PSA: Careful Parking on ANY Incline...

[atebit]

(no)

Thanks for preemptively shorting those inevitable conjectures to ground.

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[NineElectrics]

Am I seeing it wrong? Doesn't look like the rear tires rotated at all. Rear tires slid and no parking brake on the front, by design I imagine.

This why I won’t change a Rivian tire without chocks. They should be included with the car.

 

[SDH]

Folks; hand brake (park brake) is applied to the rear wheels. Has been since 1904. That's why rally drivers do "hand-brake turns", to get the back end round.

I'm amazed by people who think the park brake locks all 4 wheels.

 

[Craigins]

So a little context here

That isn't just snow. In Chicago it rained most of the day, then turned to freezing rain, and finally snow.

So there will be a nice layer of ice underneath the snow you see. Not surprised the truck slides down it.

 

[Nix]

I had this happen in a Silverado also. Luckily for me it was worse than this, and it started sliding backwards down the driveway just after I stepped out of the truck. I hadn't even closed the door yet, so I was able to jump back in and use the brakes to stop it. Each time I let off the brakes the back tires would start sliding down the driveway again.

Ice is weird.

 

[VSG]

Similar happened to me years ago when I lived in Chicago. It was snowy and icy, so I parked my sedan far away from other cars in what I thought was a flat parking lot. Locked the doors then started to walk away, and saw the car start to slide. I unlocked and jumped in the moving car and tried to get control, but it kept sliding and sliding, eventually stopping after coming into contact with the rear bumper of another car that was parked several aisles away. One of my headlights was broken, no harm to the other car's bumper.

 

[CrazyOne]

I remember Munro appreciating Tesla for not building a parking brake pawl as it was unnecessary cost. I guess Rivian followed Tesla here, as they did with AA/CP and PAAK.

Munro mentioned that some traditional makes build parking pawl into motors unnecessarily ?.

This is probably not worse than RWD ICE vehicles and Tesla. FWD/FWD based AWD, certain full time mechanical 4X4 vehicles will lock all 4 wheels when parking brake and transmission park are engaged.

 

[NineElectrics]

Folks; hand brake (park brake) is applied to the rear wheels. Has been since 1904. That's why rally drivers do "hand-brake turns", to get the back end round.

I'm amazed by people who think the park brake locks all 4 wheels.

I think this is because just placing a traditional FWD or AWD car in park will prevent the front wheels from rotating in the same direction (because the transmission is locked), even if the parking brake isn't applied to them. Therefore, more than two wheels can apply at least some traction in park (the two rear wheels plus one of the front wheels). Once a slide has started, you're not going to get any rotational inertia building up in the front wheels which would make it harder to stop. That may be enough to prevent some slides which would have occurred if no front wheel had traction. Here, it seems like Rivian has regressed, because you only get traction on two wheels when parked. It's an adventure vehicle you should always park on flat or sticky surfaces, I guess.

 

[Speedrye]

So... do the turning front wheels charge the battery when it's still plugged in? I'll bet that's a scenario the engineers didn't think about.

 

[BobinIndy]

That will suck.

If Rivian won't sell you one, any J1772 replacement cable should be just fine... pretty easy job.

 

[kizamybute']

I came home from work today, just the same as I have every weekday since taking ownership of "Lenore" in September. Little bit of snow today but nothing compared to some of the other winter days around here.

The land in Chicago's suburbs is by no means "hilly" but, apparently, we LOVE building our suburban communities with inclined driveways. Nothing terrible, mind you, but it was enough today.

My R1T decided to roll itself down the driveway while it was plugged into my external Rivian wall charger. It yanked the charging handle out hard enough to break it pretty good.

Parking brakes did nothing here, as you can see in the video that the truck rolls down the driveway as opposed to sliding on the snow.

Fortunately, it looks like a new charging cable will get me back up and running, and I have the portable charger until then.

Wow. Rear tires definitely didn't move. They slid, not rolled down the driveway. Had to be solid Ice below the snow. May need to install a chain and an anchor point to hook to the front tow hook when parking on that driveway. From the looks of it, could happen to any two-wheel-drive vehicle, gas or electric. A block stop behind the front wheel may not have helped if there was ice below the snow. It would have just slid with it. Thus, the chain idea may be the only viable option? Glad it didn't turn out worse

 

[Mathme]

Good PSA....

In your video, you didn't have much snow however, if you are in an area where you do get a good accumulation of snow, as you pull up close to your house, make sure to look up and see if there's any that may fall off the house and land on the car.

We lost the back window out of BMW about 10 years ago when we had snow slide off our place in Tahoe and land on the car.

 

[a76marine]

So a little context here

That isn't just snow. In Chicago it rained most of the day, then turned to freezing rain, and finally snow.

So there will be a nice layer of ice underneath the snow you see. Not surprised the truck slides down it.

FWIW I'm up north, we didn't get the rain but about 4" of snow overall.

 

[yizzung]

I remember Munro appreciating Tesla for not building a parking brake pawl as it was unnecessary cost. I guess Rivian followed Tesla here, as they did with AA/CP and PAAK.

Munro mentioned that some traditional makes build parking pawl into motors unnecessarily ?.

This is probably not worse than RWD ICE vehicles and Tesla. FWD/FWD based AWD, certain full time mechanical 4X4 vehicles will lock all 4 wheels when parking brake and transmission park are engaged.

I don't totally understand the mechanics here but if the Rivian parking brake is just telling the motors to lock in the rear, could an OTA update make the parking brake to tell the front tires to also lock? Seems like that could help (but not totally prevent) this issue by spreading the job across all four tires instead of two.

 

[NineElectrics]

From the looks of it, could happen to any two-wheel-drive vehicle, gas or electric.

Is that true? A FWD ICE vehicle would have the front wheels’ drive locked at the transmission when the car is in park, so they would have applied more fiction than just free spinning as the car slid (as seen here). So, you’d have more than just two wheels trying to stop the car from moving.

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