For many Americans, going camping with an RV is more gratifying and fun than going to any hotel. Your home on a trip is wherever you plant it. However, going RVing usually requires you to know some basics regarding setting up and taking care of a camper. Startup company Pebble wants to change that with its new camper. The Pebble Flow is an all-electric travel trailer with its own propulsion system, the ability to park and hitch itself, and the ability to set itself up. Let’s take a look.
If this trailer sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because you’ve read my coverage on the Airstream eStream, the Dethleffs E.Home, and the Lightship L1. All three of those trailers are based on the same overall concept.
Those other travel trailers are all-electric and feature their own electric drive systems that assist the tow vehicle in pulling the camper down the road. All of those other trailers also seek to make camping as easy as yanking out your smartphone. Keep these in mind as we talk about what Pebble is bringing to the table.
Pebble
Pebble was founded in California in 2022 by Bingrui Yang. His mission is to revolutionize how people go camping. From Yang:
“Pebble was developed to create a hassle-free way to live, work and explore. Consumers have been stuck with the same RV experience for decades. A lot of people want to get into such a lifestyle of freedom but are turned off by the pain points in today’s products. At Pebble, we are automating the hardest parts of the RV experience with the same technologies that power the most advanced automotive innovations, making the whole experience simply effortless and magical. If you know how to use an iPhone, you’ll be comfortable using our product.”
For much of the company’s short life thus far, it was operating in the background in what some entrepreneurs call “stealth mode.” Like many of these electric camper startups, Yang and his team have entered the RV field from the tech/EV world. Yang’s experience includes a nine-year tenure at Apple as a leader in iPhone development. Later, he worked at GM’s Cruise and Amazon-based Zoox autonomous vehicle startups.
The company’s Chief Technology Officer is Stefan Solyom, who brings a combined 20 years of automotive and tech experience. Solyom’s background includes a seven-year stint at Apple plus being one of the founding members of the team behind Tesla’s Autopilot system. His other work includes a 10-year tenure at Volvo working on safety and autonomous systems. The rest of Pebble’s team consists of people from tech companies as well as engineers from Cruise, Lucid, and other companies in the automotive sector.
Pebble decided to stop operating in stealth mode in June of this year when it received $13.6 million in seed and Series A funding from venture capital firms Lightspeed, Vision Plus, and UpHonest Capital. Now the company appears to be changing gears and is ready to show off what it’s developing.
The Pebble Flow
The company’s launch vehicle is the Pebble Flow, a 25-foot-long all-electric travel trailer.
As I said before, this trailer’s stated goal is to reinvent the travel trailer [Ed note: Reinventing the XYZ is fairly standard PR talk. -DT]. If you’ve ever owned a trailer before, you know that there’s a whole process to hitch up. Then you have to tow the thing, guzzling down fuel or electrons as you haul a brick to your final destination. You also know that when you arrive at your campsite, you have to park your rig, decouple, set down your stabilizer jacks, open the awning, expand the slides, and potentially a bunch of other setup before you can finally start enjoying yourself.
Some people, like myself, enjoy the work that goes into pulling and setting up a trailer. My father was an over-the-road trucker for over a decade and taught me everything he knows about hauling, so I love it all. Not everyone is like me. A lot of folks just want to get where they’re going and immediately start having fun. The Pebble Flow is supposed to be for those people.
Starting with the exterior, the trailer features a slick design said to be “300% more aerodynamic than a conventional travel trailer.” Remember, the typical travel trailer is basically a box, so it doesn’t take much to do better. The body is made out of composite and it features an aluminum chassis and aluminum structure under the composites. At least from what I could see with my own eyes, there is no wood framing or rubberized roofs in this structure to worry about. So, Pebble is already going in the right direction.
Inside, Pebble says the Flow trailer is equipped with a versatile living space. Starting with the kitchen, you get a removable induction cooktop, a 4-in-1 convection microwave, and a full-size refrigerator. The kitchen window flips open so you can get an outdoors-ish cooking experience if you want to.
This trailer is built around the idea of both work and play. Thus, there are two beds in the trailer, allowing for up to four people to sleep inside. When those people aren’t sleeping, the beds transform into other spaces. The onboard Murphy queen bed retracts away and turns into a desk so someone can work on the go. Pebble doesn’t say what the convertible full bed turns into, but the press photos suggest it turns into a couch or dinette.
Opposite of the kitchen is a bathroom with glass walls. The bathroom features what appears to be a spacious shower, plus a flushing toilet and a vanity. Don’t worry, it’s electrochromic glass so you can get some privacy.
Adding functionality to the living space is plug-and-play Starlink connectivity, a 37-gallon tank for fresh water, and a 50-gallon tank for your waste. You also get a 240-volt AC outlet to juice up high-power gear at the campsite.
Under The Floor
The interior is nice, but what Pebble really wants you to pay attention to is what’s going on underneath.
Pebble’s headlining feature is what it calls the “World’s first Dual-motor Active Propulsion Assist System.” We’ll round back to that claim in a minute. This system consists of a 45 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery and two electric motors. Much like the trailers I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, the pair of electric motors give the trailer self-propulsion abilities. When your tow vehicle pulls this trailer, the motors assist with towing so that your tow vehicle loses as little range as possible.
It’s compatible with both EV and ICE tow vehicles, and the goal here is that if you were to tow this with a Ford F-150 Lightning, you should be able to go farther on a charge. Range tests have repeatedly shown that heavy trailers cut EV truck range down to 100 miles, not ideal for road trips and camping.
At the same time, heavy trailers also result in single-digit fuel economy for many trucks. So, having a trailer that can pull most of its own weight benefits even internal combustion-powered tow-rigs. Like the aforementioned trailers, the Pebble Flow isn’t designed to haul all of its own weight, so your tow vehicle will still be pulling something, just not as much as it normally would. The Pebble Flow also has active aero to make the trailer more slippery as you go down the highway. Sadly, we don’t get to see what that looks like.
Pebble says the 45 kWh LFP battery can be charged just about anywhere from the mains at home to shore power at a campground and AC/DC charging at public charging stations. The company says its choice to go with LFP has to do with the fact that it’s safe. Pebble also says that a full battery can last seven days off-grid. Aiding in keeping you off shore power is at least 1 kW of solar power. The trailer can also fill up as you tow it through regenerative charging.
Thankfully, Pebble was also thinking ahead. Travel trailers often sit for a while between outings taking up space and doing nothing. Well, the Pebble Flow’s battery can also function as an emergency backup power source, like a really big Tesla Powerwall.
To make camping as easy as using a smartphone, the Pebble Flow uses its drive system to make parking and hitching easier. Pull out the Pebble app then activate Magic Hitch, and the trailer will use an autonomous function to roll up to your tow vehicle and hitch itself. I wonder what happens if you use Magic Hitch and the Ford F-Series’ self-hitching system at the same time. Will that start the robot uprising?
When the trailer is off of your vehicle, you can use a remote control function for the perfect parking job. When you’re in your space, hit the InstaCamp function, which automatically deploys the stairs, awning, stabilizer jacks, and parking brakes. Of course, it also works in the opposite direction as you’re leaving camp.
Good Ideas, Confusing Marketing
Now, we arrive back at Pebble’s claim of having the “World’s first Dual-motor Active Propulsion Assist System.” Originally, communications from Pebble to me said the trailer had a “first-of-its-kind system that self-propells the trailer to make towing safer, easier & more efficient.”
These don’t seem correct. The Dethleffs E.Home had a working dual-motor self-propulsion system nearly three years ago. Airstream’s eStream had the same dual-motor tech back in early 2022. Sure, neither of those trailers are on the market yet, but the Pebble Flow isn’t, either. The Pebble Flow isn’t expected to begin shipping until the end of 2024. I’ve reached out to Pebble for clarification on these claims and will update when I hear back.
With that said, Pebble is introducing some features the other trailers do not have. Pebble’s Magic Hitch is a new idea, as is the one-touch setup operation. I also like how the trailer can charge itself on the road. However, that still doesn’t solve the problem with the fact that EV charging stalls just aren’t built for a tow vehicle and a trailer to charge at the same time. You’ll still have to unhook and park both the truck and the trailer into charging spots.
How does this stack up to the other self-propelled travel trailers? The full-spec Pebble Flow is cheaper than the $151,500 Lightship L1 Long Range, a trailer that is two feet longer and maxes out at a thousand pounds heavier. However, the Lightship, along with both the Airstream and the Dethleffs, will have nearly twice the battery capacity at 80 kWh.
Pebble says pre-orders of the Flow travel trailer begin today. The company hasn’t given us a dry weight, but says you’ll need a vehicle that can tow at least 6,200 pounds (the trailer’s GVWR). The base model trailer costs $109,000. For that, you get the trailer and a single-motor self-propulsion system, but none of the automation equipment. If you pay $125,000, you get dual motors plus the aforementioned Magic Hitch self-hitching program, remote control, and other autonomous features.
If you’re going to the Los Angeles Auto Show next month, Pebble says its trailer and its team will be there for the public to take a peek at the prototype in real life.
Update: Pebble has answered my questions as follows:
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What makes this trailer the world’s first dual-motor active propulsion assist system? Previously, we’ve covered the Airstream eStream and Dethleffs eHome, both have been in development for at least a couple of years.
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Pebble Flow’s dual-motor active propulsion assist system will be the first of such a system to make production.
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Pebble Flow is not a concept demonstration. It’s slated to be the first production vehicle to have a dual-motor active propulsion assist system when it reaches production. Our vertical integration of robotics software and drivetrain hardware further enhances the capability of the Pebble Flow to make towing easier, safer and more efficient (Easy Tow).
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Is the powertrain the same between the $109,000 version and the $125,000 version?
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The Pebble Flow with the Magic Pack ($125,000) adds the dual-motor drivetrain, which enables Remote Control, Magic Hitch and Easy Tow. The standard Pebble Flow ($109,000) does not include motors, but all other features, like the InstaCamp, the Pebble App, 45kWh LFP battery, etc will still be included in both versions.
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What is the trailer’s unloaded weight?
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Unloaded weight is not being disclosed. Pebble is engineering the production design of the Pebble Flow to have sufficient cargo capacity while maintaining a light fully loaded gross vehicle weight of 6200lb.
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How much horsepower and torque do the motors make?
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We are not disclosing detailed specs of our propulsion system at the moment.
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Update: An earlier version of this story said that the Lightship L1 had a starting price of $125,000. This is true, but Lightship has since updated its specifications since we published our Lightship L1 piece. The $125,000 Lightship L1 Essential has a 40 kWh pack and no drive motor. To get the drive motor and the 80 kWh pack you need to pay $151,500, which is disappointing.
I should note that the Airstream eStream is also not just a concept demonstration. Thor Industries’ CEO has informed me that there will be a production version in the near future. However, Thor is not yet ready to put a date on it. So, Pebble is the first dual-motor self-propelled travel trailer to have a production date and could indeed become the first production camper with such a setup. The true title of “world’s first” will bestowed on the first to actually put one of these to market.
I like a lot of what I’m seeing here. The design looks pretty cool and the self-hitching program sounds like it’ll help a lot of people. Watch our video above, that self-hitching system looks wild! Pebble has some good ideas, and one day, I hope to hitch one of these to the back of a truck and experience what a self-towing trailer feels like.
(Images: Pebble)
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Sorry, I realize that this will be considered cool and all that by many folks.
But not me.
Making shit tech heavy and more complicated than it needs to be just feels counter productive, especially when it comes to stuff like this.
I do find the shape interesting though, but with this weight and size, a single axle just seems half assed.
And the whole self powered aspect just feels like tech boy overkill, sort of solving a problem that didn’t exist, but with the potential to create a shit load of other problems along the way. Seriously, who needs a motorized camper?
When you consider the build quality of the average camper/RV as well as the stellar reputations of the dealers and warranty repair techs it’s a big no for me.
Am all for innovation, and progress, but not interested in plunking down 125K or more to be a real life beta tester.
Thanks Mercedes.
It’s as complicated as an Iphone? Nope, hard pass for me.
for that price you think they would throw in a pebble watch
For that price you think they would throw in a steering axle and driver’s seat.
Is it only me but I see self powered caravans, sandy campsites, and wheels which sink into the sand while someone wearing a baseball cap the wrong way round stands jabbing a finger at an i-phone, while the wheels spin and get lower and lower.
More entertaining than campsite ping pong.
I had to go way too deep into Pebble’s website to get a floor plan. Once I found it, it explained itself. What a terrible interior setup, even for two people it’s a smush.
Also, where does the dual wheels on the front jack go after hookup? Do you have to pull them, or do they hinge up between the front frame members?
I pull a standard travel trailer, this thing gives me a lot of practical “what about” questions.
Doesn’t matter, though. The cost is a complete non-starter for me, so I’m straight out of market anyways.
One more simple thing that popped in my head: with the auto set up, usually you’ll put a pad under the stabilizers so you don’t sink them into the ground. How’s that gonna work out with the self set up? get things part way deployed and then hit pause so you can lay pads and such?
It sounds great, put there’s going to be a lot more practical work than Pebble is talking about.
Simple. You only ‘camp’ on level, clean, concrete pads.
Nope, I’m out.
All these uber techbro minimalist trailers are really offputting anymore…
Kind of the last aesthetic I want in a place I want to be the coziest, y’know? Also, that glass bathroom is absolutely hilarious. Wondering if they’ve had any shatter under flex loads during testing.
Tech bros have no aesthetic or style of their own, so they gravitate to pseudo-minimalism by default.
It’s always fun trying to guess the price, before clicking on one of your camping gear articles 🙂
This time I was much too low at $75K.
Also, I have great idea: Why not just have a steering wheel and pedals in the front and make it a four wheeler? Then you could leave your heavy electric SUV with no space in it at home. Strange nobody else have thought of that..
I have basically no RVing experience by which to enter this conversation. However, the original Dethleffs concept showed it being towed by an i3. I suggest you see if David’s little-car-that-could is able to pull this! Honestly, they have pretty similar styling too
But for real, I am curious. That intrigues me should I ever desire a camper trailer. I for one never want to have a large truck or anything so a trailer that can be pulled by a small car really could have a market.
…but..why?
Reinvention! Disruption! Innovation! (insert your Silicon Valley start-up buzzwords of choice here)
Nothing about disrupt the bathroom sounds the least bit pleasant. Well, except that it would be a killer basis for an Onion article.
Seriously. The last thing I want when I’m cooking eggs on the stove is to look to the side and see my SO dropping the kids off into the pool. And even if you can darken the glass, I really don’t want to see the toilet and shower when I’m just trying to make lunch or reading a book or whatever.
“I wonder what happens if you use Magic Hitch and the Ford F-Series’ self-hitching system at the same time.” The Autopian should be the first to try this. It might work, but part of me thinks that computerized hilarity will ensue.
[Ed note: Reinventing the XYZ is fairly standard PR talk. -DT]. I’m shocked that their PR department didn’t throw in a lot of “disrupt the industry” techbro talk.
My first thought too. I’m betting there are multiple PowerPoint (oops, these ex-Apple guys, so Keynote) presentations with “disruptive” in bold Helvetica Neue.
“The base model trailer costs $109,000. “
You know, you can do a lot of cottage/cabin renting $109,000.
I could see someone getting something like this if they do A LOT of camping… and they don’t like taking vacations in the city.
I like the idea of this camper, but I don’t see myself ever getting one even if I had the money.
You know what’s great about camping?
Getting the hell away from technology for a bit.
Somehow these people think there are lots of consumers able and willing to pay $125k for a travel trailer. That’s not correct.
California always seems to generate these weird products that can only work in California. The first time I ran into this as an immigrant was a tent made by a CA company, that let in the NC rain on its first trip and every trip after that until I threw it away in disgust. Camping tents designs from CA tend to the leaky, as they don’t get enough rain testing.
While I can not speak to the waterproofness of your tent or the testing that went into that specific product… there are areas of northern CA that get almost 100 inches of rain a year, and San Francisco isn’t exactly known as a “sunny” city. So I think you just bought a cheap product that happened to be designed by a company in CA.
North Face, it wasn’t cheap..
have noticed the same kind of design and finish problems in other CA tent designs, it’s not just them. I currently own five backpacking tents, two canoe camping tents, and two car camping tents. Tent design and finish is something I have spent too much time thinking about..
good designs come from England, Norway, and the smaller independent designers in the USA.
“…seek to make camping as easy as yanking out your smartphone.”
I don’t have one of these trailers and I don’t have a cell phone, therefore both tasks are indeed equally easy. Problem solved!
So it really is the iPhone of trailers.
“The iPhojne of…” <insert vomit emoji>
It’s AirBnB for the Uber of iPhones!
You are all making jokes, but if you want you can invest in my new Web 3.0 startup that is the Uber for Italian ice!
The interior looks far more open than it would with a real bathroom wall, but come on. Do we really need that? Walls aren’t broken. Stop trying to solve problems that aren’t there by overcomplicating things.
I had low expectations when I saw that these were tech bros trying to disrupt the RV industry, but some of the design here isn’t terrible. However, all-electric is useless for dry camping and I have to wonder how much that 45 kWh battery is actually extending the range of the tow vehicle. It feels like that is more intended to power the magic hitch and nothing else. And what happens if you drain that battery on your way to camp? Do you lose the magic hitch, which seems to be the real killer feature here?
Like all of the other semi-self-propelled trailers mentioned here I will remain skeptical that this is a good idea in practice.
Also, thinking about it some more, if this kind of hands off approach to camping is really what you’re looking for, may I suggest a hotel room? Shit happens in the outdoors. Just this season I got caught in a hail storm that damaged my awning and had a switch on my water heater go bad, which in my case was fine because I had propane as a backup, but if you’re in an all-electric you’re up a creek if that happens. Ditto the refrigerator.
I feel like the people they’re trying to serve here are probably better off in someone’s AirBnB cabin, which probably has many of the amenities of a campsite but requires even less effort than one of these.
Yep this is a solution for a beginner’s problem at an advanced price-point anti-pattern I’ve seen a lot. In this instance it’s:
Techbro:
Kickstarter is littered with them. I’ve literally lost count of number of times I’ve seen the bicycle pedal equivalent:
Techbro:
Ehhh, Marketing speak aside…..
I like that you could use the batteries to power your home in an outage assuming you are not in one of the may HOAs that don’t allow storing the RV at home. So, now this is in a storage lot with no power hookup. Not ideal.
None of these all electric RVs seem to be for true off-grid camping….you run it low on battery getting there and then can’t charge to bring home…..or run the battery low using items in the RV while there. Solar doesn’t help if you are in a campsite with trees/shade…..1000 watts of solar would take a long time to charge that battery especially with camping usage….Not ideal.
If you want to tow with your electric vehicle, you now have to find 2 working chargers and unhook to top off on a long trip….Not ideal.
I have towed many a trailer. I will withhold judgement, but the trailer applying power will have to be done just right lest sway and general towing instability be introduced.
When I read about these electric RVs, I can’t help but think the push to electrify all the things is a bit premature. I still say batteries should be used for the 90% of use cases to help with pollution. Everything doesn’t need to run off battery. And the price tag….wow!
“I like that you could use the batteries to power your home in an outage assuming you are not in one of the may HOAs that don’t allow storing the RV at home. ”
Not just HOAs, I recently moved out of a city that had that rule, for the entire city. They also banned parking unregistered or inoperable vehicles outdoors, even on private driveways
But, hey, at least the downtown was a depressing, blighted hell hole and the violent crime rate was over double the national average, got to have priorities
It’s easier to persecute the homeless than prevent them from being or helping them out of being homeless in the first place.
How is something that heavy running with a single axle?
There are heavier-duty trailer axles available. Sadly, Pebble doesn’t mention anything about axles or how much power those motors make.
That’ll take something like a ST235/85R16 load range F tire with a load rating 3900lb @ 110psi. Typically used on a 5th wheel camper. But I’d be nervous about the potential for trouble if one tire goes down.
Thanks for bringing this up, that single axle set up was bugging the heck out of me at the GVWR. I can see why they’d want a single from a design standpoint, less road contact, aesthetics, etc. but putting a lot of faith in a high stress application leads to bad consequences.
Personally, I kind of tend to tune out whenever a company starts comparing a product that isn’t a cellular telephone to a cellular telephone
Yeah, the iPhone comparison isn’t great. You don’t have to hitch an iPhone up to anything…and a lot of people aren’t exactly fond with how an iPhone operates.
But, “the iPhone of x” is buzzwordy, just like “the Tesla of x.”
Oh yeah it is, I forget which brand, but I saw a car commercial recently that blatantly said it was like your phone, nice to know up front that it isn’t for me, I guess. Now I just have to figure out why Hertz thinks I need to rent a Model 3 so badly
I have tried using an I-Phone. It did not go well.
As easy to use as an I-Phone? Does that mean every time you do an update it resets all your personal preferences?
I was just hoping it has a great back up utility that does it for you with only one button
Does Tesla “summon” work these days? This sounds like a similar challenge.