End of my dream

[iansriv]

Sorry for your experience. Glad you made it home. I hope you keep the T. I am new to EV and this helps me plan ahead. I intend to stay in town the first few months and get used to the car and iron out any issues. After that perhaps Paris-Dakar (joke).

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[crashmtb]

Apparently OP has not owned a boat.

from my dad a few years ago, one summer’s inaugural day of boating:

"Uncover boat and pull out from garage. Try new dog ramp - looks ideal, but boat ladder is too narrow, so it will not work. Hook up battery, at least enough charge to run blower and see that gas is empty. Go to gas station and fill up, back to cottage to pick up Judy and dog. Dog very excited! Go to boat launch - tons of trailers lined up for long distance along road, but not too bad at the docks. Do excellent boat launch, but don't go too far away. Good thing, as battery too weak to start boat. Get boat back on trailer and go to Hardware store to buy battery charger. Back to cottage. Directions everywhere - Do Not Charge Marine Battery While In Boat! Take out battery and leave on charger for a few hours. . Back to dock, launch boat and optimistically park car and trailer. Motor turns over, boat will not start. Get trailer back, reload boat, and return home. Put boat back in garage, day of boating done! Next boating in a few weeks (don't even want to try on weekend). Looking forward to it!"

 

[crashmtb]

Mike,

Sorry to hear about the charging and strange front hatch warning. Weird how that warning hasn’t popped up before during your daily use around town. Was the front trunk packed with stuff?

BTW, Is this your first ev? There is a bit of a learning curve getting the hang of the range estimation and charging limits etc.

I can certainly understand having several people, especially family, all at once questioning your purchase once there is a little hiccup during a trip!

Charging from home is the best charging solution so far, public charging is sketchy in my experience and calling the charging service providers when there is a problem will hopefully motivate them to step up their game.

I also own a Tesla and using the free supercharging network is the a hard act to follow though I guess I expect more. lol

Anyway, hope you keep the truck and figure out how to get the most out of it.

I’m in Carmel and so far so good even after a camping trip up to Kaiser Pass with my family where there are no charging stations!

remarkable how two people with the same name in the same town with the same vehicle can have such drastically different experiences ?

 

[kurtlikevonnegut]

While this is a bit unfortunate, folks should really be considering themselves beta testers when they sign up for brand new EV from a company that's never built anything. Even more so when less than 10k units have rolled off the line.

Anyone getting pre-march pricing is basically getting a $20k discount to be a beta tester. All things considered I personally take that as a win and fully realize that not everyone would agree.

 

[Olsonsolar]

So here we go on our first trip on our new R1T. Loading went well with lots of space and room for three adults, a big dog, bikes, and lots of luggage to support the rest of the family. OK first planned charging station after 150 miles using electrify america went great.

Then we tried to drive off only to be told the front hatch was open. Multiple, multiple attempts to open and close the hatch did not solve the problem. Called support and while on the phone the problem seemed to resolve itself.

We have 250 miles until our destination so we figured that our 95% charge, in trip mode, would get us there. We drove carefully in conserve selection, but ended up needing to recharge at 200 miles with only 30 miles left. Several of the charging stations we tried were broken or at least non-functional.

The fun really started on our return a week later. On reaching our planned recharge stop we filled up to 70% or nearly 200 miles as we only had a 100 to go. Again we get the hood open alert. We call support and do everything they say …..push down hard on hood…..no response…..open hood…won’t open…soft reset…..hard reset…All no change. So here we are in a small crossroad 50 miles from any town.

Support says try rental car…none open. Try ride share…none around. Then all of a sudden, while parked in the shade the alert goes away and we start for home. We see we are going to need a further charge and begin planning for that. The first two chargers we stop at are non-functional. Now we are panicking as we are down to less than 5 miles. We find a 6 kw charger and charge to 10 miles so we can make it to the next charger.When we get there and plug in ….no connection. Call Electrify America and they reprogram the charger to no avail. Call Rivian support and told to try hard reset as when the battery is critically low it needs to be reset in order to charge. Finally we head home.

i am completely disillusioned and plan to get rid of the truck. Rivian is coming tomorrow to take it to service center. If they won’t take it back I am selling and taking whatever I can get.

Hang in there Mike. Sorry for your problems. Sure it will get better. I have never been in that situation but try to find out what was causing all the problems first.

 

[mgc0216]

Sounds like two issues. The hood thing sucks abs hopefully it's an easy fix. mine is being finicky where it won't open sometimes. it unlatches pops up a bit then stops.

the other issue is it sums like you were just winging it with regards to your charging plans. No bueno.

My first trip in an ev was driving me truck home from IL to Oregon. This weekend i drove out to this podink 200 person town in the middle of nowhere.

Both times I spent a non trivial amount of time thinking about the route and the charging infrastructure and what the backup plans could be if something didn't work out.

Fortunately I have had exceptional luck with public chargers (knock on wood) but if I hadn't, I had backup plans.

Download and setup apps for a variety of charging networks. Ditto for ABRP and Plugshare. Cross check everything (abrp tried to route me to a charger that didn't exist this last trip).

Hope you give it another shot after chalking this up to a learning experience.

 

[R1Sky Business]

Sorry for your experience. Glad you made it home. I hope you keep the T. I am new to EV and this helps me plan ahead. I intend to stay in town the first few months and get used to the car and iron out any issues. After that perhaps Paris-Dakar (joke).

Good break in period

 

[sub]

looks like for your needs, you can't use a [non-tesla] EV since the [non-tesla] charging networks are not reliable enough yet.

Fixed that. Tesla chargers are extremely reliable and when there is an outage that info is disclosed on the car's screen so there are no surprises when you get there.

I really hope Tesla follows through on their plans to open up to other cars as planned. It would remove one of my biggest worries about buying a R1S to replace my Model 3 as our road tripping vehicle.

 

[R1Sky Business]

Sounds like two issues. The hood thing sucks abs hopefully it's an easy fix. mine is being finicky where it won't open sometimes. it unlatches pops up a bit then stops.

the other issue is it sums like you were just winging it with regards to your charging plans. No bueno.

My first trip in an ev was driving me truck home from IL to Oregon. This weekend i drove out to this podink 200 person town in the middle of nowhere.

Both times I spent a non trivial amount of time thinking about the route and the charging infrastructure and what the backup plans could be if something didn't work out.

Fortunately I have had exceptional luck with public chargers (knock on wood) but if I hadn't, I had backup plans.

Download and setup apps for a variety of charging networks. Ditto for ABRP and Plugshare. Cross check everything (abrp tried to route me to a charger that didn't exist this last trip).

Hope you give it another shot after chalking this up to a learning experience.

Not a new issue, Rivian is aware of it.....

 

[dleepnw]

thats pretty awful and it seems like its the combination of things happening that made it so frustrating. it does take different planning/mindset with EVs and its even harder for non-Teslas because no super chargers but still frustrating that on top of the charging stuff you had the issue with the trunk.

 

[JaMa]

So, this person has a lot of good points. Lets face it - charging *Anywhere* other than a Tesla Supercharger *blows* - plain and simple. Ive heard this time and time again from my non-Tesla EV friends and they all say the same thing. The issues with the Rivian are just new car company stuff. Buy a new car from a company like Rivian and you're going to deal with this kind of crap. If you want something to take you to the mountains on the weekend with kids and dogs etc, go get an F150 Hybrid until there is a real charging network out there that is not Tesla or Tesla opens their network to the rest of the world.

My 2c,
J

 

[Mike TDM]

Apparently OP has not owned a boat.

Or an RV/Camper!

 

[Denver_Paulie]

So, this person has a lot of good points. Lets face it - charging *Anywhere* other than a Tesla Supercharger *blows* - plain and simple. Ive heard this time and time again from my non-Tesla EV friends and they all say the same thing. The issues with the Rivian are just new car company stuff. Buy a new car from a company like Rivian and you're going to deal with this kind of crap. If you want something to take you to the mountains on the weekend with kids and dogs etc, go get an F150 Hybrid until there is a real charging network out there that is not Tesla or Tesla opens their network to the rest of the world.

My 2c,
J

Seems like you should not be ordering a Rivian. You should cancel your order and save yourself the frustration. There are others out there who know the truth about the CCS charging infrastructure, so it might be better to let them have your place in line.

 

[rivianguy]

Don't think of it as the end of your dream....more like your dream is postponed for a while

Instead think of it as the beginning of your nightmare. ?

 

[JaMa]

Seems like you should not be ordering a Rivian. You should cancel your order and save yourself the frustration. There are others out there who know the truth about the CCS charging infrastructure, so it might be better to let them have your place in line.

Why? Everything there is true. I know plenty about the CCS network, and I plan to avoid it as much as I can. Its nowhere near built out like Tesla's network and everyone knows it. I know of no one who is absolutely enamored of the CCS network. Half the time the stations dont work, plug and charge fails to initiate, they have to call the charging network customer care and have them do some voodoo to make the charger work, whatever. Never in my time as a Tesla owner have I ever had to talk to a person. Your mileage may vary, but every single time I ever used a Tesla supercharger it worked flawlessly and without hassle. Anyway, most people who charge an electric car do it in their garage not at a DC station so the network only matters for road trips.

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