My cold weather charging experience.. not great.

[LL75]

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!

Does your cabin equipped with dryer ? 30 amp there.

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[jjswan33]

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.

Yeah not sure. I tried twice this morning to select the charger from the app. Truck at 80% SOC and battery around 27F and I still didn’t get any pre-conditioning in the few minutes of testing.

I’ll try when I actually need it this afternoon and see what happens, if not maybe I will call Rivian and report ‘non-ideal’ behavior. Doubt I will get an explanation from them though.

 

[SeaGeo]

Yeah not sure. I tried twice this morning to select the charger from the app. Truck at 80% SOC and battery around 27F and I still didn’t get any pre-conditioning in the few minutes of testing.

I’ll try when I actually need it this afternoon and see what happens, if not maybe I will call Rivian and report ‘non-ideal’ behavior. Doubt I will get an explanation from them though.

How far were you from the charger? From prior discussions there's a radius where it won't trigger.

 

[jjswan33]

How far were you from the charger? From prior discussions there's a radius where it won't trigger.

im up at Snoqualmie Pass and selected the charger in North Bend about 25 miles away.

 

[SeaGeo]

im up at Snoqualmie Pass and selected the charger in North Bend about 25 miles away.

Yeah that should trigger it.

We really need manual preconditioning. I also don't get why the truck doesn't automatically trigger it through the motors when plugged into a DCFC if the battery isn't warm enough to accept a charge.

 

[breeves002]

I'm not sure why your battery didn't pre-condition. I also don't understand why it didn't start heating itself once you plugged into the charger. That is weird behavior. The other night after sitting in 0º ish weather all day I went to a 200A DCFC. I did not put it in the nav because I wanted to see what it would do with a cold battery.

My experience was this:
-35% SoC starting
-30ºF battery starting temp
-Charger kicked up to 20kW and battery heating immediately began when it started to charge.
-No more than about 50A would go into the pack until it was warmed up past 60ºF. I don't know the exact temp the pack was when it started to charge faster.
-Once it reached a high enough temp the charger went to the full 200A power.
-Battery heating turned off in the 80-90ºF range. When finished charging it was -3ºF and pack was at 93ºF.
-Charged to 70% with no issues at full 200A power.

 

[jjswan33]

Yeah that should trigger it.

We really need manual preconditioning. I also don't get why the truck doesn't automatically trigger it through the motors when plugged into a DCFC if the battery isn't warm enough to accept a charge.

yeah that was my expectation Saturday. At least today I should have around 70% at the end of the day and I will be headed back to Oregon so may be able to go further and give the battery time to heat up more.

 

[TheMuscovite]

We really need manual preconditioning.

This so much, particularly in the cold.

My last 4 DCFCs have been at locations that aren't yet in Rivian's database, and in the cold. I get that DCFC locations are being quickly built and it's not practical that Rivian can keep up with every new one.

So just let us tell the vehicle that we're going to one manually.

 

[MountainBikeDude]

@jjswan33 how far did you drive while preconditioning? I left my apartment this morning and granted my battery was around 5 degrees C but it still took about 15-20 minutes of driving before my motors went beyond mid temp to full. So I wonder if the intent is to ramp the temperature gradually rather than run a hot plate under the cells immediately.

Also ran into a day last week where I didn't precondition and it took around 20 minutes of charging at 23kW before getting the pack up to temp and cranking to 150kW.

 

[MountainBikeDude]

I also don't get why the truck doesn't automatically trigger it through the motors when plugged into a DCFC if the battery isn't warm enough to accept a charge.

I've had it immediately start to ramp the motor temps when plugged into a DCFC without having preconditioned, or set the charger location in the map prior to arriving.

 

[MountainBikeDude]

There was a fella yesterday that plugged into an Electrify Canada station next to me with a BMW iX that began charging at 23kW. He kept unplugging and trying again. I mentioned to him it was likely the battery pack wasn't warm enough to accept full rate yet, but when he snapped at me with "I was driving around for nearly an hour, the pack is fine". I decided the quip was enough to just close my window and stop trying to help.

Definitely not the case for you, but most EV drivers don't realize that just regular driving has such little effect on a batteries thermals, and unless there is an abnormal demand on the pack, it will always try to run in the most efficient way possible.

As @jjswan33 touched on, hard acceleration/regen events are the quickest way to warm an EV, but also not the easiest on them.

 

[jjswan33]

There was a fella yesterday that plugged into an Electrify Canada station next to me with a BMW iX that began charging at 23kW. He kept unplugging and trying again. I mentioned to him it was likely the battery pack wasn't warm enough to accept full rate yet, but when he snapped at me with "I was driving around for nearly an hour, the pack is fine". I decided the quip was enough to just close my window and stop trying to help.

Definitely not the case for you, but most EV drivers don't realize that just regular driving has such little effect on a batteries thermals, and unless there is an abnormal demand on the pack, it will always try to run in the most efficient way possible.

As @jjswan33 touched on, hard acceleration/regen events are the quickest way to warm an EV, but also not the easiest on them.

Reading the plug share feedback from the last few days I think many people are confused about the effects of cold weather on their cars.

FWIW I started home today with the battery at ~25F and selected a charger in Lacey WA about 2 hours away. It never turned on preconditioning at all but it did warm up to about 50F just from driving but didn’t get to its ideal temps.

 

[jjswan33]

FYI Rivian got back to me today and agreed that the truck didn't behave like normal. Suggested I should have done a reset as soon I noticed it wasn't pre-conditioning.

I should have an opportunity to test again soon enough, hopefully it goes better.

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