cold weather driving range

[rtobrien63]

took a road trip for ice climbing in western Maine. no local level 3 charging available... temprature 7 degrees F. charged to 99% (350 miles in conserve mode) arrived at destination 120 miles distance with battery at 46%... not enough to get home! my question is...is there a graph or other data that allows us to determine a more accurate range during cold temps. e.g., at 10 degrees F you will get X miles for Y% battery charge. thanks in advance for any help.

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[Zoidz]

ABRP (A Better Route Planner) lets you manually set the "Initial Vehicle Temperature" which will account for heating losses. The Premium version uses real time weather data.

I have not tried this feature so I can't vouch for it's accuracy.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

There is no linear chart for it AFAIK. Part of the reason why is it depends on your starting battery temperature. I bet you would have gotten closer to the advertised range if you had been preconditioned and had a warm battery. In my experience running the heater isn't as detrimental as starting off with a cold battery.

 

[rtobrien63]

i always start with a warm battery, but always start home with ambient temperature battery. should be able to figure out driving range with cold battery (?)

 

[Budman]

This is the data I've collected over the last 2.5 years. This is traveling the same route over and over. 40% of drive at 70mph freeway and 60% at 60mph state highways with many small town slowdowns.

 

[rtobrien63]

nice graphs... battery starting at ambient or warm?

 

[rtobrien63]

no offense intended, but data is sparse below 20 degrees ... 1 data point (?). Interesting your conclusion that all purpose would have the same battery consumption as conserve at low temperatures... thoughts?

 

[COdogman]

I have never seen a tool that will tell you that information. There are just too many local variables for any third party tool to account for. When it gets that cold I just assume the range may be 20-30% off and plan accordingly.

 

[DayTripping]

Not a lot of cold weather experience yet with my R1T. The one thing I have noticed that it takes a much longer time for a cold battery to ramp up to charge at the max on my L2 charging than my Teslas.

It took 50 minutes pumping in 48 amp before I got up to my typical 24-25 MPHR (miles per hour of range). By comparison, my Tesla parked next to it on a 40 amp L2 charger was already guzzling down electrons at its normal rate in under 20 minutes. I don't know exactly but more than 15 as that was the last time I looked before I checked at 20 minutes.

Both were parked outside in 22F. On my Tesla app, I had a notice that the batteries were warming. Nothing at all from Rivian other than my obviously diminished charge rate of about 11-14 MPHR.

So factor in time to warm the batteries before you can have a decent charge rate. It has turned what should have been a 2.5 hour charge session into an almost 4 hour one. I always charge just before I go to minimize degradation and to have the pack as warm as possible in the cold for departure.

 

[Budman]

no offense intended, but data is sparse below 20 degrees ... 1 data point (?). Interesting your conclusion that all purpose would have the same battery consumption as conserve at low temperatures... thoughts?

I count 4 data points....

Now 5, I just added one from a trip 2 days ago. The data is pretty consistent across all modes/Gen1 and 2. Extrapolate to colder weather if you need to.

Regarding the convergence of the All Purpose and Conserve at colder temperatures. I don't know the answer but will speculate that is because of the added power burden of heating the battery pack that negates the benefit of shutting down 2 of the 4 motors on the quad.

 

[not_a_car_guy]

One option that might work is on your way home to drive to the closest L2 charger you can find, plug in for about an hour to get your battery temperature up, and then drive home. You should get better range that way.

Also, if you drove up into the mountains, I would think to get the best possible benefit of regen on the way back down, you will want your battery temp up to higher than 60 degrees F (that's an anecdotal number not scientific). So that's another reason to get to a L2 and then warm up your battery.

If there isn't an L2 nearby, you might have luck using the portable charger in any outlet. I've not tested this, but I assume any amount of charging will help warm up your battery.

 

[egar]

I have never seen a tool that will tell you that information. There are just too many local variables for any third party tool to account for. When it gets that cold I just assume the range may be 20-30% off and plan accordingly.

I've only had my Gen2 R1T a couple of months, but most of the time it's been in the 10's thru 30's. I've found the in vehicle route planning to be very close predictor for real world range and state of charge. It's just a little bit on the conservative side, so if the trip planner says I can make it, I feel pretty confident that I'll be safe.

I'm on a long road trip right now, about 3,000 miles round trip, and the range and charging plans have been very good. I tried ABRP for the first 1,000 miles, but found it a bit fiddly (I'm a rookie with ABRP), so I stopped looking at that and just rely on the truck to plan for me.

 

[usulio]

took a road trip for ice climbing in western Maine. no local level 3 charging available... temprature 7 degrees F. charged to 99% (350 miles in conserve mode) arrived at destination 120 miles distance with battery at 46%... not enough to get home! my question is...is there a graph or other data that allows us to determine a more accurate range during cold temps. e.g., at 10 degrees F you will get X miles for Y% battery charge. thanks in advance for any help.

Was there an elevation difference? How fast were you driving?

 

[not_a_car_guy]

Also, wanted to add that ABRP live data collects the battery temperature. I don't know if it actually uses that in its calculations. Here's a snapshot from the ABRP website of the live data from my vehicle, you can see the battery temp reported:

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