One of the great joy of camping is the silence. There’s nothing worse than going out into nature, away from society, and then hearing someone at a campsite start a loud, smelly gas generator.
Pebble, a California company building a new caravan, hopes an electric camper van will be just what you need to bring some calm to the glamping life.
THE Pebble casting is a caravan with a big old battery in its floor. It can run the lights, the shower, the heat and air conditioning, and anything else you want to use electricity in the woods. The battery also powers a tow assist feature, so the Flow can give itself an extra boost when you tow it down the road, easing the burden on the vehicle you use to transport the camper.
Pebble first announced the Flow in 2023, but it hasn’t revealed until today the full range of features it plans to pack into the camper. In an announcement timed for CES week, Pebble says it will assemble and deliver its first campers in the first half of 2025. They are available for pre-order now, starting at $109,000, but going up to $135,500 $ if you want to be able to control its functionalities with a complementary mobile application.
In the flow
The Flow has the same aesthetic as many current electric models, with large windows and soft, curved features that aim to make it more aerodynamic. It looks like a futuristic luxury spaceship or a very large fancy toaster, depending on how romantic you want to make it. CEO Bingrui Yang is very romantic about it: He chose the name Pebble for the company because smooth natural stones tend to bring joy to people, and he wants the electrified camper to foster that same feeling of serenity.
I had the chance to walk around the tight space of a Pebble Flow demo unit at Pebble headquarters in Fremont, California. It has just about everything you would want if you are going motorhome. Inside is a kitchen with an induction stove, convection oven, sink, microwave and refrigerator. The cabinets have plenty of storage space and hatches hidden in the floor provide more storage. Most windows open if you need to let in a breeze. In the back rests a queen-size Murphy bed that retracts into the wall to free up space. A dining table can be broken down into a second bed at the other end of the trailer. A bathroom and shower sit right in the middle of the floor plan. A wall of glass separates it from the rest of the interior, but the person in the bathroom can press a button to electronically frost the glass if they need a private poop.
To the experienced RV enthusiast, all of this probably seems like standard fare for a trailer that costs over a hundred thousand dollars. Well, you’re right, but what Pebble is hoping is that its EV-like add-ons make the Flow special.
The Flow is powered by a 45 kWh lithium-ion battery integrated into the floor of the camper. That’s slightly smaller than the batteries built into compact electric vehicles currently on the market, and about half the size of the auto industry’s largest electric vehicle batteries. Pebble claims the battery can power indoor systems for up to seven days on a full charge. A set of 1 kW roof-mounted solar panels can recharge the battery while you’re on the road, and regenerative charging comes into play while towing. It also has vehicle charging technology, so you can connect to the Flow to use it as a backup power source or EV charger.
The Pebble Flow isn’t actually an E-RV in the sense that it can function as a vehicle on its own. You will need another vehicle to tow it anywhere. Pebble says that while towing with a hybrid or gas-powered vehicle will likely get you further, you can tow it with another electric vehicle. The 25-foot trailer weighs 6,200 pounds with all options, so it will take some muscle to move it. Pebble’s website shows the Flow towed by a Cybertruck. (While at the company’s headquarters, I noticed a matte black Cybertruck in the parking lot. It belongs to Pebble’s CTO, who talked about it a lot while I was there.)
The electric tow assist feature can be activated when the Flow is moving. Although the motors provide decent thrust behind a real vehicle, they are just powerful enough to get the Flow rolling a bit using a smartphone app, although it only moves about 1 mile per hour. It’s enough to spin it in a very slow circle, but not enough to take you down the block. What it allows you to do is maneuver the trailer into position at the campsite without having to push and drag it with your car. Simply detach the Flow, grab your iPad, and steer it like a giant, slow-moving RC car to the perfect spot. Enabling tow assist mode or driving it into the campsite will definitely reduce the trailer’s battery life for actual camping activities, as you can imagine.
Pebble has a feature it calls Magic Hitch (it’s not really magic) that allows you to use the app to connect the Flow to your towing vehicle’s trailer hitch. Simply guide it with the on-screen controls, and when the Flow is close enough, hold down a button and the hitch will use its attached camera to find the exact spot to latch on to. Another feature, called InstaCamp, lets you park the camper on an uneven surface, then press a button and the camper automatically levels itself.
