Anyone have R2 highway driving range to share? (I'm sure the color you picked looks great)

[Pablolibre]

My wife made it clear our next EV needs to have around 4 hours driving time at 75 mph. I know the R2 won't get that but if it can go almost 3.5 hours on 100-10% charge I might be able to convince her. Any one have any efficiency numbers for highway driving at a specific speed they'd be willing to share? Showing her nice colors of R2s won't get me anywhere.

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[Jeremy3292]

I think we can pretty confidently say no it won't. If it's 75 degrees outside maybe you will eek out 300 miles going 75 mph (aka 4 hours of driving 75x4=300) but that would be absolutely best case scenario. I would say getting 250 miles going 75mph is a safe bet within normal temperature ranges, not 20 degrees outside. So 250 miles / 75 mph = 3.33 hours of driving using all 100%.

The general benchmark is take 80% of EPA rating for range at 70 mph, which would be 264 miles (330 x 80%).

 

[Pablolibre]

I think we can pretty confidently say no it won't. If it's 75 degrees outside maybe you will eek out 300 miles going 75 mph (aka 4 hours of driving 75x4=300) but that would be absolutely best case scenario. I would say getting 250 miles going 75mph is a safe bet within normal temperature ranges, not 20 degrees outside. So 250 miles / 75 mph = 3.33 hours of driving using all 100%.

The general benchmark is take 80% of EPA rating for range at 70 mph, which would be 264 miles (330 x 80%).

Thanks,
That's what I'm thinking as well. Hopefully someone has real numbers to share. I'm sure if I move on to the iX3, I'll hear her complain about the price. She has a Subaru Forester Wilderness so we'd still have 1 car with a bit of extra ground clearance when needed.

 

[shamoo]

I'm curious what's driving the 4-hour drive time requirement.

Is it range anxiety? Have you owned an EV before?

For the average person, you are rarely driving more than 10-30 miles a day. On weekends, a typical day might be 50-200 miles, which is still well within range of most modern EVs.

Trips longer than that tend to be uncommon for many drivers. If that's only happening a couple of times a year, what's the downside of having "only" 250 miles of range and stopping for 150-20 minutes to charge? DC fast charging is pretty quick these days. Grab a snack or watch something on Rivian's screen, and you're back on the road.

Of course if you're regularly making 300+ mile trips, then an EV may not be for you and that's okay.

 

[jrmbadger]

The case for an EV will almost never be won on road trips. The road trip case is the one compromise you make owning an EV - It just takes longer for now.

However, the upsides outweigh the downsides for most. If you have or will have a level 2 charger at your house, unless your wife is frequently taking 5+ hour trips, I'd say the upside of NEVER HAVING TO STOP AT A GAS STATION AGAIN far outweighs the extra time on the occasional road trips. No smelly gas fumes, no watching ads on a gas station screen yelling at you, no dreading stopping on your morning commute wondering if you have time to fill up before you have to get to work. With an EV you wake up and the car is charged with a full "tank," (or whatever percentage you want).

And you no longer have to worry about the constant gas-price changes. My 300ish miles on my R1S cost me about $20 to fill up at home (15.5 cents kw/h * 131 kWh). For a comparable SUV (e.g., 20mpg) that equates to $1.33 cents a gallon in gas.

For my model Y - which is more like the R2 in size and efficiency than my R1S - I've saved $1,867 this year just on fuel over a comparable car. Of my total charging over 92% has been Level 2 charging at home or my parent's house (I installed a charger there). only 8% was at a Supercharger.

Or ... you can stick with gas and spend more of your life fueling your vehicle, changing the oil in your vehicle (no oil changes in EVs!), servicing the many moving parts in your vehicle, and spend more money overall ... just for a quicker occassional road trip.

 

[TexasBob]

Thanks,
That's what I'm thinking as well. Hopefully someone has real numbers to share. I'm sure if I move on to the iX3, I'll hear her complain about the price. She has a Subaru Forester Wilderness so we'd still have 1 car with a bit of extra ground clearance when needed.

I have the same requirement of 300 miles at 75 mph which is really 330 miles because your (very sensible) wife I am sure means she can drive 300 miles and still have enough energy that she is not panicking as you roll into a charge station on limp mode.

The only SUVs that will do that are the iX3, and the EX60 P12. On a good day with favorable winds and a higher altitude you can kind of-sort of coax that out of an R1S DM Max pack. (Drop speed to 70 at it will do it.)

 

[Great Gatsby]

I'm curious what's driving the 4-hour drive time requirement.

Is it range anxiety? Have you owned an EV before?

For the average person, you are rarely driving more than 10-30 miles a day. On weekends, a typical day might be 50-200 miles, which is still well within range of most modern EVs.

Trips longer than that tend to be uncommon for many drivers. If that's only happening a couple of times a year, what's the downside of having "only" 250 miles of range and stopping for 150-20 minutes to charge? DC fast charging is pretty quick these days. Grab a snack or watch something on Rivian's screen, and you're back on the road.

Of course if you're regularly making 300+ mile trips, then an EV may not be for you and that's okay.

I used to do it and just crank out 4-6 hours nonstop of driving. Once I hit 30, my bladder only allows 2-3 hours best case scenario.

I'm sure people out there prefer the stop and go method, but stopping every few hours and using the restrooms and stretching your legs has been a nonissue for me. As someone who does road trips fairly often, I have no problem doing them in a EV versus my old explorer which got like almost 500 miles on the highway.

To not derail the thread though, I foresee the R2 getting 4 hours top at full charge and almost down to 0%. So the first leg of the trip could be 4 hours, but every subsequent one would be 2.5-3 hours max IMO If similar to the Model Y, then these would be anywhere from 10-30 minutes which sounds way longer than you'd think. I'm usually still in the bathroom by the time our car is ready to go to the next stop.

 

[gecko10x]

If you have never owned an EV before, you may not appreciate how the charge curve impacts a road trip. i.e., the higher your state of charge, the slower the charge rate, and the curve isn't linear.

So, if you attempt to charge from near zero to full 100%, you may very well be sitting at that charger for close to an hour (depending on the specific vehicle, battery type, and batter size).

If instead you stop more frequently and drive the battery between 10%-50% or so, your stop is likely more like 10-15min.

Personally, I would much rather do the latter. It's much more pleasant.

Edited to add: To put an even finer point on it, charging from 60%-100% is SIGNIFICANTLY slower than charging from 10%-50%.

 

[TexasBob]

I used to do it and just crank out 4-6 hours nonstop of driving. Once I hit 30, my bladder only allows 2-3 hours best case scenario.

A vehicle that does 300 miles (100% - 0%) at 75 mph only does 210 miles 10% - 80% between charging stops which, at 75 mph, is 2:45. On a warm day. Without headwinds. And no rain. IMO it is not an excessive requirement.

 

[NY_Rob]

As mentioned, no matter which EV you choose, it's not realistic to expect to charge to 100% on a DC fast charge stand. As a matter of fact, some Tesla Superchargers won't even let you charge up to that amount if the site is busy.

 

[Great Gatsby]

A vehicle that does 300 miles (100% - 0%) at 75 mph only does 210 miles 10% - 80% between charging stops which, at 75 mph, is 2:45. On a warm day. Without headwinds. And no rain. IMO it is not an excessive requirement.

It's not excessive but also fits in to what I said. My bladder only last 2-3 hours, 210 miles 10-80% going 75mph is around 2.5-3 hours. Hasn't been an issue for me but I fully understand it is different for other people.

A younger me would laugh at stopping every 3 hours. At my current age, I can't imagine doing more than 4 consecutively.

 

[Yamazaki]

The case for an EV will almost never be won on road trips. The road trip case is the one compromise you make owning an EV - It just takes longer for now.

Ironically, it's the road trip aspect that is making us convert to EV. We do 4-4.5 hr trips regularly and it costs a lot (in gas) each time. But we can do the trips without stopping... It sounds like we'll have to sacrifice the time in order to save on gas cost - a trade off we are looking forward to.

 

[CharonPDX]

I regularly take ridiculous road trips, driving 16+ hours per day, stopping just long enough to refuel/recharge, eat, bathroom, etc. Trying to combine all those into one stop.

It has been *YEARS* since I was willing to go 4 hours between stops. In my 20s, probably was the last time. I suggest trying a road trip with your current vehicle and see if she actually does go a full four hours between stops, or if it's the "I won't consider a car unless it can handle something I'm not actually ever going to do" situation like many EV detractors. (I need my vehicle to tow 20,000 pounds 500 miles nonstop at 120 MPH. Uphill. In a blizzard. Then recharge 0-100% in 2 minutes.)

 

[GaryL]

The man asked a reasonable question. Has anyone who has taken delivery of there new R2 driven at Interstate highway speed overs sustained period to give everyone a real world sense of actual range. He really did not ask how long we can hold our bladder.

 

[Jeremy3292]

From the videos I've seen on R2 that have DCFC in it, the sweet spot is going to be 10% (or less if you want) to 73% or so when road tripping. That takes around 20 min. It falls off a cliff shortly after 70%. That's why the 10% to 80% rating is 29 min. The 70 to 80% is slow and isn't worth it - just unplug somewhere after 70% and hit the road.

There was one video the guy did 6% to 78% in 28 min at a Tesla V4 (posts) supercharger, which is not bad at all. It looked to me it there was room for it to be better also bc he never hit 200 kW, only upper 180s. Maybe not enough preconditioning on the way or something.

I think Rivian squeezed all they could out of the R2 charging times on a 400v platform likely due to much better cooling and thermals than R1. It held 130 kW at 73%, which is 1.48C, and then fell off after to 88 kW at 80% or 1C. Pretty darn good to me!

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