Effects of cold weather and wind on range - R1T owner's observation

[RivianNowPlz]

Can you manually precondition the battery at any time? This is important for winter range. My Tesla takes a huge hit in winter driving (I'm in Minnesota) and see weeks at a time at 0 or below sometimes a bit above.

Here is the thing though with preconditioning and Tesla.. there are 2 types of preconditioning the car can do and its likely untested amongst most owners but anyone who lives in cold weather can attest - when I "navigate" to a supercharger on my car it will precondition the battery for supercharging and this gets the battery far warmer than the "scheduled precondition" I can put this for 7am and leave at 7am and while the battery won't be cold, it won't be fully warm. But if I send to the car to navigate to a SC my battery gets ready and my range goes close to normal summer driving.

What I want to know about in the Rivian is both if you can manually precondition without scheduling and if you can keep it going warm to get it as hot and ready as possible because if you can I think this is how you'll see the least amount of range reduction.

Ultimately, I expect to use the Cybertruck/Raptor for my longer road(winter) trips.. the former if it ever comes out and the later just because it's fully awesome. I'm also getting the Hummer but.. jury is out on that of course from a winter efficiency side.

Sponsored

 

[SeaGeo]

I’ve seen several people getting around 270 on highway in warmer temps, and that was on 20” ATs.

It depends on your speed. If you assume 290 miles at 70mph, and the majority of the energy is going to wind resistance you get down to about 230 miles at 80. It's obviously not quite that bad because some of it is due to rolling resistance, but you shouldn't expect 270 @ 80mph.

Edit: also just realized I used 80 instead of 75mph in my original math.

 

[Gabe1aron]

Thanks for your post.
Fwiw…. It’s best to not charge to 100% and then let the vehicle sit for hours at that state. It increases battery degradation.

second, Its also a good idea to have the battery stop charging right before you leave (set a timer to have it start late at night) so it’s warm when you start driving and will therefore be more efficient and hold charge longer in the cold.

 

[pc500]

On Monday I made a 250 mile trip for the first time in relatively cold weather. I charged to 100% on my son's level 2 charger, then parked the R1T in his driveway for the night - 16 degrees. After charging the truck was predicting 310 miles of range in Conserve. By morning the range had decreased to 301 miles.

Across the state the predicted wind was 18-19 mph from the northwest for the whole day. Temps for the trip ranged from 16-19 degrees, roads were dry.

The first leg of the trip was pretty much straight north on interstate highways, mostly flat with the wind coming in at the driver's front fender. My speed was 70-80 mph, averaging around 75. I stopped at an EA 114 miles in. Charging set to 85% limit. At that point I was at 49% SOC (151 miles range predicted). Charging on a EA 350 KW port at 18 degrees - "Charging limited while battery conditioning" warning displayed, initial charge rate 27 KW. After about 10 minutes "Conditioning complete" displayed, charge rate ramped quickly to 121 KW, then slowly ramped up to a peak of 131 KW at 63% SOC, then ramped down to 110 KW by 67%. By 70% rate had dropped to 88 KW, slowly ramping down to 55 KW by the time it ended at 85% SOC. On the EA receipt it said 52 KW delivered total - 114 miles traveled plus preconditioning and cabin warming loads while charging.

The next leg was northwest, so headwind all the way. I put HA/ACC on 70 mph for the next 50 miles of flat terrain, then turned onto a 2 lane highway going north through a mostly wooded, somewhat hilly area so the wind probably did not have quite the same negative effect as earlier. For the 2 lane part I was averaging 60 mph - for about 84 miles. I arrived home with 24% SOC (75 mile range estimated) and the temperature was 18 degrees.

So between 18 mph headwind and sub 20 degree temps the range definitely takes a hit. At 75 mph 50% of range consumed for 114 miles. The next leg with lower speeds consumed 61% of battery capacity for 134 miles.

Draw your own conclusions, but for me, I figure my max winter range is about 200 miles (less if traveling at higher speeds and/or in snow) before charging to give me a confortable range reserve.

I don't know if the compute accounts for it, but the book range with those 22" tires is 285-295 (not 300+).

However otherwise this seems normal. Slowing down a little (65mph) would help materially, but not enough to avoid a charge stop so that doesn't matter.

It would help if they had a precondition battery now button so you could be ready to charge when you pulled up.

 

[Franksmartin]

I don't know if the compute accounts for it, but the book range with those 22" tires is 285-295 (not 300+).

However otherwise this seems normal. Slowing down a little (65mph) would help materially, but not enough to avoid a charge stop so that doesn't matter.

It would help if they had a precondition battery now button so you could be ready to charge when you pulled up.

Preconditioning would help. It also sounds like the OP let the truck sit in the driveway overnight so he left with a very cold battery and cabin. If it had been charging right before departure and the truck was pre-warmed it would have helped. I hope there is a way to warm the battery while plugged in.

 

[fastwheels]

Preconditioning would help. It also sounds like the OP let the truck sit in the driveway overnight so he left with a very cold battery and cabin. If it had been charging right before departure and the truck was pre-warmed it would have helped. I hope there is a way to warm the battery while plugged in.

I would have liked to stay plugged in until departure, but that was not possible. My son needed the overnight charge on his Bolt so the R1T had to sit out in the cold. Life is full of compromises...

 

[Franksmartin]

ould have liked to stay plugged in until departure, but that was not possible. My son needed the overnight charge on his Bolt so the R1T had to sit out in the cold. Life is ful

Even if you did keep it plugged in, would it keep the battery warm after it was fully charged to target? Since we don't have preconditioning i'm guessing it may not?

Good to know you left with a cold battery, because range would have been better. I'm guessing you would just need to time it so that the charge finished right before you leave, until they give us a preconditioning option.

 

[ajdelange]

Air resistance is a huge energy penalty (v^3) so I suspect the dominate factor..

It's bad enough but lets not make it worse than it is. Drag is proportional to the square of the velocity and the work required to overcome drag in going a given distance is proportional to the product of the distance and the drag. Therefore, the energy required per unit distance (Wh/mi) is proportional to the square of the velocity.

 

[fastwheels]

Even if you did keep it plugged in, would it keep the battery warm after it was fully charged to target? Since we don't have preconditioning i'm guessing it may not?

Good to know you left with a cold battery, because range would have been better. I'm guessing you would just need to time it so that the charge finished right before you leave, until they give us a preconditioning option.

From what I have seen I think it just might keep the battery somewhat warm. While in my garage at home plugged into a 120v outlet (still waiting on the electrician to wire up the Rivian EVSE box) I have noticed that after it hits the 70% target, charging will start back up every 90 minutes or so for about 5 minutes to recover what is being lost due to parasitic losses. The losses seem to be about 3%/day when sitting in my garage at around 40 degrees.

 

[jjswan33]

As an added cold weather data point. I drove last night from Hood River OR (sea level) to Government Camp OR (~4000 ft above sea level) and then down to Sandy OR (900 ft above sea level). The weather was mostly around 32 getting as low as mid 20s at elevation and snow on the ground above 2500 ft and rain at lower elevations.

For the whole trip I averaged about 1.75 mi/kWh. I thought that was pretty good.

It will be interesting to go for a drive today, we have 6" of snow on the ground here in Sandy, OR.

 

[s12dxer]

As an added cold weather data point. I drove last night from Hood River OR (sea level) to Government Camp OR (~4000 ft above sea level) and then down to Sandy OR (900 ft above sea level). The weather was mostly around 32 getting as low as mid 20s at elevation and snow on the ground above 2500 ft and rain at lower elevations.

For the whole trip I averaged about 1.75 mi/kWh. I thought that was pretty good.

It will be interesting to go for a drive today, we have 6" of snow on the ground here in Sandy, OR.

Oh Wow, it snowed here in Eugene but definitely didn't stick like you'all have.

I was hoping to try out the R1T in the snow

 

[ajdelange]

For the whole trip I averaged about 1.75 mi/kWh. I thought that was pretty good.

The truck has rated conumption of about 430 Wh/mi and you used 571 Wh/mi going down hill at moderate speed. The thing that probably ate you lunch was probably the snow on the road rather than the cold temps. Even so, not too bad.

 

[Arky]

Thanks for your post.
Fwiw…. It’s best to not charge to 100% and then let the vehicle sit for hours at that state. It increases battery degradation.

second, Its also a good idea to have the battery stop charging right before you leave (set a timer to have it start late at night) so it’s warm when you start driving and will therefore be more efficient and hold charge longer in the cold.

Hours is not going to kill a battery, consistently storing them at 100% will yeah but leaving it overnight (when it's typically cooler as well) isn't going to hurt as much as people think.

Sponsored