UPDATED 6/2 - Delivery day (Hello!) and Return day (Goodbye) ... argh! "Ride height change not possible due to overheated air compressor"

[Dirty_B]

Am I correct in inferring from this (see above), if the air compressor is not working when the R1 is in its lowest height setting, the R1 is essentially not drivable --i.e., horrendous rubbing sound?

Now that is a horrible thought that I haven't thought of before... Damn, bet you're right with one minor adjustment, it wouldn't be a "ride height" if it couldn't drive meaning it went below lowest ride height. Well played my good man

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[Dirty_B]

Really the only problems I'm worried about are the tonneau cover and 12v battery (which the new update apparently fixes). Drive train failures and air suspension issues seem to be rare at this point. I fully expect my tonneau to break at some point in the couple months after I take delivery.

Vampire drain is my biggest fear, all that mechanical sh!t will get figured out/fixed. But 2 - 3 kWh drain a day is a killer

 

[atebit]

Sounds like they owe you new interior fender liners and new (at least front) tires, too.

 

[RivianXpress]

The weird thing was that there were no error codes or dash warnings when this happened. I heard the tires rubbing and it took a couple seconds to figure out what it was. Even after I pulled over there were no dash messages about any failures. Someone less experienced might have kept driving and destroyed the tires, fender wells and who knows what else.

It was only after a hard reset AND trying to change drive modes did the error message show up. Even then it was not persistent and only displayed when trying to change drive modes.

I would think there would be a failure mode where the truck tells you you are slammed on the tires and to pull over immediately. I'm also not sure why when there is a failure of this type it rubs the tires. The absolute lowest mode allowed IMO should allow you to at least drive the truck (and not rub the tires) if there is a catastrophic failure of the air suspension like this.

Luckily I was driving only 20mph and can't imagine if this happened driving at highway speeds!

 

[Max]

Am I correct in inferring from this (see above), if the air compressor is not working when the R1 is in its lowest height setting, the R1 is essentially not drivable --i.e., horrendous rubbing sound?

I was thinking the same thing. This sounds like bad design. Lowest setting should not result in tire rubbing and I would think in case of a compressor issues, it would drop to the lowest setting on all 4 to get you limping to somewhere safe. I think Rivian may need another 5 years to adjust the design and manufacturing to get this thing reliable enough for a road trip. R1 sounds like a great girl friend but an awful wife. Too much drama. Rivian May be selling a lot of Lexus if this keeps up.

Vampire drain is my biggest fear, all that mechanical sh!t will get figured out/fixed. But 2 - 3 kWh drain a day is a killer

That is definitely a deal breaker for me.

went off roading (without the boat!),

Now you are making me wonder

 

[mgc0216]

Vampire drain is my biggest fear, all that mechanical sh!t will get figured out/fixed. But 2 - 3 kWh drain a day is a killer

I'm a new EV owner, so I am genuinely asking - why is 2-3 kWh/day of drain killer? Wouldn't it take like 40 days to fully drain the battery at that rate?

Also, does charging at home obviate the issue.

One of the things I'm concerned about is leaving my truck at the airport for a 10 day trip w/o being able to charge it (e.g. all the chargers are full or whatever). Is that a valid concern if I show up with a 65% battery?

 

[mindstormsguy]

I'm a new EV owner, so I am genuinely asking - why is 2-3 kWh/day of drain killer? Wouldn't it take like 40 days to fully drain the battery at that rate?

Also, does charging at home obviate the issue.

One of the things I'm concerned about is leaving my truck at the airport for a 10 day trip w/o being able to charge it (e.g. all the chargers are full or whatever). Is that a valid concern if I show up with a 65% battery?

If you do the math, I think it works out to over a thousand dollars a year (edit: over $100 a year) in electricity cost. Plus, the time it takes to get from 100 to 0 is not really the meaningful measure. If you head somewhere for a trip, you’re not got to arrive with 100%, and you’re going to need much more than 0% to get back home. So in most cases, vampire drain of even 10% (in just 2-3 days according to some owners) could be very noticeable, and impact your plans.

I think the other issue is simply that it’s such a huge technical miss. Nobody would accept a slow due leak in an ICE vehicle. And no other EVs (except apparently some Teslas, which honestly surprises me) have this shortcoming.

Edit: oh yeah, and one other thing. If you care about environmental impact, you should note that unless you’re driving hundreds of miles a day, that drain ends up effectively lowering your fuel economy by a noticeable amount. It’s kinda like if you just kept your engine running all the time in an ICE car (though it’s not really quite as bad, it’s a similar concept).

 

[NY_Rob]

I'm a new EV owner, so I am genuinely asking - why is 2-3 kWh/day of drain killer? Wouldn't it take like 40 days to fully drain the battery at that rate?

It's not about battery drain... it's a useless waste of electricity (which has to be generated somehow) and the cost of said electricity over time.

Here on Long Island we pay $0.24/kWh for electricity... a 3kWh/day vampire drain would cost about $22/month or $263/year for absolutely no reason or benefit. Before I went solar on my house, my electric bill was $250/month... so just owning a Rivian would add a full extra month electric bill without ever driving it even 1 mile.

 

[mgc0216]

If you do the math, I think it works out to over a thousand dollars a year in electricity cost. Plus, the time it takes to get from 100 to 0 is not really the meaningful measure. If you head somewhere for a trip, you’re not got to arrive with 100%, and you’re going to need much more than 0% to get back home. So in most cases, vampire drain of even 10% (in just 2-3 days according to some owners) could be very noticeable, and impact your plans.

I think the other issue is simply that it’s such a huge technical miss. Nobody would accept a slow due leak in an ICE vehicle. And no other EVs (except apparently some Teslas, which honestly surprises me) have this shortcoming.

Edit: oh yeah, and one other thing. If you care about environmental impact, you should note that unless you’re driving hundreds of miles a day, that drain ends up effectively lowering your fuel economy by a noticeable amount. It’s kinda like if you just kept your engine running all the time in an ICE car (though it’s not really quite as bad, it’s a similar concept).

I think for me it works out to be about $165 a year ($0.15 / kWh * 3 * 365), but your point is still well taken. I hadn't even considered the costs associated with it - basically pissing electrons onto the ground.

 

[Canthoney]

At least this didn't happen for your delivery day! My brother law sent me this picture after a scrap truck hit the tow truck. The Rivian crushed the scrap truck!

 

[mindstormsguy]

OK, so taking the "it's like idling your car for no reason" analogy a little further... I think it's a fun thought experiment.

Let's assume 3kWh of waste power (as a per day hypothetical). 1 gallon of gas is equivalent to 33.7kWh of electricity (this is how MPGe is calculated). So 3kWh/33.7kWh = 0.09 gallons of gasoline. A 2.0l gas engine idling for an hour uses about 0.16 gallons of gas (source: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicle...umption-selected-gasoline-and-diesel-vehicles). This means 3kWh of vampire drain is the energy equivalent of idling a 2.0L engine for 0.09gal / 0.16gal * 60 minutes = 34 minutes. That's not a terrible number, and yes, it would be fewer minutes for a larger engine. However, we should also remember that most modern vehicles have start/stop, and will not idle at all if they don't have to. So even half an hour of idling equivalent is kind of a waste by modern standards.

I did this math again but based on range loss as the constant between EV and ICE (rather than energy), and interestingly you get the same result (about a half hour of idling). Doing it with range rather than energy makes it somewhat agnostic to the engine size too. A larger engine means more gal/hr, but the conversion from miles to gallons (ie MPG) cancels that out.

So I guess there we go. 3kWh is like 30 minutes of idling. Do that every day though, and it's kinda a bummer.

 

[mindstormsguy]

I think for me it works out to be about $165 a year ($0.15 / kWh * 3 * 365), but your point is still well taken. I hadn't even considered the costs associated with it - basically pissing electrons onto the ground.

Yeah, that's right, it's not over a thousand. I thought someone in another thread said it was, but I never bothered to check the math.

I would agree that financially, it's not so terrible.

 

[mgc0216]

Yeah, that's right, it's not over a thousand. I thought someone in another thread said it was, but I never bothered to check the math.

I would agree that financially, it's not so terrible.

but the larger point of just being wasteful still holds. Like someone else (I think) said that $165 a year is basically one month of electricity that I'm wasting.

 

[SeaGeo]

Ive seen enough posts here to expect the hyper Rivian loving crew to scream about hyperbole, etc, but these issues are real and they’re increasing.

I don't see this as that. They're increasing production, so you expect an increased number of people noting issues. As I noted earlier, while every problem reported is concerning, qualitatively the frequency or severity do not seem any more significant than what VW had with the initial ID.4 sales.

I also don't see any signs that the major issues reported at related to Rivian's production issues so far. There's obviously a risk here for people, but how many reported suspension and motor failures have we seen? less than 5 total for each? That's what... less than 0.1%? And that's assuming they're actually the same thing.

 

[Max]

but the larger point of just being wasteful still holds. Like someone else (I think) said that $165 a year is basically one month of electricity that I'm wasting.

people have been reporting 4%-8% daily loss which is 5KWh-10KWh. So the cost could be larger and depending on how much of that electricity comes from coal, the environmental impact could be larger too. For me the impact is magnified since I don’t drive much and proportion of electricity wasted to electricity used for moving is much larger than most.

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