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DC Throttling "battery conditioning"

Nolf

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This subject gets a lot of discussion only in part because a lot of us geek out on the technical details. More importantly, we like to have a basic understanding of the factors impacting charging time as it allows for better time management. In other words, it allows us to avoid sitting at a charging station for excessive amounts of time when the vehicle really isn't adding much charge. EVs are not like ICE vehicles where you will charge to 100% at every pit stop on a road trip (unless you like to waste significant amounts of time) so it's important to know what charging strategy will work best (ie, get you to your destination in the shortest elapsed time).
I was planning on just charging based on the timeI wanted to spend at a charger (e.g. outside shopping / food / or just to take a break). Especially initially, I'm not going to leap into long road trips with this thing where time or sense of urgency is a factor.
I just want to drive the thing and will look at the range as a guide as to when to stop. Just like with ICE, I don't plan on pushing the limits.
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Nolf

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Monitoring battery health is like scheduling oil changes. Some folks are obsessive about the type and timing of oil changes, others run it hard and dry until they blow a header.

And for some folks on here, it will be the last car they buy...
I don't have to graph when to change the oil. Pretty simple. Car tells me. Kind of like this. I assume the car will give me a range and I can make an assumption to stop within a certain mileage before 0. Never thought going from 0 to 100% was the only way to charge. If I save 10 minutes on a multi hour trip but need to spend hours evaluating seems like a bad ROI.
 
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SeaGeo

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I was planning on just charging based on the timeI wanted to spend at a charger (e.g. outside shopping / food / or just to take a break). Especially initially, I'm not going to leap into long road trips with this thing where time or sense of urgency is a factor.
I just want to drive the thing and will look at the range as a guide as to when to stop. Just like with ICE, I don't plan on pushing the limits.
Folks like you are exactly the person I was/am thinking of when I am bringing this up. *currently* the truck may frustrate you because the curve is inconsistent, and it's not verbose enough to tell you (or me) what's causing the poor charging performance.

I'm coming at this from the standpoint of if my in-laws were to buy this truck and go to drive it from Minnesota to Seattle. What's going to cause them to complain to me how shitty EVs are when they get to Seattle. If Rivian isn't managing temps well enough that it starts throttling to "battery condition" during charging and they're getting 50 miles instead of 20 minutes instead of 140 miles (or even just 100), they'll get frustrated. If the "battery conditioning" warning has a "click here for more info" box the explains why it's conditioning, and how to avoid that it would be a better band-aid.

And then long term, it would be good to know that they have a plan to address this so that they (or you) can just hop in and drive and have it perform as expected when it's 30 degrees out.
 

rogunenode

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I think it's a bit more about a lack of familiarity with how Rivian is choosing to deal with things.
Some will always want details, but right now Rivian's current charging is not meeting expectations, so many who might prefer not to care are interested. Though, I fully understand they are new to the market and likely will improve. This is something we need to learn about Rivian, how timely and effective will they be with updates. It is promising to already have seen UI bugs and features improvement via updates. Hoping we'll see charging improvements via software sooner rather than later, along with improved company communications.

Side note, if they can improve communications, they'll already have surpassed Tesla.
 

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If the "battery conditioning" warning has a "click here for more info" box the explains why it's conditioning, and how to avoid that it would be a better band-aid.
This would be a fantastic way of allowing interested people new to EVs to learn more about how to improve their experience with their Rivian!

If Rivian includes the information in the owner’s manual and the button you propose takes the owner to that section of the manual then they’d hit 2 groups of owners who care about such things with minimal development. I say 2 groups because some owners will read the manual proactively while some will search for things only when an issue crops up.

The people who don’t care will never hit the button.

I assume you could even make this an Alexa option since some people don’t always notice or read on-screen displays. Alexa says, “It looks like your charging session is slower than it could be. Would you like to learn about battery preconditioning and how it affects charging to make things faster next time?” For those of us who lived through the ‘80s with cars telling us, “A door is ajar.” this might feel a little retro, but I could see some folks wanting Alexa to converse with them in plain language about vehicle issues and information. It could be interesting as an opt in option.
 

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Agree with @SeaGeo, some of us will embrace the adventure of methodically tracking range and charge characteristics while we road trip but we are in the slim minority of consumers. This trait is probably far more common amongst LE preorder holders so Rivian would be wise to improve the charge curve performance and consistency before more casual consumers start taking delivery. On a positive not their range guess-o-meter seems good so far.
 
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SeaGeo

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On a positive not their range guess-o-meter seems good so far
To far it seems great imo. Like... weirdly so from what I've seen.
 

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Agree with @SeaGeo, some of us will embrace the adventure of methodically tracking range and charge characteristics while we road trip but we are in the slim minority of consumers. This trait is probably far more common amongst LE preorder holders so Rivian would be wise to improve the charge curve performance and consistency before more casual consumers start taking delivery. On a positive not their range guess-o-meter seems good so far.
IMO, Tesla owners are the only ones right now who have the luxury of not being geeks on these things. Everyone asks me how far my Tesla can go, and instantly glaze over when I tell them "it depends". With a gas car, no one thinks about range, not because of the mpg or size of your tank, but because gas stations are everywhere and it's less than 5 minutes to top up. This is how we should be thinking about BEVs. If reliable DCFC is plentiful and you can get a lot of energy in the pack quickly, then the battery size and efficiency don't have a huge impact on your ability to get where you're going. If it's not plentiful, and the charging isn't reliably fast, then road tripping really requires more planning than most people are used to and can still quickly go south.

We recently got ICEd at a hotel charger while traveling for a family emergency. The front desk told us they couldn't help us, and the hotel was in the middle of nowhere. Literally would have had to drive 15 minutes away for a level 2 that might work and Uber back to the hotel, assuming we could get an Uber that late. Luckily Tesla had just opened a supercharger barely 10 minutes away, two weeks prior. It still sucked to have to drive and charge at midnight, but the next closest SC and EA station were over an hour away.
 
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SeaGeo

SeaGeo

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IMO, Tesla owners are the only ones right now who have the luxury of not being geeks on these things. Everyone asks me how far my Tesla can go, and instantly glaze over when I tell them "it depends".
I think there are plenty of cars where it doesn't matter. The original e-tron is like that. The Lucid is like that. I think the e-gmp cars will be once they get preconditioning working for the winter. The ID.4 is like that when it's warm out (obvious caveat there).

It obviously depends on where you are in the Country from an infrastructure standpoint. For example, I have CCS stations more readily available than SC stations. I expect that to become the norm pretty quickly here too.
 

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Folks like you are exactly the person I was/am thinking of when I am bringing this up. *currently* the truck may frustrate you because the curve is inconsistent, and it's not verbose enough to tell you (or me) what's causing the poor charging performance.

I'm coming at this from the standpoint of if my in-laws were to buy this truck and go to drive it from Minnesota to Seattle. What's going to cause them to complain to me how shitty EVs are when they get to Seattle. If Rivian isn't managing temps well enough that it starts throttling to "battery condition" during charging and they're getting 50 miles instead of 20 minutes instead of 140 miles (or even just 100), they'll get frustrated. If the "battery conditioning" warning has a "click here for more info" box the explains why it's conditioning, and how to avoid that it would be a better band-aid.

And then long term, it would be good to know that they have a plan to address this so that they (or you) can just hop in and drive and have it perform as expected when it's 30 degrees out.
Meh I'm going to roll with it. I don't always get consistent gas mileage either and manage to survive. If this is what it will take to simply drive an EV the industry is screwed.
 

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SeaGeo

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Meh I'm going to roll with it. I don't always get consistent gas mileage either and manage to survive. If this is what it will take to simply drive an EV the industry is screwed.
It should get better pretty quickly.
 

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I personally wouldn't even bother with a max pack unless it charges st 800v.
Agree. If I were one of the few and proud that needed the max pack, I would be waiting for 800v. Who knows, seems unlikely, but perhaps pre-march-1 max pack preorder holders will get 800v, new in-house motors, etc. :CWL:
 

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I hope that those issues can be solved by software updates and do not require hardware changes.

Manufacturers do tweak charging curves, but is anyone aware of such a big change (simply looking at the average charging rate) that was accomplished by software update alone?
Unfortunately yes with our 2014 Tesla model S - unfortunately it got MUCH worse, not better ;-(
 

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I am really glad I decided to skip the Max Pack. Definitely don't want to be sitting around waiting for that thing to charge. Maybe next generation ?
RJ mentioned a heat pump in forthcoming efforts during the 3/10 earnings call, but that did not seem to apply to the R1 gen. Is a retrofit or aftermarket HP possible?
Heat pumps are nice and all, but a relatively small efficiency boost compared to other tweaks. The R1T has a relatively small cabin and an enormous battery - I bet the kWh/cubic-foot ratio is probably well over 2x a Model 3/Y. That's not to say there's no benefit from a heat pump, but the marginal gains (in miles of range at low temperature) are much smaller than they were when Tesla rolled them out, so I can see why it wouldn't be a priority.

I don't think anyone should get their hopes up for a retrofit. The ROI just isn't there for Rivian when they're trying to scale new deliveries as fast as possible - why add a low-margin, probably niche retrofit to a service network that will already be struggling to keep up for the foreseeable future.
 

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Unfortunately yes with our 2014 Tesla model S - unfortunately it got MUCH worse, not better ;-(
Yeah, that's yet another way Tesla did 85kWh battery owners dirty. The charge throttling—even on rarely fast-charged batteries—is almost a crime. All so they can save some money and not replace battery packs under warranty. :confused:

We're coming up on the end of year 7 of our warranty, and I'm getting pretty nervous having this car for another year (or longer).
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