My cold weather charging experience.. not great.

[jjswan33]

So I am spending the weekend in Snoqualmie Pass WA and it is very cold for this part of the country today, it was around -7F this morning when I woke up and my truck was cold soaking in the wind all night. The battery was understandably cold, the gauge read 15F but I think that just may be the minimum temp for the guage.

The only fast charger up here is non-operable. I worked with the L2 for a while yesterday and added 10-15% SOC. Rather than fight for L2 all day again I decided to drive down to North Bend to charge at the EA station, it was about 25 mile down the mountain.

So I headed out and I had literally 0 regen until I got a little over 20F on the battery, motor power was also limited. I set the Nav to the charger figuring that the battery would start pre-conditioning (it never did). By the time I got to the charger it had heated up to around 32F When I plugged in.

The truck was charging at 6kW. I figured after a little while it would warm up and start charging normally but 30-40 min later is was still at 6kW. When I unplugged to my surprise the battery was still in the low 30s F so it had not heated up at all. Desperate to get some juice I decided to drive around yoyoing as much as I could between acceleration and regen. After a little while I got it to heat up to around 41F and went back to the charger and now it was giving me about 20kW still not great. I let it charge for 25 min or so and again it never got above that so I went off again to try and heat up the battery. This time I jumped on the freeway and gunned it up another 5 miles or so and got the battery above 50F. First plugging back in it again started at 20kW but after a few minutes it started warming up and shot up over 100kW.

Honestly I am not sure what I could have done differently to get the battery to warm up and I finally got charged up but it was a bit of a time sync. What I really don’t understand is why the truck would take the juice to warm up the battery rather than just continuing to charge at 6kW or 20kW ?‍. My lesson is don’t even bother fast charging if your battery is not warmer than 50F.

On the plus side I ran into the gang from the Emerald City Rivian Club preparing for an offroad adventure. Shame I had such a low SOC otherwise I may have joined them.

Disclaimer. I am still on 2023.46.01 so possibly with some of the new stuff I would have had more options.

Sponsored

 

[Redline]

I too am dealing with cold right now…on top of a non-functioning door latch assembly lol.

I decided against putting in a L2 charger at our cabin this year, with Tesla network access coming, it seems unnecessary to spend the $3k they wanted. Well I’m currently charging at 1.1kwh right now in the garage, sitting at 25% SOC and wanting to drive 150 miles home tomorrow. The nearest fast charger is out of range right now, but I do have a 50kwh charger about 30 miles away.

Tesla access cannot come soon enough!

 

[R.I.P.]

I too am dealing with cold right now…on top of a non-functioning door latch assembly lol.

I decided against putting in a L2 charger at our cabin this year, with Tesla network access coming, it seems unnecessary to spend the $3k they wanted. Well I’m currently charging at 1.1kwh right now in the garage, sitting at 25% SOC and wanting to drive 150 miles home tomorrow. The nearest fast charger is out of range right now, but I do have a 50kwh charger about 30 miles away.

Tesla access cannot come soon enough!

Always spring for the L2 at the cabin. Even when Tesla does open up, you will never regret having L2 at home!
??

 

[neocyn]

I too am dealing with cold right now…on top of a non-functioning door latch assembly lol.

I decided against putting in a L2 charger at our cabin this year, with Tesla network access coming, it seems unnecessary to spend the $3k they wanted. Well I’m currently charging at 1.1kwh right now in the garage, sitting at 25% SOC and wanting to drive 150 miles home tomorrow. The nearest fast charger is out of range right now, but I do have a 50kwh charger about 30 miles away.

Tesla access cannot come soon enough!

Why not future proof the cabin and at least install a 240v outlet? That way you can use the mobile charger in a pinch.

 

[Redline]

Why not future proof the cabin and at least install a 240v outlet? That way you can use the mobile charger in a pinch.

That was the plan…everyone was over $3k and most couldn’t get it done in time. Things move slow up here. There’s a Tesla charger just 20 miles away on our way home. Really solves all the issues.

 

[Electrified Outdoors]

Battery was cold soaked. Typically on a road trip one would leave with a high SOC. If you had a low SOC it may not precondition. What you had was a worst case scenario.

A cold soaked battery will charge slow. Preconditioning is a must in sub freezing temps.

As far as L2 at the cabin 3k seems super high. Why so much? Do you need a "heavy up"? Do they have to trench in wire? How long of a run is it?

I would definitely opt for a charger at the cabin. You only have to spend the money once.

 

[TheMuscovite]

Been having a similar experience during this cold snap.

Went to an 350kw EA DCFC after the R1S being parked overnight in single-digit temps at 20% SOC. Charged for 30 minutes, never got above 16kW.

Left the vehicle parked in a 30F garage plugged in to 120V for a couple days, got up to 50%. Drove to a DCFC (that wasn’t in Rivian’s database yet, so no preconditioning) and at least made it to 85kW to get it up to 85% SOC for the drive home at 7°F.

Glad this is outside of our normal travel patterns and we’ll do most of our winter charging with Level 2.

I’d love to see better preheating/preconditioning options for cold weather driving.

FWIW, running a 240v outlet to a charging location at our mountain cabin was about a $2,600 investment. The tax credit will help, but this was the cheapest of several bids.

Electricians are expensive, especially in mountain towns.

 

[Dark-Fx]

~15-20 minutes on L2 before it was even putting any energy into the battery. Truck had been sitting unplugged for a few days and now I am getting "12V battery needs service" messages. Motors were heating up just fine for me though. Definitely need to give yourself extra time if you start off cold soaked.

On 50.1

 

[jjswan33]

Battery was cold soaked. Typically on a road trip one would leave with a high SOC. If you had a low SOC it may not precondition. What you had was a worst case scenario.

A cold soaked battery will charge slow. Preconditioning is a must in sub freezing temps.

It was cold soaked but was up near 40% SOC when I left to charge. That should be enough to trigger pre-conditioning in my opinion but who knows.

 

[Denver_Paulie]

Battery was cold soaked. Typically on a road trip one would leave with a high SOC. If you had a low SOC it may not precondition. What you had was a worst case scenario.

A cold soaked battery will charge slow. Preconditioning is a must in sub freezing temps.


THIS.

I left my house in Denver this morning at 6:30am with a 100% battery when it was -6F and drove the 195 miles to the Electrify Charger in Trinidad Colorado. It was +1F in Trinidad when I plugged in, but the battery temperature was 55F, and promptly got 180kW charging speeds.

I have 22's on my R1T and did 1.88kWh per mile in conserve mode on that first part of the drive, which was all below zero temps. I averaged 63mph on the way down since I had yet to road trip in the Rivian in such extreme cold and wanted to be cautious. I also alternated keeping the heat on an off on the drive in order to conserve battery - not something I recommend, but in the spirit of conserving battery I bundled up as much as I could.

Overall, I was pretty satisfied with how the Rivian managed the extreme cold during the first part of my drive today. By the time I got to Santa Fe it was over 40F. Best part of the drive today was all four of the Electrify America chargers I used today worked great and saw charging speeds above 180kW.

 

[Electrified Outdoors]

It was cold soaked but was up near 40% SOC when I left to charge. That should be enough to trigger pre-conditioning in my opinion but who knows.

Agree it should have. When you input the charger did you search for chargers on the NAV or did you put in the address?

 

[jjswan33]

Agree it should have. When you input the charger did you search for chargers on the NAV or did you put in the address?

I had the electrify America station in north bend in my history from the other day. I had selected that.

 

[Electrified Outdoors]

I had the electrify America station in north bend in my history from the other day. I had selected that.

Interesting. I know that when I put the address of a charger in it will not precon. I purposely do this in the summer because I found that in that situation it mostly just wastes energy.

I have tested and I know it does precon when I either

A) have the charging stop as part of a trip in the NAV

OR

B) Show chargers on map, select and navigate to it that way.

I haven't tried the way you did it. Its possible since it was selected from history that it didn't precon. I'm going to have to try this method in the future to see what happens.

 

[jjswan33]

Interesting. I know that when I put the address of a charger in it will not precon. I purposely do this in the summer because I found that in that situation it mostly just wastes energy.

I have tested and I know it does precon when I either

A) have the charging stop as part of a trip in the NAV

OR

B) Show chargers on map, select and navigate to it that way.

I haven't tried the way you did it. Its possible since it was selected from history that it didn't precon. I'm going to have to try this method in the future to see what happens.

Yeah it’s a possible corner case that Rivian missed but I would expect that it should because the history specifically says Electrify America Station.

I have to do the same drive tomorrow and it’s still pretty cold so I can try selecting it and see if that makes a difference. I’m hoping to have enough charge to skip that station though as I plan to leave it on L2 by the hotel all night.

 

[SeaGeo]

Yeah it’s a possible corner case that Rivian missed but I would expect that it should because the history specifically says Electrify America Station.

I have to do the same drive tomorrow and it’s still pretty cold so I can try selecting it and see if that makes a difference. I’m hoping to have enough charge to skip that station though as I plan to leave it on L2 by the hotel all night.

For some reason I feel like this popping up before where it may not realize you're going to a charger unless initiated as described by @240vPlug . Otherwise it's very odd that it didn't try to warm the battery for you.

Sponsored