RV Camping in the Pebble Flow | Easy to Tow Travel Trailer

This all-electric travel trailer behind me is the Pebble Flow Founders Edition. Normally I would give you a full walkthrough of this trailer, however there are so many unique and different features about it that the only way to really see and experience those is to take it out camping for a few days and that's exactly what we're going to do. Just picked up our Pebble Flow trailer and we've got a Rivian that we're towing it with so this is a new experience both from a tow vehicle standpoint and the trailer standpoint. After getting a detailed walkthrough of the Pebble Flow with the Pebble RV team, it was time to hit the road in this all-electric RV. Our first stop, the grocery store. That short drive gave us the perfect chance to get comfortable towing an EV trailer behind the Rivian and experience what it's actually like maneuvering and parking an electric travel trailer in a regular everyday parking lot. We kept a shopping trip quick just in case the lot filled up and we had to navigate our way out while towing the EV trailer. Thankfully that wasn't an issue. Kate jumped in and started loading groceries into the 6.5 cubic foot fridge and she even checked the freezer size before we grabbed a few pints of our favorite protein ice cream. It didn't take long to get everything put away and with plenty of food and snacks for the next couple of days, we were ready to head out to our first campsite with the Pebble Flow. One of the many unique things about the Pebble Flow that we have not experienced in another camper is that the entire camper is primarily controlled through this iPad and before we can get started I have to take the parking brake of the trailer off. To do that I have to press that button and confirm that yes we're ready to go. My brake is on and then there's a pre-tow checklist. Once I confirm that, confirm, the parking brake of the trailer is now off and I can drive off. This has a 45 kilowatt battery system in the trailer along with two electric motors so while we're driving we can actually turn on the electric motors and they are going to assist in us going down the road. We could go the other way which is we could use those electric motors to regenerate the energy in the battery and charge up the battery as we're going down the road so it'll go either way. Right now we're in neutral mode so we're not pulling from the battery we're not putting back in and we're actually going to try now to try the assist feature and see what that feels like and the trailer itself they were saying dry weight is around 5,800 pounds and it has a GVWR of 6,800 pounds. We had easy tow on for 10 minutes just to get an idea of it. I didn't feel any difference while we were driving. I did notice that the average miles per kilowatt hour went up slightly and we're going to arrive at camp with 68 percent battery rather than the 67 that it estimated before. I'm sure if we kept driving with it it's just going to get better on our end but we did lose two percent battery on the camper itself. We're going to be boondocking all day today so we figured no sense in using the battery in the camper up tonight because we want it for camping but if you're on a long drive and you're going to be charging up anyway you might as well be using that to help you reduce the amount of battery or gas that your tow vehicle is using. While the iPad can control a lot of this electric RV's features, some of the basics still have to be done by hand like disconnecting the seven pin connector, the safety chains, and the emergency breakaway cable. But once that's done the tech takes over. I extended the jack right from the iPad instead of cranking it manually and once the coupler was free from the ball hitch I used the remote control feature to position the Pebble Flow exactly where I wanted it. There are four cameras around the exterior of the electric RV though they aren't activated yet. It's easy to imagine features like sentry mode or proximity alerts being added through future software updates for extra visibility and peace of mind when parking or setting up camp. From there it's as simple as tapping instacamp on the iPad and letting the Pebble Flow take over. The system automatically levels the electric RV adjusting the front jack, deploying the rear stabilizers, and dropping the other stabilizers into place. Once the steps slide out that's our cue that setup is complete. Before heading inside we did lower the aero box so wouldn't block the front window view when we were sitting at the dinette. We're all set up at our Harvest Host. I got to use all the fun features on the app to kind of get this into position and move it so we had the sun coming down with all the windows here. It's going to be a gorgeous evening with all of the olive grove trees around us. Now we're going to go inside because this is also a spa and I'm going to book myself a spa treatment. Since the Pebble team surprised us with a brand new coffee machine I booked a massage later in the day to give us time to relax, enjoy a cup, and get more familiar with the space. This Nespresso setup is definitely a step up from the one in our own camper. It might be time for an upgrade. While the coffee was brewing we switched the windows from opaque to clear so we could enjoy the view around us. You know the first time I drove an electric vehicle I really had to relearn how to drive a car. Not so much keeping it between the lines but all the different tech and ways of doing things in an EV compared to a gas or diesel powered vehicle and I'm having to do the same thing with this camper because it is completely different than any other RV we've been in. Just the way everything works and all of that and trying to go through all the options on this iPad to figure out what it is I have to do or need to do or can do. So here's the energy screen. Here's what our solar panels are bringing in. Here's what our appliances are taking out. So we're about even right now. We're not charging and we're not using the motors and the battery is at 76% currently. The cell service isn't all that great so I'm going to go set up Starlink. Now Pebble gave us a Starlink to use for this trip. It does not come with one but there are outlets in this travel trailer outside that we can plug into and run the Starlink. Now the thing with the outdoor bays is I have to use the iPad in order to open up those bays. I just can't walk out there press the button and have them open. That massage was fantastic. Feeling nice and relaxed. I think there was a frozen pizza in the freezer that someone left so we're going to cook that up and just relax for the evening and maybe drive into downtown Livermore to see what that area is like. You know it may sound silly but I do like the fact that you can drop off this trailer and then just move it whichever way you want. It's nice because you don't always have to park going you know this way in a row for example. You can turn it a bit. Maybe turn it towards what you like. If you want to see the sunrise turn it that way in the morning and then turn it back in the evening to see the sunset. Oh it is? Take a look. Based on our observation of the pizza we're going to play it safe and not eat the pizza. Luckily we have a backup so what I'm going to do is make a turkey salad. Shower time. Decent size sink in here. Got a medicine cabinet. A few shelves. Hooks. Buttons for the toilet and the restroom light. The vent button. This is the window. Toilet. There's the fan. Shower curtain. Shower wand. And this will turn it on. And this hot water is on demand. Very good shower. Good water pressure but let's see how much water I used. Let's see. The fresh water percentage did not change. The gray water went up from 11 to 16. Which means I left plenty of water for Jo to take a long shower. And we are going to a full hookup campsite tomorrow so we can dump and fill up. After Kate's shower she's now ready for bed but before I convert this area to the bedroom I wanted to discuss what it currently is. So this is just it's a big open space. You have this desk here which is nice but the only piece of furniture you have back here is this single chair. And then there is storage down here however you can't access it when the bed is down. To stow the chair you put it on the floor and their suggestion was to kind of wedge it under the bed. Now to put the bed down that's fairly simple. There's a lock here. A little handle. And I learned this the hard way. If you leave your feet out this will come down and so you keep feet clear. When the bed comes down what's great is you can leave the bed made and now you have all this space back here. But with this piece of wood here you can't stow anything under the bed that you want or need access to. It'd be nice if there's the foot on the end and you could slide things under the bed at night or other things. You have a RV sized queen bed back here and a nice open area. Plenty of headroom if you want to sit up in bed and read or do other things. They do give you a projector instead of putting a TV in here and they said you could set up the projector and project it onto this wall. There's an outlet over here and there's an outlet behind this pillow. So if you need to charge your device at night, run a CPAP machine or something like that you can do so. Plenty of outlets around here so that is nice. Okay so here's where we sit in the morning. Just after seven we have 20% battery left because we are running the heat all night and the heat is currently off because we are at 20%. We've got this little warning that below 20% some features are unavailable. EasyTow, the 110 outlets, heating, cooling, tank heaters, privacy windows, and lights. So we can turn off energy saving mode for temporary outlet power. It said we could turn off the outlets or turn them back on I should say temporarily. Energy saving. Okay power's back on. Unfortunately we can't make the windows clear in power saving mode. I'm gonna see. One decaf latte in the making. I'll be curious to see where our power is once we're done with morning coffee and beverages. I'm just happy we can turn the outlets on for 30 minutes. Yes because we all know if Joe couldn't make coffee this morning we were probably in the Rivian driving to town right now. It's quite the latte. You like my latte art? I do. What is it? Four little pebbles. In the pebble flow. How is the little seating area back there for you? Good. I like sitting this way. I can use this as a little desk and if the windows are clear I can look at the olive grove. The energy saving feature is back on and after coffee and charging devices we're at 18%. We've experienced boondocking in the pebble flow. Now it's time to head to a campground and experience full hookups. Okay so we're going to kind of reverse what we did last night. So Instacamp. I'm going to hit that. Now the jacks and everything are going to retract. Front jack actually raised itself so we can get it hooked up to the Rivian but now I get to be a big kid and remote control this thing over to the Rivian. I don't have to Now that we're within about five feet I hold the dead man switch and Magic Hitch gets illuminated. I hit that and now it's going to hitch itself up. So we're getting an error message with the Magic Hitch. It's telling us that the terrain is too uneven in order for it to connect and I gave the guys at Pebble a call. They said if you're over a six percent grade you will see that error message but as you can see here it's pretty flat. So the only thing I'm wondering is maybe something with the terrain here and all the wood chips in that is preventing it or not letting it get to that pitch. So what we're going to do is there is a even flatter grass patch over there. I'm going to drive the Rivian over there and then I'm going to remote control the trailer all the way over there and see if we can hook up there. Otherwise we're doing this the old-fashioned way. So it worked but it didn't work. I think the gravel wood chips back there were what was impeding it but what's happened now is it's come down directly on top of the hitch and not centered on the ball. So I'm going to have to either move the Rivian a little bit or see if I can remote this so that the ball pops into the coupler. There we go. I noticed yesterday when we took this into Livermore the ride feel was set to soft so I bumped it up to firm. I don't know what it was at yesterday when we had the trailer but I left it at firm so we'll see if that makes any difference in how this goes down the road because yesterday it was bouncing quite a bit when we went over dips and things like that. And after all that remote control fun we're at 17 percent battery on the Pebble. Even though it would have been easy to just back the EV trailer into the campsite I couldn't pass up another chance to remote control this 6,000 pound Pebble flow into position. In the time it took me to walk over to the Rivian and back it into the campsite, Instacamp had leveled the camper and deployed all of the stabilizers. All that was left to do was plug in the camper especially since it was at 14 percent battery. The Pebble team mentioned that you can pull up to certain EV charging stations to top off the electric RV if needed but we didn't have to on this trip. It supports level 1 and level 2 AC charging and even level 3 DC fast charging through a built-in charge port. So we're currently charging we're getting 5.8 kilowatts per hour. What this is doing is it is first dumping the black tank and then all of these have macerator pumps so it's dumping the black tank and pumping that out then it's pumping the gray tank through the black tank through the hose to clean everything and then it'll add a little bit of fresh water to kind of do a final flush. With the tanks dumped and the electric RV charging it was finally time to unwind and enjoy the beautiful weather around us. Well we got to test the heater last night and we're gonna get to test the AC right now because it is hot in here. For the heat the fan and the AC all of the vents are at the corners of this so two here and then two over there so they all come out and kind of push outward. The AC with everything else is drawing about two and a half we're getting half a kilowatt of solar and with being plugged into the 50 amp we're positive four kilowatts an hour. We are making steaks and we're going to have another salad so I'm going to do that in here. We can take the cooktop and actually move it outside the problem is I don't believe we have an extension cord plus they are mowing the area around that's why we wanted to close all the windows and put the AC on because there's grass and pollen up in the air right now. Two New York strips and one maple bourbon bacon kit. I'm gonna have myself a drink and this is what I was talking about with the stove so you can lift it unplug it and take it with you. What I would do is take the induction cooktop put it here there's an outlet over there plug it in and we've got a light and a vent. As Kate and I were talking about this camper what I started to realize is that this is a departure from normal RVs and it's hard to think of this in context to other RVs even though you take it RVing this thing has a lot of different tech than most RVs on the market. A lot of it is automotive grade they have a different type of heater AC unit the battery system the fact that you can drive this around a campground and all sorts of different things on this that set it apart from a normal RV. One of which being that this is a software-based system or camper meaning they can do upgrades similar to an electric vehicle like a Tesla where they can send out upgrades and make changes to the vehicle and do other things to make it more efficient they can do that with this camper. Now what we found last night was we were running the heat all night long and you would think with 45 kilowatts of battery we could go forever but we used a good portion of that battery last night when we were sleeping and when we were talking to some of the founders of the company what they were saying is they know efficiency is something they need to improve on you know this is number one of 500 of the founders edition you know in the future you can continue to get upgrades which I think is kind of exciting and not really something you can do with RVs unless you're taking components out and replacing them. The other thing I want to bring up is price so this is the founders edition which means it comes with all the options except nightshades or sunshades depending on how you use them that is an additional option and it costs a hundred and seventy nine thousand dollars. Now another thing we haven't talked about yet is traveling with family you have a tow vehicle you have plenty of seats you can bring kids and things along this dinette converts into another bed and with this converted you could definitely sleep one adult maybe two but definitely a couple kids so if you wanted to bring your family along you can do that with this. And if you're traveling with furry family members Pebble thought of them too. There are two built-in bowls tucked into the kitchen galley right next to the entry door making it easy to keep food and water ready without cluttering up the floor. The Pebble Flow also came with the optional blackout shades but we really didn't find a need for them. Being able to shift the windows from clear to opaque on demand was more than enough for us. All right well we are packing up because this is the end of our trip and the first thing to do is dump our tanks so I'm just doing it from in here on the iPad so auto dump yes there it goes that can dump while we're packing up and then all I have to do is put the hose away. Well that is it for our time in the Pebble Flow magic hitch work like magic this morning and I would love to know what your favorite feature of the flow is down in the comments below. Well we are headed home and that is it for this video if you enjoyed it please give us a thumbs up subscribe if you haven't already and if you want to check out more of our videos head on over to our YouTube channel at War of the Russo's. We'll see you next time. Bye!