portland rivian new
Member
- First Name
- Cheryl
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2022
- Threads
- 1
- Messages
- 11
- Reaction score
- 45
- Location
- Portland Oregon
- Vehicles
- Rivian R1T, Audi Allroad, Honda Accord, Audi A6
- Thread starter
- #1
Took our first long trip in our R1T. We’ve taken several weekend trips, however this was our first long trip. This is our first EV so we took our time driving down in order to get used to what it’s like. Just about 1,700 miles total – Portland to Ashland; Ashland to Red Bluff; Red Bluff to San Jose; San Jose to Ashland; Ashland to Portland. Short stops and side trips - Ashland, Lake Sikiyou, Shasta (mountain and lake), and a short trip through the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. We forgot to reset the trip odometer until a bit into the trip – so only sharing about 60% of the data – highway speeds were usually over 70 and quite a bit of driving in San Jose/Santa Clara as we were there to move our son out of his dorm.
The ride!
Oh so wonderful. A joy to drive and ride in on the highway. Handled the curves like a champ. Never wanting for the ability to speed up, or slow down. Passing other vehicles was a breeze .
People and vehicles.
Lots of thumbs up. Many inquisitive glances – what is that? A few pictures taken of us/the truck. At stops, hotels and restaurants many asked us what we thought of the truck. (we love it – we put that on repeat). Two Rivian sightings. Rivian blue on the highway in San Jose – got a honk! And a white Rivian on I-5 headed south while we were stuck in accident traffic.
Mapping and Charging.
Random notes:
The ride!
Oh so wonderful. A joy to drive and ride in on the highway. Handled the curves like a champ. Never wanting for the ability to speed up, or slow down. Passing other vehicles was a breeze .
People and vehicles.
Lots of thumbs up. Many inquisitive glances – what is that? A few pictures taken of us/the truck. At stops, hotels and restaurants many asked us what we thought of the truck. (we love it – we put that on repeat). Two Rivian sightings. Rivian blue on the highway in San Jose – got a honk! And a white Rivian on I-5 headed south while we were stuck in accident traffic.
Mapping and Charging.
- The mapping function worked well and suggested charging stops. We consistently cross referenced with Plugshare and checked charger activity through that and the apps for the chargers. On the way back the truck suggested that we needed to charge earlier that I thought we would need to, that was due to the uphill drive and I hadn’t thought about that. Good balance.
- Electrify America worked great – we saw a few Walmarts and the Vacaville premium outlets.
- Downtown Ashland has free charging and a good amount of parking
- Two of our hotels had free charging and got us enough of a charge on multiple days. One had Tesla chargers and the TeslaTap adapter worked perfectly. The other hotel in San Jose had Chargepoint chargers that were slow (approx. 5 kwh) and there weren’t enough of them for everyone who was staying there – timing of getting the parking spot was key.
Random notes:
- If pets come; get a hammock!!! Our dogs were with us and we had one. Thank goodness as it turned out our dogs had a stomach flu while we were traveling. Yuck – had to hose it off at one point.
- Should have bought a monthly member pass to Electrify America – after checking all the numbers this trip would have allowed us to save on the price per kwh and it was enough miles to justify a year’s worth of member fees.
- Was interesting to see how we felt about free charging spots. Once you’re there, you kind of don’t want to move the truck.
- Will bring camp chairs next time so that when we’re waiting at charging locations (with dogs) and don’t want to be in the truck we can sit under the trees in shade.
- Got over the how far can we go / charging angst. Chargers up and down I-5 are plentiful.
- I have WAY too many EV charging apps on my phone.
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