Guess it was my time - 12v is dead

[Steve A.]

I see posts like this and I'm like WTF, why isnt this self repairable? Coming from a classic car and Jeep background, I couldnt imagine not being able to self repair something as simple as a 12-V battery. Is this just a function of the vehicles being within the warranty period?

Simple function of being designed w/o regards to reparability. Just one of many cases like costing $30k+ for a simple fender-bender.

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[R1Thor]

Non-defective 12V batteries should NOT just die in < year from delivery regardless of EV, ICE, or whatever. Rivian obviously got a bad batch from the supplier. Who knows how long they were sitting on a shelf before Rivian got them?

It stinks that you feel slighted. While it's not ideal for things to break...things...break.

This truck has literally thousands of unique components. Each individual component has a design intent. Those design intents include efforts through risk analysis to make them as close to six sigma reliability as possible. But regardless of where it falls on the bell curve, everything will fail. Part of it is planned obsolescence, and an even bigger part of it is making it so your 12V battery doesn't cost $1000 to make.

It's sort of like planes falling out of the sky. We don't want that to happen. But despite the best Engineering and Manufacturing approaches on the planet--things still happen.

The good news is that the odds are even lower that it'll happen to you twice, so when this is out of the way, you can breathe a bit easier knowing you have some fresh new batteries to carry you through the lifespan of your truck

 

[shandel]

Try their mobile service. They repaired mine the day I called. They can get into the drink via a latch cord under the driver side front wheel. They use a T20 or T25 to get I there and pull the cord. Then they can reach the battery by removing one panel over the frunk. The frunk does not need to come out. This is all doable in a tight space.

 

[Steve A.]

It stinks that you feel slighted. While it's not ideal for things to break...things...break.

This truck has literally thousands of unique components. Each individual component has a design intent. Those design intents include efforts through risk analysis to make them as close to six sigma reliability as possible. But regardless of where it falls on the bell curve, everything will fail. Part of it is planned obsolescence, and an even bigger part of it is making it so your 12V battery doesn't cost $1000 to make.

It's sort of like planes falling out of the sky. We don't want that to happen. But despite the best Engineering and Manufacturing approaches on the planet--things still happen.

The good news is that the odds are even lower that it'll happen to you twice, so when this is out of the way, you can breathe a bit easier knowing you have some fresh new batteries to carry you through the lifespan of your truck

Of course, EVERY part fails EVENTUALLY, but MTTF of < 1 year/25k miles for ANY vehicle is unacceptable.

I have owned more than a dozen ICE vehicles over the last 40 years, and most of them were large trucks/SUVs, but the shortest TTF of any OEM 12V battery that I've ever owned was 18 months.

For my Rivian R1S battery to fail in 8 months (23k miles) is simply unacceptable esp. considering the number of other owners w/ similar experiences on this forum alone. Obviously, Rivian got a bad batch or several batches from their supplier. It is what it is.

That said, not having a physical key stored in my keyfob like my Audi Q7 and my wife's Porsche Cayenne is a BAD design decision considering how EASILY it is to replace a 12V on EVERY ICE vehicle incl. my wife's Cayenne which is under the passenger floor.

 

[SANZC02]

That was not the case for my dead 12V. It was essentially bricked even though trying to jump it at least opened the driver's side door handles but otherwise it was a brick. Couldn't even open the frunk nor tailgate. Since I ALWAYS drive it in lowest sport mode/lowest drive height, the tow truck operator couldn't get under it to release the rear brakes w/ the electronic tool, so he had to hammer some hard-plastic skates under the rear tires to get it on the flatbed.

Just curious, when yours “bricked” it was a total failure correct? It stopped reporting to the app as well? I think what we are seeing here is the feature they added to warn of a pending issue.

Hopefully when OP gets back to their vehicle they can confirm the behavior.

If anyone else saw this message in the app, would like to know what your experience was.

 

[Steve A.]

Try their mobile service. They repaired mine the day I called. They can get into the drink via a latch cord under the driver side front wheel. They use a T20 or T25 to get I there and pull the cord. Then they can reach the battery by removing one panel over the frunk. The frunk does not need to come out. This is all doable in a tight space.

Depends upon the service center and date/time. In my case it was a Friday afternoon as I was leaving work (an hour from my home and an hour plus from the SC) and the 3rd party tow service they called didn't have a driver w/ the special tool required to unlock the rear brakes which they didn't end up using anyway; long story short, I had to wait until Sat am for the tow and then the SC didn't get to replacing it until Tuesday which is 2+ hours from my home.

That said, my ICE backup truck 12V was dead also, but all I had to do was pop the hood and jump start it w/ a booster pack. No biggie.

VAST difference in the two cases!

 

[R1Thor]

Of course, EVERY part fails EVENTUALLY, but MTTF of < 1 year/25k miles for ANY vehicle is unacceptable.

I have owned more than a dozen ICE vehicles over the last 40 years, and most of them were large trucks/SUVs, but the shortest TTF of any OEM 12V battery that I've ever owned was 18 months.

For my Rivian R1S battery to fail in 8 months (23k miles) is simply unacceptable esp. considering the number of other owners w/ similar experiences on this forum alone. Obviously, Rivian got a bad batch or several batches from their supplier. It is what it is.

That said, not having a physical key stored in my keyfob like my Audi Q7 and my wife's Porsche Cayenne is a BAD design decision considering how EASILY it is to replace a 12V on EVERY ICE vehicle incl. my wife's Cayenne which is under the passenger floor.

I'm not trying to ...argue whether or not it's ideal for you to experience a failure. It stinks, 100%

That said, Rivian isn't building these batteries in house and there's only so much you can do to test them before they leave their facility. Predicting the failure you've experienced is clearly difficult, or they would've done it.

The exact defect causing your battery to die prematurely isn't even likely on the battery manufacturer's list of 'things to evaluate' in any reasonable time simply due to where the money is (unfortunate, but true). If 100s batteries were failing a year, they'd be investigating.

Stinks, sure. Bell curve exists. I'm sure there were batteries DOA (much easier to catch, honestly, since..you know..they don't work at all).

And while YOUR experience is understandable, it's not EVERYONE's experience. This feels like it's happening TO YOU. Rivian will do what they can to make it right.

Hopefully they make you whole soon. Best of luck to you!

 

[SkiLizardHead2]

Hopefully, the many 12v complaints on this forum is being addressed "under the hood" in the refreshed R1? This single point of failure should have been mitigated in the engineering design phase long ago.

Let's keep our fingers crossed for the R1 refresh.

 

[shandel]

Depends upon the service center and date/time. In my case it was a Friday afternoon as I was leaving work (an hour from my home and an hour plus from the SC) and the 3rd party tow service they called didn't have a driver w/ the special tool required to unlock the rear brakes which they didn't end up using anyway; long story short, I had to wait until Sat am for the tow and then the SC didn't get to replacing it until Tuesday which is 2+ hours from my home.

That said, my ICE backup truck 12V was dead also, but all I had to do was pop the hood and jump start it w/ a booster pack. No biggie.

VAST difference in the two cases!

Totally agree with you that fixing a dead 12v battery should be easier and user-serviceable. In my case, they swapped the battery for a new one. We can’t buy those batteries at any auto parts store, from what they told me.

 

[Steve A.]

Just curious, when yours “bricked” it was a total failure correct? It stopped reporting to the app as well? I think what we are seeing here is the feature they added to warn of a pending issue.

Hopefully when OP gets back to their vehicle they can confirm the behavior.

If anyone else saw this message in the app, would like to know what your experience was.

Literally, I got the latest update that supposedly had the battery warning enhancement the Saturday before, and then when I went to walk out to leave work on that Friday, as I approached my R1S it went to wake up but only the driver side headlight and side of the light bar flashed on then off quickly and then it was bricked.

The next day when tow truck operator got there showed him how to jump it w/ his booster pack and it only opened the driver's side door handles so I could at least get my stuff out of it (thankfully I didn't leave my mobile phone in it).

 

[Steve A.]

I'm not trying to ...argue whether or not it's ideal for you to experience a failure. It stinks, 100%

That said, Rivian isn't building these batteries in house and there's only so much you can do to test them before they leave their facility. Predicting the failure you've experienced is clearly difficult, or they would've done it.

The exact defect causing your battery to die prematurely isn't even likely on the battery manufacturer's list of 'things to evaluate' in any reasonable time simply due to where the money is (unfortunate, but true). If 100s batteries were failing a year, they'd be investigating.

Stinks, sure. Bell curve exists. I'm sure there were batteries DOA (much easier to catch, honestly, since..you know..they don't work at all).

And while YOUR experience is understandable, it's not EVERYONE's experience. This feels like it's happening TO YOU. Rivian will do what they can to make it right.

Hopefully they make you whole soon. Best of luck to you!

Don't get me wrong. It was still under warranty, but the fact that it took from Friday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon to replace it, was FAR from the experience to replace an ICE battery.

It is what it is.

That said, it's not my 1st vehicle. Based upon owning a dozen or so ICE vehicles over the years along w/ EVERYONE else I know that has owned both ICE and EVs, this is the ONLY OEM 12V battery that I know has failed in less than a year.

Sure, life is a bell curve but statistically speaking, seeing the number of Rivian 12V battery failures under warranty posted here alone, this is not a random occurrence.

 

[R1Thor]

Don't get me wrong. It was still under warranty, but the fact that it took from Friday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon to replace it, was FAR from the experience to replace an ICE battery.

It is what it is.

That said, it's not my 1st vehicle. Based upon owning a dozen or so ICE vehicles over the years along w/ EVERYONE else I know that has owned both ICE and EVs, this is the ONLY OEM 12V battery that I know has failed in less than a year.

Sure, life is a bell curve but statistically speaking, seeing the number of Rivian 12V battery failures under warranty posted here alone, this is not a random occurrence.

You're not wrong--I'm personally hopeful that we're seeing LESS.

That said, I hope the OEM replacement aftermarket starts becoming more ubiquitous for our vehicles. Warranty or not, we should be able to pop into our local auto parts store and grab a replacement 12V, ya know?

I have a friend of a friend (former colleague) who's currently working for an AGM battery manufacturer who specializes in heavy equipment batteries. I tried poking him once about broaching this topic. Maybe I can poke him again... As of right now, the only aftermarket, due to the bizarre form factor of the Rivian batteries, I won't even mention because they spec'd their batteries poorly and it's resulted in at least one fully bricked Rivian...

 

[Steve A.]

You're not wrong--I'm personally hopeful that we're seeing LESS.

That said, I hope the OEM replacement aftermarket starts becoming more ubiquitous for our vehicles. Warranty or not, we should be able to pop into our local auto parts store and grab a replacement 12V, ya know?

I have a friend of a friend (former colleague) who's currently working for an AGM battery manufacturer who specializes in heavy equipment batteries. I tried poking him once about broaching this topic. Maybe I can poke him again... As of right now, the only aftermarket, due to the bizarre form factor of the Rivian batteries, I won't even mention because they spec'd their batteries poorly and it's resulted in at least one fully bricked Rivian...

Well, I"m definitely not the only post in this forum w/ the same bricked experience esp. earlier posts for those w/ two 12Vs and when one failed it was not driveable.

Yeah that brings up another good point. Why the unique form factor? What was the benefit of that?

Whatever happened to #RightToRepair legislation? I guess it's DOA. SMH

 

[Engineer]

Don't get me wrong. It was still under warranty, but the fact that it took from Friday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon to replace it, was FAR from the experience to replace an ICE battery.

It is what it is.

That said, it's not my 1st vehicle. Based upon owning a dozen or so ICE vehicles over the years along w/ EVERYONE else I know that has owned both ICE and EVs, this is the ONLY OEM 12V battery that I know has failed in less than a year.

Sure, life is a bell curve but statistically speaking, seeing the number of Rivian 12V battery failures under warranty posted here alone, this is not a random occurrence.

I know it’s a N of one but the battery in my $80k 2022 Tahoe died in less than 6 months….

my R1S battery just turned 6 months old and so far no problem…

HOWEVER my Tahoe battery was a breeze to replace and the key still worked to get into it. The worst part was it forgot all my radio station presets.

 

[LL75]

Can we do the 12V battery maintaning ourselves? We have one at home and wondering if we can check and maintance it once awhile?

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