Pebble Flow Is About to Change the Way We Camp

Originally published for Marin Living Magazine.

There’s something about being locked inside the house that will have you dreaming of fresh air and blue skies. We all experienced the longing for nature while quarantined in 2020, and so the boom in outdoor product retail that came in its wake is no surprise. This industry grew 6.7 percent annually between 2018 and 2023 (according to figures from IBISWorld), far outpacing the overall economy.

“It has become a lifestyle — anything outdoor or adventure has just exploded,” says head of Design at Pebble Page Beermann. Pebble founder Bingrui Yang also felt the pull to explore the outdoors, which culminated in an RV road trip he and his family took in 2021. While he loved the freedom, the product experience proved challenging. He dreamed of a better way to hit the open road.

Pebble’s first product, the Pebble Flow, is a sleek, inventive and completely electric travel trailer made in Fremont that takes all of the hassle out of the traditional RV experience. Seriously — all of the hassle. The trailer operates through a remote control app, powered by an Nvidia chip. The most difficult part of towing a trailer — docking to the towing vehicle — is done automatically through the app. Users can move and park the Pebble Flow perfectly into place with just a few finger taps on their devices — ideal for parking in those compact camping spots. Setting up camp takes seconds, not hours, with the app’s InstaCamp feature.

“RVing is difficult. It’s a steep learning curve,” says Beermann. “We want to give users the best possible experience in this space. We want to modernize RVing.” The modern approach comes with cutting-edge power, like the 45-kWh battery pack, letting you go off the grid for a week without a water or power connection and providing a great emergency power supply while you’re at home — and a roof of integrated solar panels self-charges on the go, topping off the power supply.

The Pebble Flow is built more like a vehicle than an RV — with an aluminum space frame and molded interior and exterior panels — and that’s very intentional. Traditionally, Beermann says, “there are rampant quality problems with RVs. We really want to make sure that this is in a different league.”

High-quality innovation is ingrained in the culture at Pebble. Beermann emphasizes the company’s “unmet needs analysis perspective. This loop of design, test, iterate is constantly going on, and it’s very fast. Tests like, what would happen if we poured water down this one air vent? As the first of our kind, we want to anticipate any problem before it arrives. In short, be the opposite of a traditional RV experience.”

The biggest durability test the Pebble Flow has faced was at the LA Auto Show in 2023, when thousands of people toured the travel trailer. “The response was wild. I was not expecting a line at the vehicle all day every day for seven days,” says Beermann. “It seems like we’re hitting a nerve. It’s a simple idea that manages to be an innovative idea.” Be on the lookout for the travel trailers of the future winding down highways soon: the Pebble Flow is currently racking up preorders and preparing to be on roads this spring.