Indianapolis to Maine road trip (via Philly and Boston) - 2200 miles

[rogersmj]

Our family of 4 took a road trip from our Indianapolis area home to coastal Maine (by way of Philadelphia and Boston for an American History tour). I have had our 2025 R1S Dual Max for about 7 months, and this is the first major road trip we've taken it on (I've had a Tesla for 3.5 years though and we've traveled with that, so I'm not new to EV road trips).

Stats according to Rivian Roamer:

• Total miles: 2171
• Efficiency: 2.28 mi/KwH (22" Sport Dark wheels with Nokian One HT tires)
• Charging spend: $457.23 (multiple networks: IONNA, Rivian, Tesla, Electrify America)
• Cost/mile: $0.21
• Total energy used: 953 kWh
• Average speed: 57mph (seems low, not sure how this is calculated by RR, maybe it's averaging it across drives rather than miles driven? The vast majority of the miles were done at or around ~70 mph. Once arriving in a city we mostly parked the car and walked.)
• Temps/weather: Most of the driving was done in 70-90F temps, usually sunny but occasional rain/clouds

TL;DR: I love Rivian but it was not all sunshine and roses. Numerous software bugs and a charging scare (where we thought we were about to be stranded) make me nervous about depending on this vehicle. I'm really on the fence about how long I'm going to keep this R1S, but right now I don't know what else I would get.

Pros

• Lots of space for packing stuff
• Seats are comfortable -- no one felt particularly fatigued after long stints
• Range is decent for such a large brick-shaped vehicle
• Most of the chargers we plugged into from all brands "just worked" (until the car just refused to charge one time, more on that later), which was a pleasant surprise.
• Ride on the highway is OK
• I liked having the "charging grade" on the Rivian nav's charging station details.

Cons/Issues

• UHF (Universal Hands Free) was unreliable and unusable for a lot of the trip. I paid for Autonomy+ hoping it would take some of the pain out of the long highway segments...only to have it fail and be unusable for hours at a time (non-specific "system fault" message, or just refusing to engage in the first place). This was about 50% of the time. The remaining 50% of the time, when it did "work"/let me engage it, it often wouldn't do lane change on command. Lane change on command was "not available on this road" about 80% of the time UHF was otherwise working. This is on major interstates like I-80, not some state backroad. I'm unsubscribing from Autonomy+ and asking for a refund for this month, not because I care that much about getting my $50 back, but because I want Rivian to see that in their tickets that I was dissatisfied with its behavior.
• Even the standard cruise control wasn't all that reliable -- it did enough phantom braking to make it annoying/not relaxing to use. It would occasionally slam on the brakes for no reason. Clear day, no traffic in front. One pattern I noticed was that it sometimes freaked out from the shadow of an overpass.
• During one two-hour segment of the drive, the car repeatedly "dinged" at me because it thought one of my kids was unbuckled. Then it would detect him as buckled again and be quiet, but a few seconds later it would start dinging again. It did this for the better part of two hours. I almost lost my mind. Fortunately, it didn't happen again after the next time we stopped, because I was about to go insane.
• Absolutely infuriating navigation bugginess — lots of little things (especially when trying to plan a route in the mobile app), but the biggest issue was one time we sent a plan from the Rivian iOS app while we were stopped to charge, because I was trying to plan out where we were going to stop and charge next while we had dinner. Somehow, this screwed up the in-car nav so badly that we couldn't edit/control the route anymore, and it wouldn't display the "next destination" card (that shows your arrival charge and route option buttons). I've never seen this before. Trying to send new destinations from the app to try and kick it out of this bad mode only confused it more, to the point that we had to just reboot the car to fix it.
• AC is so weak even though I installed a full roof shade for this trip. I can’t imagine how people in actually hot climates survive.
• Ride tends to be crap on imperfect roads (already knew that, it's my biggest long term gripe with this vehicle...I have 20" wheels as well, they don't help much).
• Periodic loss of cloud connectivity, but only from one of our accounts. Monitoring a charging session from the mobile app was therefore challenging. I never experienced this before this trip, but half the time my phone showed "no cloud connectivity" when I opened the Rivian app. Even when it did this, though, I found I could send commands to the car -- I just wouldn't receive any data. My wife's phone (exact same model) worked fine. I restarted my phone, I deleted the Rivian app and reinstalled it. No effect. I've found similar reports from others with no definitive solution. It periodically would cure itself and work fine.
• Door handles squeal like stuck pigs when they deploy/retract in the heat.
• I really understand people's complaints about the lack of faster charging on Rivians now. Especially when you've got the Max pack that you're trying to fill up.
• And here's the biggie...the car initially refused to charge on our LAST STOP before getting home. No specific error message, just the red icon after attempting to start charging and "unplug and try again". Temps normal. Tried two charging stations, a Tesla and EA. Called Rivian. After screwing around for 30 minutes, unplugging and replugging, and TWO hard resets, vehicle finally started charging (they were getting ready to mobilize a tow truck). NOT confidence inspiring, to say the least, and my wife was starting to get really nervous. Rivian has no idea what was happening or why it didn't fix after the first hard reset, but did after the second. You know the only thing worse than a bug? A bug that fixes itself without you knowing the reason.

General notes/observations on the R1S and long range traveling with an EV in general
These are things that aren't really Rivian issues, just observations about roadtrips in an EV.

• As far as I can find, there's still no perfect EV trip planning tool. The big thing I want is timeboxed stops with amenity proximity. e.g., When we're setting out for the day on a long drive, I want to be able to say "find a charger near some restaurants for wherever we are during the 12-1pm timeframe on this planned trip, and plan on us charging for 45 minutes while we get lunch" and have that become part of the plan. You can kinda do this with ABRP, but it's fiddly and buggy and their UI isn't very good. If I had one wish for Rivian Assistant, it would be this kind of thing. As it is, I use the Rivan route planner, than manually pan through the route and try to guess how far we'll be around the target time, and check that in a separate app on my phone, then manually pan around the Rivian route planner to add a charger that's near restaurants for where we'll be at that time.
• Charging is not always convenient to a hotel. More than once I dropped my family off at a hotel, then drove a mile or two away to sit in the car for an hour while it charged to 100% (or close to it) so that we could start off the next morning without having to immediately stop to charge. When possible I booked a hotel with L2 EV charging, but that wasn't always in the cards.
• Charging was expensive. I didn't pick charging stations based on cost; it was more about convenience to amenities. And I knew supercharging wasn't cheap, but I was shocked at how much we spent. With the average MPG we got on our old V6 Kia Telluride (our previous large SUV), I calculate that we would have spent ~$400 on gas -- less than what we spent charging the Rivian, even with gas around ~$5/gallon. (I bought a Tesla charging membership for $12.99 before we went but as far as I can tell it wasn't "used", I'm not sure what I missed. We wound up not charging at all that many Tesla chargers anyway.)
• It's kind of annoying that some charging stations don't have windshield cleaning things like gas stations always do -- we killed a lot of bugs!
• A significant portion of the Tesla chargers we ran into had not been upgraded with the longer cables.
• Multiple Electrify America stations we went to had some chargers that were significantly slower than others (150 kW vs 350 kw). You've got to pay attention to which one you pull into. Why they wouldn't upgrade all of them to the same speed I don't know.

Other Comments
I know many of you go on road trips and experience virtually no issues whatsoever -- I'm glad for you. Obviously our experience wasn't so smooth.

Admittedly, a lot of the cons on their own are somewhat minor things -- the door handles, the mobile app issues, nav bugginess, etc. But add all that up, plus the major issues -- namely the charging scare, where we thought we had made it nearly 2k miles only to have to get towed within hours of home -- and I have to say my overall experience was a solid "C" at best. I spent a fair amount of the trip dealing with frustrations related to the car not performing/behaving as we expected. Not relaxing. The number of issues I had on my last Tesla road trip? 0.

Immediately on getting home, I opened up a service ticket for many of the issues -- the charging hiccup, the mobile app connectivity issues, the seatbelt thing, the door handles, the UHF issues. And now I get to wait 6+ weeks until the first available appointment. Which means we are going on one more roadtrip in July (not nearly as long) with all these issues.

Conclusion
I love the Rivian in theory but in practice...this wasn't great. Any car should do better than this, let alone one that has a sticker of ~$100k. The problem is, short of going back to ICE, which I don't really want to do, I don't know what else I would get. We want three rows and lots of space to haul things. The closest thing that I find interesting is the Cadillac Vistiq (which I know has superb on-road manners), but it has 25% less range than our Max and no frunk -- two big negatives. Plus its overall design vibe is more pure "luxury" than "utility-focused but nice", which is something I really like about the Rivian.

So for now, I don't think I'm changing cars, unless we have worse experiences on a future roadtrip. But I'm keeping a close eye on the market, eagerly anticipating what Rivian might do for a "gen 3" R1S, and hoping they can patch some things up with software updates in the meantime.

P.S. Found a parking buddy in a parking garage in Philly on June 6...matte-wrapped with New Jersey plates.

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[SwampNut]

As far as I can find, there's still no perfect EV trip planning tool. The big thing I want is timeboxed stops with amenity proximity. e.g., When we're setting out for the day on a long drive, I want to be able to say "find a charger near some restaurants for wherever we are during the 12-1pm timeframe on this planned trip, and plan on us charging for 45 minutes while we get lunch" and have that become part of the plan. You can kinda do this with ABRP, but it's fiddly and buggy and their UI isn't very good. If I had one wish for Rivian Assistant, it would be this kind of thing. As it is, I use the Rivan route planner, than manually pan through the route and try to guess how far we'll be around the target time, and check that in a separate app on my phone, then manually pan around the Rivian route planner to add a charger that's near restaurants for where we'll be at that time.

Yeah, it's funny-sad that we can teach an AI to land a rocket on a ship but we can't do this. My stop style is to have a few options in mind, where one is closer (if I gotta pee) and one is the last possible safe charge, and some in between. Then pick by amenities, mood etc.

Charging was expensive. I didn't pick charging stations based on cost; it was more about convenience to amenities. And I knew supercharging wasn't cheap, but I was shocked at how much we spent. With the average MPG we got on our old V6 Kia Telluride (our previous large SUV), I calculate that we would have spent ~$400 on gas -- less than what we spent charging the Rivian, even with gas around ~$5/gallon. (I bought a Tesla charging membership for $12.99 before we went but as far as I can tell it wasn't "used", I'm not sure what I missed. We wound up not charging at all that many Tesla chargers anyway.)

Yes, all DCFC is expensive, Tesla with the subscription is nearly always the lowest cost. I did a comparison of my R1T charging cost to an F150, and the EV was barely less than the ICE truck.

Multiple Electrify America stations we went to had some chargers that were significantly slower than others (150 kW vs 350 kw). You've got to pay attention to which one you pull into. Why they wouldn't upgrade all of them to the same speed I don't know.

EA is a complete shitshow, and has left me semi-stranded twice. And I lost count of how many bad charges I have had with them. I'm done, it's Tesla only for me.

 

[tobyringle]

Thank you fellow Hoosier for the detailed trip review! Sounds like some of those issues were definitely concerns. And when on vacation, that only adds to the stress. For our trip to Canada last summer, we decided to just rent a gas vehicle vs our R1S, to avoid the extra travel time for charging. For us, it was worth it.

 

[commanderSalamander]

Thanks for the detailed report, and I'm sorry for all the issues you had. I recently ordered an R2, which I believe ships with RivianOS 2.0 software. I take a lot of long road trips, so I'll be very curious to see if I experience any similar issues.

 

[mkennedy009]

OP, Appreciate the honest write up. You balance the forum.

 

[2kwik4u]

I spent a fair amount of the trip dealing with frustrations related to the car not performing/behaving as we expected. Not relaxing.

This sums up my experience with Rivian in two sentences. You have to WANT to own one of these, it doesn't make itself easy to own.

I love the Rivian in theory but in practice...this wasn't great. Any car should do better than this, let alone one that has a sticker of ~$100k. The problem is, short of going back to ICE, which I don't really want to do, I don't know what else I would get.

100% agree. I might buy another, but it's not because I think it's a stellar product, it's because I lack compelling alternatives. Tough place for a brand to be when it's not "the best", but rather the "lease worst".

 

[TTedP]

1. EA blows.
2. Use the grades filter for chargers. 'A' or bust.
3. Most of the turnpike rest areas in PA, NJ, NY are kicking off Tesla and installing 3rd party universal chargers that dont show up on our nav systems -they seem new and good quality.
4. Go Birds

 

[Golfer04]

I love my R1T, but I can't bring myself to risk it when we go to Pensacola 2-3 times a year (2,000 mile round trip). Stuff like this is just too annoying. The list of things my son's new Subaru Forester ($35,000) does better than my $95,000 Rivian is too long to even start here. They need to get the basic stuff right and quit with the aerial backflip crap.

 

[SwampNut]

I love my R1T, but I can't bring myself to risk it when we go to Pensacola 2-3 times a year (2,000 mile round trip). Stuff like this is just too annoying. The list of things my son's new Subaru Forester ($35,000) does better than my $95,000 Rivian is too long to even start here. They need to get the basic stuff right and quit with the aerial backflip crap.

My longest road trips have been around 1700 miles, and I haven't experienced any of this, and would still take the EV instead of ICE. My ONLY road trip issues have been with EA chargers.

 

[2kwik4u]

1. Most of the turnpike rest areas in PA, NJ, NY are kicking off Tesla and installing 3rd party universal chargers that dont show up on our nav systems -they seem new and good quality

I've used several of the chargers along I-90 in New York. The "Applegreen" center chargers are quite nice and seem to work well. Wish they were included in the in-dash nav though.

 

[2kwik4u]

I love my R1T, but I can't bring myself to risk it when we go to Pensacola 2-3 times a year (2,000 mile round trip). Stuff like this is just too annoying. The list of things my son's new Subaru Forester ($35,000) does better than my $95,000 Rivian is too long to even start here. They need to get the basic stuff right and quit with the aerial backflip crap.

I can agree with most of this. All of my problems are not EV related, they're all Rivian related.

Drove my wifes 8yr old (almost 100k mile) Nissan Rogue into work the other day. It had a better ride, didn't sound like a broken hay wagon, the sunroof opened, and I had zero issues with the key working or the HVAC vents being aimed wrong. Just basic "car stuff" worked fine.

They're working hard to be a "car of the future" when they really need to be a "car of the present" first.

 

[rogersmj]

They're working hard to be a "car of the future" when they really need to be a "car of the present" first

Yes. There's other "car of the present" problems that I didn't even list here. HVAC auto mode sometimes goes off the reservation and has a mind of its own -- my wife was varying the temp between 72 and 78 just to get comfortable. Keyless entry, while WORLDS better since the UWB update, still has a lag sometimes where I walk up to the car and stand there like an idiot for a few seconds before it unlocks. The audio streaming just...stops sometimes. FM radio locks into a station sometimes and doesn't let you change it.

This is all stuff that's been solved on every other car for a decade or two.

Not to mention the lack of some creature comforts you would normally expect, like auto-heated/cooled seats which nearly every other car I've owned in the last 10 years has had.

The good news is, a lot of this could be fixed with software. But will it be? I know the punchline around here is voice texting, and that it took years for that feature to be implemented while most other cars have had it for a long time. (I couldn't care less about voice texting, but just to make the point.)

Unfortunately the ride on the R1S seems unfixable.

Like I said...I want Rivian to succeed and I like the idea of the product, but the execution falls short. When people ask me if I recommend it...I only do so with caveats/reservations.

 

[KBabione]

I'm glad you made the trip - Nice photos! A couple thoughts:

• As mentioned above, EA sucks. I've had issues with the EA fast chargers at the corporate headquarters in Reston, VA exactly as you described. It's not the Rivian - it's EA. The only reason I go there is because there's a Wegman's there and I can do my shopping and charge.
• To get the discount your Tesla membership provides you CANNOT just plug and play. If you just plug in you get screwed twice: You pay the non-membership Tesla rate plus the Rivian markup. What you need to do is to pull up to a Tesla charger, open the app, select the charger number and click "Start Charging" and THEN plug in. That will link the Tesla charger to your membership and you're only billed by Tesla.
• The Tesla chargers on the PA Turnpike are for Teslas only. I wrote to my congresswoman to see if she had any influence and she put me in touch with the EV Charging person at the PA Turnpike. They are installing Applegreen L3 chargers and they worked just fine, with one caveat: They stop charging at 70% even if there's nobody else at the charger! I was heading to Columbus OH and needed to charge to 85% to comfortably get to Columbus with only the one stop but it quit at 70% so we needed another stop en route. I get it when the chargers are full, but when you're the only one there it's just stupid.

And yes - Our Gen1 will suddenly brake at shadows as well while using the cruise. It's really annoying and I hope it's something that they're able to fix. When those wonky things happen always do two things:

1. Get a photo of the screen - even if you miss the pop-up take the photo so you have a date/time stamp of the occurrence
2. Hold the hazard button down about 10 seconds or until you see a message pop-up on the screen that "Diagnostics have been captured" - that, along with the date/time stamp from your photo, will allow the SC to better determine what's going on

Hopefully you'll be able to stick with the Rivian...You're in a better place than I am since you have a Gen2 and autonomy upgrades should make the long-distance experience better. Thanks for posting such a well-written trip report.

 

[Orangecicle]

We just returned from our summer road trip: 3,500 miles from central Iowa, to Wilkes-Barre, PA, then to around Rockaway, NJ, then down to the Jersey Shore, then to Shenandoah National Forest, then to Spartanburg, SC. On the way home, we hit the Tail of the Dragon in Deals Gap, NC. Ton's of driving, tons of fun. We used about 1,500 kwh of energy. We had not Tesla charging failure (system could not connect to the mothership to confirm our credit info) but we found an alternative charger easily. The only problem we had along the way was the typical air conditioning drain problem, which we fixed as soon as we got home.

Deals Gap (photo by Killboy):

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Lucy the Elephant -- oldest roadside attraction in the US (Jersey Shore):

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World's Largest Mailbox (Casey, IL):

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Appalachian Trail (Shenandoah):

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Other than the air conditioner thing, it was a wonderful trip, and I was happy that in 2026, we could do it all in an EV.

 

[therealcmj]

• Periodic loss of cloud connectivity, but only from one of our accounts. Monitoring a charging session from the mobile app was therefore challenging. I never experienced this before this trip, but half the time my phone showed "no cloud connectivity" when I opened the Rivian app. Even when it did this, though, I found I could send commands to the car -- I just wouldn't receive any data. My wife's phone (exact same model) worked fine. I restarted my phone, I deleted the Rivian app and reinstalled it. No effect. I've found similar reports from others with no definitive solution. It periodically would cure itself and work fine.

Are you by chance using Home Assistant and the Rivian integration or the Rivolt thing?

I'm using the former and am pretty sure Rivian is either detecting it and blocking the account, or those sorts of tools polling is causing me to exceed the allowed rate limits.

When I have it happen I have to re-authenticate or at least disable it for a bit to get everything working again.

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