Mike@2
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We just completed our big adventure for the year traveling 5253 miles in our R1T dual motor large pack while towing our teardrop camper that weights about 2000lbs, through 12 states and two countries around the Great Lakes. Spending over month on the road seeing beautiful beaches, many lighthouses, cities, towns, little diners, and many national parks. So how was it to road trip towing a trailer in an electric pickup for over a month? It was an amazing trip the R1T performed in every aspect as it should. We spent $938.64 dollars charging, stopping 34 times to DC fast charge for an average of 33 min. Our average kWh cost was 43¢ with an overall average efficiency for the entire trip of 1.95 mi/kWh. This came to about 18¢ per mile, which was about the same as I was seeing with our ICE vehicle last year towing the same trailer across country. The truck performed amazingly, towing was a non-issue and the software for us accurately calculated the weight of the trailer and did a pretty good job estimating our range. It was conservative for the first hour or two within the planned route but upon arrival it was usually within a percent or a mile two. We were on all types of roads pothole Urban, super highway, rural back roads and many wash boarded dirt tracks. Went through downpours that turn the roads into a rivers within minutes without any problems and in comfort, we even saw a small funnel cloud that never touched down in Ohio. The interior of the truck held up without issues, even living in it for a month. Just a very comfortable high-quality vehicle to travel in.
Thoughts:
The navigation software works fairly well, but not as flawlessly as Google or Apple Maps would have. It sometimes will take you two blocks down the road to make your turn when you know you could have turned sooner. It also got the vehicle location and charger locations wrong at times. These are not big errors one street off or one parking lot off, but it would confuse itself saying you need to be here to charge when you’re staring at the charger right in front of the vehicle. This usually required you to stop the route and start over after completing your charging session. GPS is a proven technology I’m not sure what was going on with the software. We were in many places where there was no cell phone signal and at those times navigating with so-called off-line maps was impossible. The system just would not be able to plan a route if it wasn’t preloaded, plan ahead! The other frustrating thing for me was the difference between what planning tools are available in the app versus the tools in the vehicle. For instance, in the app I can select that I’m towing a trailer, but in the vehicle, I can’t indicate that I’m towing a trailer, unless it’s plugged in. In the app, I can’t tell it to avoid tolls or highways. Why there is a difference? I also found it frustrating that adaptive cruise control was turned off while towing. Other manufactures can do this why not Rivian?
DC fast charging: it shouldn’t be this hard. In general, it worked, but knowing your way around all the various apps that you have is important. Do your homework on plug share, having paid membership is definitely a way to save on long road trips. I really do wish Rivian and Tesla would get together (maybe soon) so you could use plug-in charge and still receive membership pricing. It’s a little clunky to open the Tesla app, tell it where you are select the post, wait for the app to figure it out put on the adapter, then plug it in and start charging. It shouldn’t be this hard. I did have several occasions where the handshake between the vehicle and the charging post failed. One at EVgo one at Electrify America and Petro Canada. The RAN chargers, always worked plug-in charge and the best price out there. The location of many of these charging stations just plain sucks, especially when towing a trailer. Most RAN locations had a trailer spot only one Tesla location that I visited did. This made for some creative parking however, we did not have to disconnect a trailer once during this whole trip, which I count as a win. Very few of these locations had your standard gas station amenities like window washers, trash cans, canopies to keep the weather off of you. It shouldn't be this hard. One Electrify America station flooded during a downpour in which I saw 6" of water running in and around all the charging posts while we sat in the vehicle waiting for our charge to complete as we were checking the weather apps to see when it would stop. All the while just across the parking lot people were fueling their vehicles under a canopy with dry feet. It shouldn’t be this hard! Having access to the Tesla network did make this trip much easier than it would’ve been without it and they did work flawlessly every time. One EVgo location was in a bank parking lot just off the drive-up window and ATM lanes. The person who thought this was a good idea must never have had to charge a EV. This made for a very creative parking with one of the three stations down and the other in use. If we didn’t need to charge and had options we would’ve moved on.
Infotainment and camp mode: Again, these features worked well most of the time, camp mode was a big help. However, putting the vehicle in sleep mode for extended time periods seem to confuse it. This might have been because there was no connectivity at these locations but after waking it up and getting on the road, there would be occasional rogue, warning notices, or a pop-up message that would quickly go away. This could be sorted out with a reboot that would strangely, erase just the custom name of the trailer. But why? The infotainment system Bluetooth (proven technology) seem to get confused sounding like the speakers were under water and required at least one time for me to remove my phone and reinstall it. It may have been my phone, but it was still a bit frustrating.
Would we do it again? Planning for our next trip has already started.
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