(Credit: Pebble)
LAS VEGAS—As EV adoption grows, the uses for electric drivetrains have extended beyond cars to airplanes, boats, and even recreational vehicles (RVs).
Pebble, a new entrant to the electric RV market founded by veterans from Apple, Tesla, Cruise, and Volvo, announced at CES that its upcoming Pebble Flow RV will be the first on the market with semi-autonomous assists.
The Pebble Flow, which debuted in fall 2023, is a pull-behind trailer with a self-propelling powertrain, similar to the competing Lightship Electric RV.
You can pre-order the Pebble Flow now for a late-2024 delivery. It comes in two versions, one for $109,000 and one for $125,000. Only the pricier model has semi-autonomous driving assists, such as the Magic Hitch feature, which automatically connects the Pebble Flow to the vehicle towing it, as shown in the video below. Ford debuted similar technology for its F-150 pickups in April 2023.
Another feature is Remote Control. As Pebble describes it: "Once unhooked from the hitch, the Pebble Flow is fully remote-controlled for easy parking and maneuvering, effortlessly pivoting and positioning itself into tight spots."
All autonomous features are controlled by the Pebble app, and powered by the Nvidia Drive Orin system-on-a-chip, a "scalable supercomputer" that delivers 254 trillion operations per second of compute power. The chip can also receive over-the-air updates, turning the Pebble Flow into a "tech-first" smart home.
"Nvidia Drive Orin is the world’s highest-performance, automotive-grade, autonomous-vehicle processor," says Pebble. "The collaboration represents the first time the RV market will see this level of computing power."
(Credit: Pebble)Though $125,000 is certainly not cheap, it could be a compelling differentiator from the Lightship Electric RV, which also starts at $125,000 and does not currently have semi-autonomous assists. The Lightship is set to arrive in 2025.
Aesthetically, the Pebble Flow and Lightship RVs are similar, but the Lightship is slightly longer and wider at 27-feet long and 8.5-feet wide versus 25-feet long and 7.6-feet wide for the Pebble Flow. The Lightship also has an 80kWh battery compared to the Pebble Flow's 45kWh pack.