Guess it was my time - 12v is dead

[RexRemus]

If it's any consolation, when my Rivian suddenly died w/o warning, it was towed to Gaithersburg where it sat for 10 days before they looked at it. When they finally replaced the 12V battery and it woke up to communicate, it had lost no charge at all (tracked via ElectraFi); I presume the contactors were left open, so the HV battery was just sitting there at 70% charge the entire time and not trying to charge a broken 12V battery for over a week.

That's genuinely my hope - that with all other subsystems "dead" it's just sitting there fully idle and it'll be fine. I just wasn't aware of any other points of reference. Your example is heartening, thank you for sharing!

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[Dark-Fx]

My larger concern now is where the primary battery will be by the time that happens. I keep the max charge at 60% which is more than enough for any of my local trips and enough to reach any family/friends in an emergency situation without requiring any additional charging (that was basically my prime criteria for setting max charge - as low as I could go while knowing if I needed to jump in and get somewhere in an emergency I could still make it there (plus a 30-40 mile surplus). Anyway...

If the 12V is dead it won't be draining out the HV battery at all, it can't connect it.

 

[RexRemus]

UPDATE 2:

Rivian service is calling and checking in for the coming repair, and maybe, finally ACTUALLY listening to me about the difficulty of trying to service this vehicle where it has chosen to die...

They asked for videos and I sent them.

Current request is that there's no way to service it as-is unless I can clear the shelving from the front of the vehicle. So... guess what I get to do tonight...Empty an entire garage because those shelves are land-locked behind 2 other shelves, all of which will have to be emptied to try and slide them out.

Basically if I can't/don't get the shelves out they are saying there's no way to do mobile service on the 12v and it will have to be a tow - which as we've already covered, I have very slim hopes for working at all given the tight spaces involved in the alley here. So... shelving removal it is.


One thing I asked - isn't there SOME way to manually release the parking pawl? Like, you know... for an emergency? Then we could possibly just roll it back a bit and chock the wheels? Service person seemed to think, no. And no way to "jump" it long enough to get it into Neutral or any other options. But I swear I saw something about releasing the pawl somewhere.

Anyway, I shall get to work clearing the garage and hoping that the appt. on Friday can happen, and more importantly... actually be successful.

 

[RexRemus]

UPDATE 3:

Remote service came out today at ~2pm. We tried jumping from the rear to get the frunk open - nothing. Clearly the battery is very, very, dead.

Try to get access to the emergency frunk release, but because of low ride height and wheels being pretty much straight it was pretty much impossible to reach release cable.

Jack it up and take the wheel off. Success, frunk is now open.

Begin battery swap. Mostly goes without any issues. Vehicle wakes, but tech can't get it accept the battery reset (you need to clear some codes and run a process to tell the vehicle it has a new battery). This isn't working. We try a few things, try to start a charge - no go. Starts for a second or two and stops.

New 12v battery is rapidly dying - 11.6V

CTRL+ALT+DELETE the R1S... watch windows loading screen...

Seems better, but once entering RIDE and plugging in laptop - it's still bonked. Vehicle is just "off" - not responding as expected, pressing brake pedal and trying to shift into gear says "please press the brake pedal" - and so on.

New 12v battery is rapidly dying - 11.2V

Connect wall outlet battery charger I have to 12v battery - it can't charge it fast enough. Nothing happens.

Connect Rivian service jumper kit battery to 12v battery - it doesn't help.

New 12v battery is rapidly dying - 10.9V

Try a few other things...

New 12v battery is rapidly dying - 9.8V

Pull fireman's loop, remove ground.

"It needs to come back to the service center, we'll have to tow it"
"I have told like 4 people at this point I don't think a tow truck is going to make it into here"
Take a walk, explain the turn that is going to be a problem...

Wait a few minutes...

"One of our lead techs is going to come out and take a look at it, is that ok?"

"Yep"

4PM - Current tech leaves for next appt. I am still waiting for lead tech to arrive.

Wanted to get a pic of literally EVERY warning possible being active

Will update again... soon? Hopefully... maybe

 

[NY_Rob]

UPDATE 2:
..One thing I asked - isn't there SOME way to manually release the parking pawl? Like, you know... for an emergency? Then we could possibly just roll it back a bit and chock the wheels? Service person seemed to think, no. And no way to "jump" it long enough to get it into Neutral or any other options. But I swear I saw something about releasing the pawl somewhere.

You might be recalling the procedure below.. but that can only be performed with the vehicle running.

 

[NY_Rob]

Sorry you're going through this BTW! We've seen other "simple battery replacements" not work out too well either. Seems in quite a few cases it's not the batteries that are faulty, it's the charging circuit failing.

 

[RexRemus]

You might be recalling the procedure below.. but that can only be performed with the vehicle running.

The tech did mention releasing the parking brake today but we held off because the lead tech is supposed to head over. But yeah this might be what I was thinking of. Seems like a true manual override would still be quite handy.

Actually lead tech just arrived...

 

[RexRemus]

Sorry you're going through this BTW! We've seen other "simple battery replacements" not work out too well either. Seems in quite a few cases it's not the batteries that are faulty, it's the charging circuit failing.

Thanks, yeah. Trying to stay positive. Certainly the tech(s) have been trying and doing their best but it's definitely at a point where I'd really like my vehicle back. Unfortunately it's going to take a while for me to trust this battery replacement or even the vehicle as a whole because how it happened was just...odd and totally out of the blue.

I'm a little nervous to take it any meaningful distance (assuming it gets sorted today anyway) for a while. Which kinda bothers me more than I was expecting. The loss of confidence in something that's been so great.

 

[RexRemus]

UPDATE 4:

Lead tech rechecked everything. Got battery charged back up and vehicle booted up. Loads of errors, but was able to get the "new battery" process to run. Cleared everything and then rebooted again.

Vehicle was still throwing battery ground errors and/or battery sensor (IBS) errors - they were sometimes using things interchangeably.

Disconnect everything and go through all connections again.

Reconnect, reboot, same errors.

Disconnect, pull IBS off. Notice that the connection cable looks slightly "off" one of the pins is a bit "forward". Adjust the connector a bit.

Reconnect everything, reboot. Errors but he goes through and clears it and seemingly the IBS errors are not coming back.

We both don't feel super comfortable about it, but everything is looking normal. Take it for a test drive,all is well.

He wants to give it all a whole, much more in-depth, electrical checkup. Calls service manager, explains everything. They will be in touch to setup an appointment.

So, this story isn't entirely over, but the vehicle is currently drivable. The biggest question is how long will it stay that way?

I guess we'll see what happens next ?

So while it's not an entirely happy ending, it's not a Greek tragedy either... I'm glad to have it back, but I can't fully trust it right now ?

Mixed results I suppose, but credit to the Chicago Service Center, and specifically the two techs I worked with for coming out for 2 hours and then coming back for another 1.5 to do everything they could to make things right. I can't complain about that.

 

[Budman]

Progress, of sorts. It does seem like a good number of battery issues are really just a symptom of some other underlying mechanical issue.

 

[RexRemus]

UPDATE 5:

Just got a call from the Chicago Service Center.

Rivian engineering has been watching my vehicle since the mobile service repair. They believe the initial issue, and subsequent "issues" during the repair were/are caused by a software bug. There is a hotfix coming for it and they believe everything else on the vehicle is healthy and there is no need to bring it in for the "deeper" inspection that the service techs wanted to do. At least until there seems to be any new issues popping up after the hotfix goes out.

I could not get any significant details on the issue, or when the hotfix will drop (not a huge surprise). What I could get was that there are still a few subsystems with lingering issues like this for some vehicles. Basically a sensor issue of one kind of another that causes a downstream failure of some kind. In this case there is a scenario where the bug causes one or more of the high/low voltage connectors (relays I assume) to stay open when it shouldn't. And with the circuit open - things don't get charged when they should. So even if other areas of the software are saying - 12v system NEEDS to charge! The bug causes the connectors to remain open and it just doesn't happen.

There is also some issue with false positive notifications being generated in/by the app - saying there's an issue, when there isn't. This also has a hotfix coming.

After watching my vehicle logs for a week or so, engineering seems confident that I was a victim of this issue, and honestly looking back at the repair where we could NOT get the 12v system to charge after replacement and/or the vehicle itself to accept a new battery "reset" - and based on the stream of random errors we saw saying a connection was "open" (connection to ground for the 12v) it at least lines up with what they are saying the bug would look like (in software). It took several resets and eventually removing the IBS module to finally reset the bug and let the repair process complete. Given the odd behavior of the vehicle I can understand why the techs wanted to get it in for a deeper inspection. I respect that they didn't just see it working and say "welp, good enough" - I'm glad they cared enough to speak to the service manager and say that they needed to get it in and REALLY figure out what was going on. It seems that they notified engineering as well - so despite the drama and the VERY long day for all of us during the mobile repair - their extra concern seems to have paid off.

Obviously, until the hotfix drops I suppose there is still a risk of a repeat episode, but it's good to know that the repair was taken seriously. I'll be canceling the scheduled repair for next week - which is sad because I had added some NVH/rattle stuff to get looked at, but that can wait. I don't want to waste service center time for minor complaints unless there's a larger reason to be in there. They have their hands more than full with more important repairs for other owners... But it would have been nice to get some of the creaks and rattles looked at. Guess I'll save that for the 7500 tire rotation visit

So all in all, I think this is resolved, or at least will be (fingers crossed) with the (next?) software drop. Hopefully that's the end of this adventure and I can confidently get back to ACTUAL adventures in the vehicle.

Thanks all who have been following along. I hope this was beneficial and as ever I'll light this thread back up if anything of interest presents itself. but for now, I'm glad it's over

 

[reindeer]

How is this still happening with the 12V batteries? I thought the software update had the computer monitoring the voltage in the 12V to prevent this kind of thing from happening. With massive batteries in our trucks, it seems ridiculous that they would be crippled by 12V batteries dying.

Unfortunately this is the Achilles heel of all EVs. :/

 

[RexRemus]

Unfortunately this is the Achilles heel of all EVs. :/

I don't disagree, it IS weird though, and I feel like having some kind of failsafe that uses a converter - there must already be one somewhere dropping the voltage low enough to not melt the 12v system when charging it - to just keep the 12v loop alive off the high-voltage pack. Like it doesn't need to run that way ALL the time, but if it's very inefficiently use the HV to run the 12v subsystems, or be a brick... you use option A and limp along until service.

I just feel like it should be fundamental to the vehicle design that if there is battery of some kind, somewhere... use THAT and give the customer any many ways as possible to keep the vehicle alive and moving.

Regardless, while that would have mitigated my(and all the others who have been hit with 12v issues) problem. The fact is there's an underlying bug and at least it's been found and hopefully the update/fix will reduce this issue even more going forward

 

[reindeer]

I don't disagree, it IS weird though, and I feel like having some kind of failsafe that uses a converter - there must already be one somewhere dropping the voltage low enough to not melt the 12v system when charging it - to just keep the 12v loop alive off the high-voltage pack. Like it doesn't need to run that way ALL the time, but if it's very inefficiently use the HV to run the 12v subsystems, or be a brick... you use option A and limp along until service.

I just feel like it should be fundamental to the vehicle design that if there is battery of some kind, somewhere... use THAT and give the customer any many ways as possible to keep the vehicle alive and moving.

Regardless, while that would have mitigated my(and all the others who have been hit with 12v issues) problem. The fact is there's an underlying bug and at least it's been found and hopefully the update/fix will reduce this issue even more going forward

Totally! Hopefully! Crossing fingers for ya. Been through this once myself, not in a Rivian.. was in my model X and luckily it happened in a good location. Thanks for sharing though, because I'll be on the lookout in my T

Take care!

 

[Condor]

So I woke up yesterday to the “Replace 12V Battery” warning. Mobile service is scheduled for Friday and I’m told my R1S is fine to drive in the meantime… Do I trust that? They said the warning typically gives about 3 weeks of warning…
Delivery was Nov 2022. This is the first problem I’ve had in a while.

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