80A L2 charging

[Dark-Fx]

Now that Ford has announced the F-150 will be available with dual chargers to enable the truck to charge at the full speed of the L2 spec, I'm wondering if Rivian is going to reconsider only offering a single charger that will only do 48A. That's the biggest concern of mine if I were to get the Max pack, it would not recharge fully over a full night of sitting on the charger. I mentioned this to them a while back but never received a response. I currently have a 40A and 32A L2 charger in my garage, but it would be trivial to hardwire it for an 80A.

Of course having an L3 setup that supports V2H is always an acceptable substitute for me, if you are listening, Rivian. Any L3 chargers currently on the market are stupid expensive and don't support feeding backwards.

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[n8dgr8]

Now that Ford has announced the F-150 will be available with dual chargers to enable the truck to charge at the full speed of the L2 spec, I'm wondering if Rivian is going to reconsider only offering a single charger that will only do 48A. That's the biggest concern of mine if I were to get the Max pack, it would not recharge fully over a full night of sitting on the charger. I mentioned this to them a while back but never received a response. I currently have a 40A and 32A L2 charger in my garage, but it would be trivial to hardwire it for an 80A.

Of course having an L3 setup that supports V2H is always an acceptable substitute for me, if you are listening, Rivian. Any L3 chargers currently on the market are stupid expensive and don't support feeding backwards.

How far are you driving per day? Needing a full charge every night is a small portion of the population. Even Tesla gave up in 80 amp charging.

 

[monzarottie]

How far are you driving per day? Needing a full charge every night is a small portion of the population. Even Tesla gave up in 80 amp charging.

Exactly. Highly unlikely to run the battery down that far in a day. In the rare instance I do, an overnight charge would be plenty sufficient for a normal day's driving. Otherwise, DCFC is an option.

 

[Dark-Fx]

How far are you driving per day? Needing a full charge every night is a small portion of the population. Even Tesla gave up in 80 amp charging.

Teslas on the market aren't able to pull an 11,000 lbs trailer. And they certainly don't have a pack that wouldn't get a full charge overnight on a 48A charger. Rivian has stated that it reduces range by about half. I'm assuming that is under ideal weather conditions. Pulling that same trailer through heavy snow will probably further reduce the range by another half.

I can't really say if I'll ever need it for sure, but I'd rather be given the option to pay for something I don't end up needing versus finding out I need it and can't get it. I don't currently have a vehicle that can tow 11,000 lbs but that fact also stops me from being able to get a trailer that could meet or exceed that.

*Edited to add:
My local electric rate for EV specific time-of-use is a 10 hour window. If I were to take that rate it would only be an 8.5 hour window before I have to leave for work. I'm on the standard ToU which starts 2 hours earlier.

8.5 hours wouldn't even get me 100kWh of charge on a 48A charger. Even the 300 mile pack would end up limited to somewhere around 200 miles a day. I have occasional back-to-back days in my Bolt where I exceed that number without having to stop for a charge. Heck, GM is putting a charger that size (48A) in the 66kWh Bolts starting in 2022.

 

[trickflow]

I wrote this in another thread, Rivian said 25 miles per hour on L2. That's 12 hours 0-100 on the 300 mile pack and 16 hours 0-100 on the 400 miles pack.

Everyone that says it's not necessary to have it quicker has never stayed overnight in a hotel with L2 charging and wanted to go on the next morning 8 hours later. 8 hours will get you 200 miles, that's pretty low.

Now on the other hand, most EVSEs in hotels that I stayed at are in the 6.6 range and even the Tesla HPWC are usually not 220 volt / 48 AMP, but it's just something to think about.....

If you come back from a trip on a Sunday night with 10% left with a 400 mile pack and have to drive far for work the next day, it will be a slight annoyance as you may need to fast charge. Might be an edge case, but I really feel any EV needs to be engineered to charge within an 8 hour window L2.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Might be an edge case, but I really feel any EV needs to be engineered to charge within an 8 hour window L2.

That's exactly my thoughts about it. Part of what makes EVs amazing is that you can always start the next day with a full battery. Won't be the case once charging times are much over 8 hours. The 180kWh Rivian will take more than double that to get a full charge. Will I run the battery down that far very often? No. I don't do that in my Bolt very often either. But I *do* on occasion. Part of me hopes that is why they delayed the larger pack, because they are re-engineering the onboard chargers.

 

[timesinks]

I don't think anyone expects to have hotels with reliable 19kW/80A L2 chargers. Adding even just 100 miles of range over night at a hotel would be a great perk, but if I were planning to drive 200-400 miles per day, I'd also be fully expecting to rely on DCFC infrastructure.

If I'm only doing 200-300 miles, I might try to push it without stops, but if I'm logging longer days than that, I'm going to be making a bunch of stops anyways. The charging infrastructure will get to the point where I can plug in where I would have stopped anyways.

As for rolling home with less than 10% charge and needing to drive more than 200 miles first thing the next morning -- I can't even imagine winding up in that situation. And if I knew I'd need to hit the road in the morning, I'd probably swing by a DCFC on the way home the night before.

 

[monzarottie]

That's exactly my thoughts about it. Part of what makes EVs amazing is that you can always start the next day with a full battery. Won't be the case once charging times are much over 8 hours. The 180kWh Rivian will take more than double that to get a full charge. Will I run the battery down that far very often? No. I don't do that in my Bolt very often either. But I *do* on occasion. Part of me hopes that is why they delayed the larger pack, because they are re-engineering the onboard chargers.

Personally, I don't like charging to 100% (full) since it significantly reduces regen braking (at least in my Model 3)

 

[Dark-Fx]

Personally, I don't like charging to 100% (full) since it significantly reduces regen braking (at least in my Model 3)

It does on the Bolt as well. I expect it to on the Rivian also. I can make it past the reduced regen without needing the mechanical brakes but it does require leaving a lot more space for the first 2-3 miles. Back when GM actually let me charge to 100% I could drive the entire 20 miles to work and still be in the range of full that reduces regen if I was really taking it easy. I usually only charge to 100% on days where I know I'll end up with less than 1/4 battery life left after my planned day. Lowest I've pulled into my driveway with was 3% on a day I charged to full, and did no other charging during the day.

 

[CommodoreAmiga]

Everyone that says it's not necessary to have it quicker has never stayed overnight in a hotel with L2 charging and wanted to go on the next morning 8 hours later. 8 hours will get you 200 miles, that's pretty low.

That's 3 hours of driving. Do yourself a favor and stop to stretch your legs for 20-30 minutes at a DCFC. Problem solved!

 

[DucRider]

80A charging is something that <5% of the owners will need <5% of the time they charge.

If you were Rivian.....

 

[trickflow]

80A charging is something that <5% of the owners will need <5% of the time they charge.

If you were Rivian.....

If I were Rivian.... I would look to see the my closest coemption can charge in 8 hours of time and I would not want to come in stating to a potential customer that my vehicle basically takes all day to charge. Plug in at 10PM the night before, finish charging at 2PM the next day. Also to mention that some of us on TOU with the power company will not want to charge during the expensive time.

And with your thinking, the average American drives about 30 miles a day. Why not just do that?

 

[Mjhirsch78]

If I were Rivian.... I would look to see the my closest coemption can charge in 8 hours of time and I would not want to come in stating to a potential customer that my vehicle basically takes all day to charge. Plug in at 10PM the night before, finish charging at 2PM the next day. Also to mention that some of us on TOU with the power company will not want to charge during the expensive time.

And with your thinking, the average American drives about 30 miles a day. Why not just do that?

This is all based on underselling the charging in order to hype up their 80 amp stuff. Based on their stated 3 days of charging a house using 30 kw/day means we are looking at roughly 90 kw usable battery for the 230 range truck (or perhaps 90 kw allowed with some floor to not drain the truck completely). Even at standard 9.6 kw level 2 charging, that will take 9 hours from 0 to 100. Jumping to the 300 range with similar rating (looking like 2.5 miles/kw based solely on guesstimates from their spec sheets) means it would be about 120 kw usable which means 12 hours from empty to full.

To be blunt, if that isn’t enough, you need to sleep more.

Granted this is all guesswork for their battery size and mileage.

 

[DucRider]

If I were Rivian.... I would look to see the my closest coemption can charge in 8 hours of time and I would not want to come in stating to a potential customer that my vehicle basically takes all day to charge. Plug in at 10PM the night before, finish charging at 2PM the next day. Also to mention that some of us on TOU with the power company will not want to charge during the expensive time.

And with your thinking, the average American drives about 30 miles a day. Why not just do that?

It is a common tendency to project your use pattern or desires in a vehicle to a large percentage of the population. Sometimes it is true, often it is not.

200 miles a day is 73K per year.

Work trucks and fleets have a greater need for full charging overnight than commuter/adventure vehicles. Rivian has a focused and relatively niche target audience. They are not trying to make their vehicles fit for every use case and every possible consumer. The F150 will appeal to a different customer base (with some overlap).

Rivian did not see the need to add home charging capability at a higher rate than 25 miles/hr. 99% of home charging will be covered in only a few hours at that rate. If it is an absolute necessity, some small DCFC units are available that don't require 3 phase 480. They are even faster than an 80A L2 EVSE and can provide that charge speed to any EV with CCS - no built in dual chargers required.

 

[Canthoney]

Personally, I don't like charging to 100% (full) since it significantly reduces regen braking (at least in my Model 3)

It’s not really 100% though, right? I thought new electric cars have a 10-20% buffer on both sides? I remember reading Tesla is more aggressive in letting you use the full pack though

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