Wally Byam’s Airstream Clipper of 1936. Back then, his trailers weren’t luxurious ways to travel but solved housing issues at airfields. Bowlus is perhaps better known for his role in the early decades of aviation. Most famously, Bowlus led the construction team for Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis. He didn’t limit himself to powered flight, either.
Gliders were some of the earliest forms of flight. Famously, Leonardo da Vinci drew something that resembled a glider in 1490. In 1799, Sir George Cayley designed a glider that used flapping wings for thrust. Throughout the 1800s and into the early 1900s, aviation pioneers all tried out their own interpretations of vehicles that flew through the air. Of course, this also included the Wright Brothers.
As gliders got more advanced, interest in the sport surged. Reportedly, Germany lept ahead in glider development in 1920 after being banned from flying powered aircraft after World War I. Over in America, Bowlus had been building gliders since his teenage years, later founding the Bowlus Sailplane Company and the Bowlus Glider School. Bowlus was so obsessed with gliding that he set records with high-performance gliders of his own design and helped establish glider clubs.
This brings us back to his trailers. At first, Bowlus ground crews slept in tents at the glider launch sites. However, those tents were blown down by the wind. Bowlus’ solution was to put tents on the trailers that transported his gliders, but it’s reported his wife wasn’t fond of these accommodations. This led Bowlus to take the trailer solution to the next level: He started constructing trailers like he built gliders and the crews got to sleep with hard walls around them rather than flimsy tents.
Bowlus went on to build 80 trailers before refocusing his energy on aviation, and the Bowlus name disappeared from the RV space for decades. Winds changed in 2011 when Geneva Long had a dream for the future of RVing where electric trailers would be pulled by electric vehicles. Inspired by restoring a 1935 Bowlus Road Chief with her parents, Long decided to reinvent the Road Chief for the modern day and the new Bowlus launched in 2013.
The Rivet
While a new Bowlus looks like one of the ones of old, that’s where the similarities end. A new Bowlus boasts a TIG welded aluminum frame and skeleton featuring 2024-T3 aluminum and thousands of rivets spaced one inch apart. Long’s version of Bowlus fills its trailers with yacht-inspired interiors and high prices to match.
Right now, the Bowlus flagship is the $310,000 Volterra, which makes an Airstream look cheap, and the still expensive, but luxurious $285,000 Terra Firma. Last year, Bowlus introduced vintage-style Heritage Edition, which brought the price down to a more reasonable $159,000. That trailer is no longer marketed by Bowlus. In its place is the $165,000 Rivet, which is said to cost as low as $148,500 with maximum tax credits.
The good news is the Rivet is a huge upgrade over the Heritage Edition for not a lot more money.
The Rivet starts with Bowlus’s signature curved polished aluminum body. It measures 25’3″ long and has a base weight of 2,800 pounds. What makes this model different from the more expensive Bowlus units is a three-inch lift kit and 235/75R15 Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac Tires. A torsion axle gets the trailer down the road. Bowlus says this trailer can be taken off-road to your destination, but I’d keep it light unless you fancy damaging such an expensive trailer.
Where things start getting interesting is with the technology. This trailer comes with an 8 kWh lithium battery, a 3,000-watt inverter, and up to 660 watts of Bowlus AeroSolar power. This battery is said to recharge from 20 percent to 90 percent in 4 hours. Now, Bowlus is pretty clever with the advertising of this system, saying the energy storage will last “indefinite time off-grid.” You might be inclined to think that means the batteries will last a long time, but remember, indefinite just means there isn’t a defined time. You can drain a battery pretty fast if you don’t care about conserving energy.
Still, even that 8 kWh system is better than what you get with most campers these days.
The real highlights of this trailer, at least to me, are the EasyHitch and AeroMove features. EasyHitch is the one that comes with the least amount of explanation, but Bowlus says the feature will allow you to hook the trailer up to your tow vehicle in under 60 seconds. The hitch of this trailer isn’t anything special, so I suspect EasyHitch works using a part from the next feature.
The other new feature on the Rivet is what Bowlus calls AeroMove.
Bowlus proclaims “The Rivet is the first production RV to be self-propelled, self-powered, and remote-controlled, enabling access virtually anywhere.” The interesting part is that the self-propulsion system is nothing like what you’d find with a Pebble or Lightship. The Bowlus AeroMove simply activates a chassis-mounted motor, which turns a roller pressed against the tires to transfer power via friction. It’s almost amusingly simple.
The pair of AeroMove motors are controlled through a remote control. So, you can decouple the trailer from your tow vehicle and then use the remote control to steer the trailer where you need it to go. No more late nights trying and failing to fit into a tight space at a campground! Bowlus does say that AeroMove can drive the trailer up a steep slope and through dirt, but I wonder what would happen if mud got involved.
The interior of the trailer introduces the aforementioned yacht theme. There are riveted aluminum walls in here and wood trim on some surfaces. The Rivet isn’t as luxurious as the company’s more expensive models, but it looks plenty cozy in there. Cooking comes from an induction range, and there’s a shower and a toilet, but the latter is of the cassette variety. A silent hydronic heating system is onboard and can run on 120V or propane. If toasty floors aren’t enough, more heat comes from radiators in the trailer. Finally, the interior is capped off with a king bed in the bedroom.
In terms of holding tanks, you’re getting 19 gallons for water, 21 gallons for grey water, and 4.5 gallons for the cassette toilet.
Off-Grid, But Not For Long
Based on the specs provided by Bowlus, I see this trailer as a nice weekender, but not much longer. If you don’t run out of energy, those holding tanks are quite small, especially for multiple people.
That said, there is a lot to like here. Not everyone is good at parking trailers, so being able to drive it into a parking space like a big R/C car is good. I’ll be interested in seeing how those motors age and work in imperfect conditions. In the worst case, the motors do seem to be replaceable by the end user. I also like the system to streamline hitching.
There’s another benefit to the self-parking system. Bowlus advertises the Rivet, which has a loaded weight of 3,500 pounds, as a good trailer for EV owners. As I’ve noted in the past, most charging stalls will require you to remove a trailer from your tow vehicle before you can charge your EV. This system will at least make that easier.
Pricing starts at $165,000 for the 2025 Bowlus Rivet before tax incentives. The company expects the price to get as low as $148,000 after credits but notes that the AeroMove feature is an additional $10,000 option. So, the trailer is really $175,000 as shown in the promotional images. That’s a lot of money for a trailer, even more than an Airstream, yet, it’s still over $100,000 cheaper than the next Bowlus in the lineup. I imagine those with the kind of money to afford a Bowlus will love this trailer. Maybe, one day we’ll get to see a sub-$100,000 model.
Am I the only person who wonders why tax incentives are being given for a $165,000 weekend trailer? They should not have that.
1. A motor for parking instead of regenerate braking trailers half the size have? Stupid
2. Most parks now have drive thru parking for old farts that never drove rvs. So useless.
3. Remember when this site had airplane experts? Why are we getting submarine Tylenol pill shaped RVs, a shape for underwater and wasteful instead of using the European shape for airplanes a point leasing to a square body that allows efficient use of space far superior to a round body? It is stupid.
4. Who wasting $165,000 on an RV is worried about MPG?
5. Why does a weekend toy get a tax incentive when it doesn’t have a motor? Isn’t this the thing our journalists buddies are supposed to ask?
Cmon guys entertaining car coverage doesn’t mean you can’t do some hard hitting journalism. You might need an experienced financial expert that would also help other stories.
You’re certainly not the only person objecting to it.
As to why, it’s because their cheapest trailer costs 165 grand. It’s aimed at rich people. Rich people write the tax code. Same reason you can get a tax credit if you buy a private jet, or a Lucid.
My thoughts exactly.
Nice trailer but I really question the use case of walking around with your trailer to place it in a parking place. You rarely move it from place to place within a lot. If you need to move the trailer, it is about to be connected to a tow vehicle or it already is. You rarely move it from place to place within a lot. Most vehicles have camera systems for hookup and backup that make it pretty darn easy.
It feels like enabling people incapable of/unwilling to learn to reverse a trailer. Shouldn’t that be on the skill test to get your trailer endorsement?
oh, wait…
I missed this comment, but it’s all about getting the trailer into a parking space. I used to think a self-parking trailer was totally useless until I watched people destroy their campers with poor towing techniques. A backup camera is not enough because you have to clear trees and other stuff and it might be in the night. One of those people is my dad.
See, he used to be an OTR trucker so he knows better. But that was 20 years ago and he can’t see or move like he used to. Instead of getting out of the SUV and checking clearances like I do, he just guesses and gets it wrong. Last time he got it wrong he took out the awning on the camper.
Even I had a fun time getting into a parking space just once last year. It was super narrow, was at nighttime without any lighting at all, had trees on both sides, and in typical campground fashion, there was a whole crowd watching me. My parents were nice enough to install a camera, but it didn’t see anything at night. It took me an hour, but I got it in there. Had the trailer been able to drive itself you bet I would have used that feature
Thanks for the perspective.
The nice thing about these is they are very light for the size. I’ve been in a vintage one and it’s a pretty narrow space though. If I were in the market for one of these (I’m not), I’d look for a vintage one that is going to keep increasing in value, or look at a used one. This 2018 is asking $135k OBO and looks just as nice. Might as well have someone else take that huge depreciation hit and work out the kinks for you. https://www.rvtrader.com/listing/2018-Bowlus-ENDLESS+HIGHWAYS+EDITION-5030224597
This should be a lifetime trailer with proper care, so if you look at it in that context, it’s better than buying several disposable campers. Our regular camper is a 17 year old Airstream and it’s required very little in our 3 years of ownership (far less than most new campers) and we’ve towed it around 6000 miles. It’s at the point of a fairly flat depreciation curve, so it hasn’t lost much value, even though we bought at the height of Covid pricing from a private party.
Why are there tax credits for recreational toys targeted at the wealthy?
Because the wealthy write our laws.
detached house money for a (admittedly nice) trailer is still absolutely bonkers.
“…a chassis-mounted motor, which turns a wheel that uses friction to turn the tires. It’s almost amusingly simple.”
THERE’S NOTHING AMUSING ABOUT… Well, okay, maybe a little amusing.
https://live.staticflickr.com/1272/5187435727_83bf4fa4dc_c.jpg
I was hoping you’d drop that in here!
We appear to be progressing toward just mounting a bass boat seat on the tongue and driving campers around without a tow vehicle; and I am here for it!