Out of Spec's Rivian Route Planning Woes

[MRE]

My truck certainly never routes to Tesla chargers appropriately. I've even set the Tesla charger as my destination and the truck will try to make me stop and charge at another charger that is only blocks away. I don't have enough RAN charging along my route for that too be a factor, and I actually have my preferences set to prefer Tesla stations, but it will route me to literally anything else before going to one.

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[CarlM408]

I have found that the in-truck navigation system does not accept any filters/presets.
...so I update my 'filter' in the map area, still takes me there.

That's not how one sets the route planning preferences.

Select a destination, do NOT press GO (do not collect $200), select Details, then Settings to adjust the route planning settings. If that's not quite clear please find 5 minutes to watch my video which shows this in detail:

 

[CarlM408]

My truck certainly never routes to Tesla chargers appropriately...and I actually have my preferences set to prefer Tesla stations, but it will route me to literally anything else before going to one.

That smells like the flag that you have a Tesla adapter is not set correctly. Without that, Prefer Tesla is just going to route you to Magic Dock stations (if along your route)
Double check those route planning settings I described several times in the last few postings...

 

[MXA121]

Learn something new everyday!

 

[Riviaenz]

I have never experienced anything this egregious with the R1T, even in areas close to where they are traveling. I am wondering if they have some nav settings that are forcing the behavior, like preferred/excluded chargers and or charge at arrival. Though I don’t recall if that’s configurable or not…

I haven't had the problem they claim with RAN either. The only instance of bias I've seen with regard to RAN is when there's a choice of RAN or another like EA and they're in the same area (like across the street from each other) and I have RAN selected as a preferred network as well as the competing network (EA in the case I'm thinking of). You can select preferred networks in two different places in nav. One specific to a route plan while configuring your route and the other as default preferred networks from which it can pick dynamically. From what I recall I don't believe they showed their settings ("race" from Vegas to Ft. Collins) although they did show how they set their arrival SoC preference which is the same pane in which you select your preferred networks for the route.

 

[Riviaenz]

Keep in mind they are trying to get views for their videos. May be valid, may not be, but failure will probably get more views than success. Personally I think their videos are way too long to be useful, so I don’t consider anything they present.

Totally! They tend to be unnecessarily verbose and repetitive in the videos; their intros alone often as long as any other YouTuber's whole video (MKB as an example) and in the same time as a Kyle intro, MKB will have done a full product review.

 

[Riviaenz]

Tangentially related - I just went in a 500 mile drive and one of my charge stops I had instructions to charge to 68%. I plugged in and started charging.

I went to a different UI feature - music or something - and then went back to nav and it says 75%.

I thought "huh, could have sworn it was 68... Guess I was mistaken"

Then I fiddled around elsewhere, went back to nav again and it said I needed to charge to 78%

Rinse and repeat... It changed to 85%

My route hadn't changed and I was just sitting there charging the entire time.

I have no clue why it kept creeping up. At first I was thinking it was updating for wind or something (I think ABRP premium has this so maybe it also lives inside range calculations??? Doubtful but maybe?)

But by the time it was 85% requested charge I realized it was borked and ended nav. Replanned my route and it went back to "normal"

Never happened before so I can only assume it's related to the last update

Was it pushing out distance to the next charger? I've seen it do that where it recomputes and figures if it stretches the charge session (like when it's going really well - fast) to then send me a bit further on the next leg.

 

[Riviaenz]

I've had the opposite issue in that I have wanted to go to a RAN that would be slightly off route. I've had to purposely throw a destination out of the way in the direction of a RAN to get routed to them. There are two "near" (within 15-25miles) out of the way of two routes I've taken a few times in the last year where what I've had to do is either directly plan a route closer to them or just select them as destinations to get routed out of the way. Often times it's worth it just for the more reliable and faster charging (and better price compared to EA). And when it does select a RAN it's truly on the way.

This last winter I had taken a long 1000 miles ski road trip with our trailer for one of our kids to get his PSIA Freeride Cert. It perfectly routed us via 2 RAN on the way there and spaced the sessions such that it would maximize the driving time. On the way back it gave us 2 options to return and I picked the one that took us via 2 other RAN and the same thing in that it spaced the arrivals to maximize driving between each charging session. I do keep RAN as a preferred network. The only one I keep disabled is EVgo (bastards are over priced and deceitful - $60.25 for 48kWhr, didn't adequately display rates, and interrupted session mid way through hitting me up for an extra session fee, timed a few minutes after the EV6 charging on the same unit had his session interrupted first).

I make sure to avoid EVgo - Rivian nav settings have gotten much better at avoiding networks you de-select although you do have make sure to give your choices (if you have a preference) while planning a route in addition to also indicating your preferences on the default view as well.

 

[cjbot3000]

Was it pushing out distance to the next charger? I've seen it do that where it recomputes and figures if it stretches the charge session (like when it's going really well - fast) to then send me a bit further on the next leg.

Nope, I don't believe so

In their latest video for planning route "race" back from Vegas they had the same issue, too

 

[edman007]

I had it happen to me last week. I started a trip with ~50mi of range, and the supercharger that I needed to make it to was ~15mi away. There was a RAN Waypoint on the way, so it wanted a half hour charge there.

I think the way the nav is, it NEVER wants to arrive at a DCFC below 10%, and will always pick a closer charger, no matter the speed. OOS had it happen because they were pushing nav to arrive below 10% in an area with no other options for DCFC.

I've also had it attempt to direct charging at a RAN site when I was at 80% charge...when I had no problems driving further.

 

[Marchin_MTB]

I haven't had the problem they claim with RAN either. The only instance of bias I've seen with regard to RAN is when there's a choice of RAN or another like EA and they're in the same area (like across the street from each other) and I have RAN selected as a preferred network as well as the competing network (EA in the case I'm thinking of). You can select preferred networks in two different places in nav. One specific to a route plan while configuring your route and the other as default preferred networks from which it can pick dynamically. From what I recall I don't believe they showed their settings ("race from Vegas to Ft. Collins) although they did show how they set their arrival SoC preference which is the same pane in which you select your preferred networks for the route.

Good points. They do go into more details on the settings in their next video (trip back the other way based only on in-car nav). However claiming that the nav arbitrarily prefers RAN is a stretch since there are many reasons to avoid a nearby EA, including distance from the freeway. Also, just because both stations are an “A” ranking, doesn’t mean that one has a 91 while the other a 94, so it’s possible that not all A letter rankings are created equal.

 

[CarlM408]

A few thoughts on the return trip video...

A, Team Rivian totally f'ed themselves at Green River which ruined their shot at 2nd place. I've seen some comments running around that they saw a poor review of the 350kw charger on PlugShare and so that was why they went for the 150, but there was nothing along those lines shown in the video (actually re-watched, and Kyle said something about the bad review, nothing from Team Rivian), just some hand waving about believing they might charge faster due to battery temps.

B, the Rivian team talked several times about preferring the standard suspension height for comfort, and it can be seen several times that they indeed disabled the Auto suspension, meaning it wasn't lowering down while on the highway for best efficiency.

C, turning Rivian off on the route planner 'saved' 10 minutes on the plan, but IMHO over a multi-stop trip ABRP/Rivian will have a random variance in it's time estimation and 10 minutes is well within that margin of error. It did not suggest something stupid like a L2 charger off the path, and so turning it off was certainly very much not what an average driver would do. AND, look at the map at 29:20 carefully, with RAN enabled it skipped Green River!

 

[zoro25]

Keep in mind that they are trying to get views for their videos. This may be valid, or it may not, but failure will probably get more views than success. Personally, I think their videos are way too long to be useful, so I don’t consider anything they present.

The video may have been too long for you to see it.
However, they literally did a default route plan, and the Rivian chose the Rivian Adventure Network, With multiple networks ticked.
They then unticked the RAN as an option when selecting networks and let the car once again work out the same route, which was quicker the second time.

So, the software, as it currently stands, will prioritize RAN stops even if it harms the overall user experience.

The only reason I can think of this is that the Rivian team knows the exact stats of the RAN stations.

However, also in the same video (or the one on the outbound trip), we see the car tell them that there are 2 or 3 empty RAN stands, and when they arrive, all are taken by cars that have been charging a while (assumed by states of charge of cars at stands)
They also recheck the car, and it tells them there are free stalls while they are looking at a fully packed RAN station.

There are apparent issues, but it's all software, and the Rivian team can improve things with quick fixes.

Battery thermals, which are not software-related, are the biggest thing that needs fixing for long trips.
For most people doing short daily drives, none of the above is really an issue.

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