Driving R1T past 0% dead battery while towing 6x12 Trailer miss-hap

[Truffle]

First off-- what a beautiful place for this to happen! Whistler is jaw dropping

Secondly-- instead of dropping the trailer, why not turn around and head back to Squamish? I would imagine the extra weight pushing you back down the hill would have helped get you some extra regen juice and you could have made it back-- what do you think?

Totally crossed my mind but the math made less sense based on our proximity to destination.. and honestly I don’t know how much regen truly does make an impact in these conditions. Be curious to determine that. I was trying to utilize regen in any downhill and I was also tailgating where I could to pickup the slingshot

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[TheIglu]

Well, if I had to do it all over again, I'd get this and bring along a NEMA 14-50R to L14-30p adaptor. That one is large/heavy though. If you have empty trailer space and can use it as a whole house backup generator though....

But, I got a nice little Honda E3000i generator for free, so I use that with a L6-30p to TT-30R adaptor, then a TT-30p to NEMA 14-50R adaptor. Already had the second adaptor to be able to plug in at my in-laws garage, so super easy. Plus the Honda is fairly small/light and can still charge at 120v/21amps.

Won't be charging fast, but if I can hit 5mph in charge rate, that's good enough for emergencies. I also have a full living setup in my trailer (bed, kitchen, etc), so it would be easy/comfortable for a 5 hour wait if I wanted to get 15 miles of towing range. And I always have 10-20 gallons of dinosaur juice, so fueling the generator is a non-issue.

 

[KootenayEV]

Driven that road many times, though since moving away have only been back with my EVs a few times, and not towing. I could see how it would catch you off-guard.

I use ABRP for any trips where I have stuff attached to the car or am towing something and generally it helps me find those trip legs that might cause problems! (Though not always, for instance it had the Revelstoke to Nakusp portion of highway mapped at only 60 km/h rather than 90... so I had a tight experience along that route to Nelson once [before they installed chargers in Nakusp]).

For my regular "high-consumers", I have done controlled tests to figure out the consumption rate I manually enter in ABRP for my car. When I get my R1T, I plan to do the same thing with my travel trailer.

 

[Truffle]

Driven that road many times, though since moving away have only been back with my EVs a few times, and not towing. I could see how it would catch you off-guard.

I use ABRP for any trips where I have stuff attached to the car or am towing something and generally it helps me find those trip legs that might cause problems! (Though not always, for instance it had the Revelstoke to Nakusp portion of highway mapped at only 60 km/h rather than 90... so I had a tight experience along that route to Nelson once [before they installed chargers in Nakusp]).

For my regular "high-consumers", I have done controlled tests to figure out the consumption rate I manually enter in ABRP for my car. When I get my R1T, I plan to do the same thing with my travel trailer.

Solid advice here..was caught off guard due to complacency really .. having driven the route hundreds of times and nit realizing just how much the uphill route would zap the batteries. Lesson learnt with minimal hurt... I am quite concerned however doing a Nelson trip or something in actual cold weather (would not even begin to do it with the trailer). Snowmobile going in the bed of the truck for those long routes...

 

[Tahoe Man]

The main problem is the charging infrastructure isn't up to par and towing adds to the woes. There's not enough chargers, there's reliably issues, speed issues, etc. When that gets sorted out and fixed is anyone's guess. You can only do so much planning and prep work and hauling around a gas generator seems to defeat the purpose of owning a EV but I understand why some may do it.

 

[GA_Rivian]

- Departed Whistler,BC with 100% charge on my 2023 R1T w/20" A/T and an empty 2018 6x12 Continental Tailwind trailer hooked up. Towing mode on.
- Total weight of R1T + Trailer [I drove it onto a scale] = 9,500lbs / 4313kg

Any idea what the trailer alone weighed? Asking because we plan on towing approx 1500# trailer a lot.

 

[MountainRatMatt]

My opinion on charger etiquitte. As long as you are pulling current you are welcome to sit at the charger, as soon as you are done charging then get your vehicle off the charger ASAP for the next person.

You never know anyone's particular situation but there is no excuse for leaving your car in a charging spot and not pulling current. That is just as bad as ICEing.

Glad you got it figured out even though it took longer than expected.

 

[Truffle]

Any idea what the trailer alone weighed? Asking because we plan on towing approx 1500# trailer a lot.

Indeed, the weight of my trailer (weighed it empty) is about 1700lbs

 

[bemulligan]

Well, being it's my first post here - let me begin with stating that this is by far and away my own error. With that said, there's a few worthy lessons and data points to share here so I figured I better post while certainly take some heat on.

April.15.2023
- Departed Whistler,BC with 100% charge on my 2023 R1T w/20" A/T and an empty 2018 6x12 Continental Tailwind trailer hooked up. Towing mode on.
- Total weight of R1T + Trailer [I drove it onto a scale] = 9,500lbs / 4313kg
- Destination Vancouver, BC = 130km's / 80 Miles [weather was above freezing and grew milder to 12degrees C in vancouver]
- Reading ~480km range estimated w/ Tow Mode [knew this would change once in motion]
- Arrive Vancouver with 260km estimated range [towing trailer impacted range by ~2X]
- Pickup a new Fridge [+265lbs] + Girlfriend + Dog + Items [200lbs] = 465lbs
- Drive back to Whistler; navigation says nope you will need a charge.
- Stop in Squamish, BC and plug into a 50kw mini fast charger for about 30mins and decide to leave with approximately 110km estimated in Tow Mode
- We had to sit parked for 40mins waiting to get on charger because an inconsiderate person stayed on it for 125minutes and left their car.
- Distance remaining to my house in Whistler = 60km s and we had 110KM Estimated Range in Tow Mode showing on the dash.

Believing I had now set myself up with a bit of battery buffer, we depart. The road from squamish to whistler is full of up hills and is a mountainous pass on a beautiful perfectly smooth highway. It did start to rain decently hard and my driving style was very grandma the whole way knowing I was aiming to conserve battery. Temps above freezing. We had normal A/C and heated seats w/music going to start...

Then it got interesting as we were climbing hills roughly halfway there the battery started dropping very quick and with roughly 40kms destination range on the journey the "you need to plug in because you will not make it" message displayed. Now the anxiety really sets in because there is no turning back and the nearest plug is beyond estimated range. A/C goes off and music heightening anxiety. We make it another short distance and I say f*ck it to the trailer - dropped it on the side of the road in record speed and aim for the nearest charger which is still beyond estimated distance.

With ~10kms distance to Whistler (google maps via phone) the "you must pull over battery is done sign" clicks on and speed is reduced [= about 60km/h] so we continue on and the battery gets to 0% and we hold our breath and keep pressing. We make it into Whistler Village Creekside and there is a very mild incline that the truck literally goes down to maybe 5km/h speed and we inch our way up this thing to enter a parkade which is supposed to have 3 chargers available. Someone was watching out for us because this truck pulled into the middle stall doing 1km/h snail crawl and it was open with two vehicles charging either side. The truck was basically shutting itself down as I plugged it in with the tightest butthole in town.

- So, we have well establish that beyond 2X distance reduction is expected especially with hills involved while towing a medium weight trailer.
- You can expect to see roughly 10kms of distance beyond 0% in an "emergency" scenario.
- I'm an idiot and should have stayed plugged into the squamish charger for an extra 15mins (so much for my etiquette and courteous course of action)
- I should/could have dropped the trailer sooner on the side of the road and perhaps made it to that charger.
- Once plugged in, it took 35-40minutes for the first 1KM of charge to transfer/register on the App (yikes)

Alas, we plugged her in for few hours on the 6.6kw charger... walked the dog, ate some good food. Then drove 10mins to a different 50kw fast charger and plugged in another 2 hours (ate more good food) then finally drove back down the highway 30mins and got the trailer and arrived home safely way later than expected with a few new grey hairs.

Hope you enjoyed this miss-hap that one can only blame themselves for - cheers.

Thank you for this great story! I’ve been there, just not towing. I think you illustrate a flaw in EV range calculation that Rivian and most other EV manufactures have not figured out.

If your trip had been reversed (Vancouver to Whistler and back) you would not have run into trouble. When you start at a high altitude and your halfway point is a lower altitude, your estimated range is based on your efficiency going downhill. You made your decision to leave with a reasonable buffer based on that optimistic estimate. In reality, you will not only fail to match that efficiency, you will do worse than your normal average.
I am curious, when you left Vancouver, did you enter your destination in the Rivian nav? I wonder if it took the elevation gain into account. Tesla does this but I don’t think anyone else does.

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