gj_washington
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Completed a wonderful 15 day trip down the West from Seattle to the Bay area and back in my R1T with wife and brother as co-pilots. It was the first long road trip. We covered over 2500 miles in early April weather - mix of snow, rain and some glorious spring days. The R1T with 21" tires performed admirably over the trip, reaffirming our confidence in the truck.
Some highlights:
Some highlights:
- Used the 'Conserve' mode a majority of the time, which netted us about 2.13 miles/kwh.
- Got to see some of the mythical RAN Charging Sites for the first time (why don't we have any in WA?). They work as advertised.
- The much-maligned Tonneau cover actually does a darn good job at keeping out the rain despite Rivian not officially claiming that it is weather proof. And the power mechanism stalls frequently but did not actually fail on me despite a good amount of use.
- We used the A/C power in the bed to power a small 20L refrigerator from Alpicool. There is no discernible impact on power consumption so I think we'll be using this more.
- Highway 101 and some of the coastal highways of OR and CA are a joy to drive in the Rivian.
- Auto-high beam hugely useful driving down 199 at night.
- Visited the Oregon dunes on the return trip and ventured out onto ATV tracks briefly to try out the the soft-sand mode. Worked pretty well in this limited trial.
- Rivian as an office - My brother joined a two hour video conference on his laptop from the back seat, while we were driving down I-5 in Southern OR. Laptop was plugged into the rear AC outlet and used the Rivian's hotspot. Quite an enabler.
- Adaptive cruise control - all three drivers used this extensively and found it an effective reducer of fatigue. I tried the lane tracking a few times but still find it a little scary and apt to turn off.
- Overall cost was about $130 for charging! We used RAN in 4 locations, complementary in-hotel L2 charging in one and discounted "Pass Plus" 36c per kwh from Electrify Americal super chargers for the rest.
- Nav generally worked pretty well but required cellular connectivity and there were some areas near the coast where the truck lost connectivity. This seems a shortcoming for an adventure truck.
- Took a while to work out some kinks in EA charging. I think this was EA's problem - my EA app would sometimes get stuck thinking a charging session was in progress when the truck was miles away. The phone support from EA was responsive. I sure wish Rivian would work out something with EA so Rivian owners can drive up, connect and get auto-identified and auto-billed without using the EA mobile app. (Umm, like Tesla owners).
- I scraped my front wheel against a high curb trying to take a turn that would have been a cinch in my car. Still this undoubtedly was driver error.
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. Left a gap in the window and rear seat passenger held the pole. If you do discover a good way to secure it I'd love to know because I hope to go back some day.
