Lack of range anxiety... What was your moment?

[Dark-Fx]

So if I’m understanding, first the truck said you didn’t have enough charge, then it says you’ll have 79 miles left, so you decided to skip it and go 60 miles further?

Why was it wrong to begin with? What’s a preconditioning message look like?

I have so much range anxiety lol

The truck has a general idea of what your energy consumption has been like, but if your typical drives are 30 minutes, it's going to severely overestimate how much energy it needs on a longer trip in similar temperatures. With it being in the single digits here, I see somewhere around 1.1 mi/kWh at the start of my commute, but it goes up quite a bit by the time I arrive at the office 30 minutes later.

Preconditioning for a long time helps a little with that, but with the way Rivian only pulls energy from the wall to charge the battery and not maintain charge level under usage, it's not super helpful with range unless you do it long enough for the truck to kick the charger on.

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[Yellow Buddy]

Thanks for the post. My primary road trip will be a 360 mile drive to northern Michigan and this helps me understand how it might go. When you do the NY to Ohio drive do you typically charge to 100% before leaving?

For my Ohio trip I don’t start at 100% anymore. I need to stop regardless so the extra 50 miles doesn’t buy me enough to skip the stop.

I would probably set the charge to 100% for that 360 mile trip, just because the entire way I’d probably wonder if I could make it without stopping and might try depending on how it’s going.

Fun facts:
*On a 150kW charger we charge at ~300mi/Hr or 5mi/min. 10 min = 50 miles.

*On a 350kW charger we charge up to ~540mi/Hr or 9mi/min. 10 min = 90 miles.

360 is an easy trip. If you’re conservative think of it this way, you need to stop once, and it really doesn’t matter when you do it. Plug it in, take a bio break and go. I’m willing to bet it will be at least 10 minutes of charging whether you’re taking a piss or grabbing a coffee

 

[Yellow Buddy]

The truck has a general idea of what your energy consumption has been like, but if your typical drives are 30 minutes, it's going to severely overestimate how much energy it needs on a longer trip in similar temperatures. With it being in the single digits here, I see somewhere around 1.1 mi/kWh at the start of my commute, but it goes up quite a bit by the time I arrive at the office 30 minutes later.

Preconditioning for a long time helps a little with that, but with the way Rivian only pulls energy from the wall to charge the battery and not maintain charge level under usage, it's not super helpful with range unless you do it long enough for the truck to kick the charger on.

That’s a great point. So one of the things I do - since we don’t have a single day scheduled departure via the app - I try to start my charging so that it finishes right when I’m ready to leave. I estimate this saves me roughly 10-15 miles of range due to the battery being warm already.

 

[inconceivable]

Whenever I get something new, there’s always a period of time where I’m not quite settled yet. Sneakers, baseball gloves, cars…all need to be broken in before I’m comfortable with it.

Today, I realized I was comfortable with my R1T and put Tesla and their supercharging network into my rear view window. How do I know this?

4:30AM, I got ready for my next leg of my trip and got this:

I looked over at my phone at the PlugShare map:

And decided…I’ll be fiiiiiine.

So at 4:30 in the morning, being conscious of the stupid decision I just made, I hit “Go Anyway” and decided that it was cold. So I turned on my heated steering wheel, heated seat, turned the heat up to 74F and set my cruise control at a conservative 85mph and set off, occasionally seeing what the GPS showed.

It was not happy..

At this point I closed PlugShare. It was pointless as there were no chargers around. I had Waze up but that’s as all.

Before I knew it the truckthrew a preconditioning message up. I looked down this:

I was making good time AND I had plenty of range left. Approximately 20-25% by my estimates. So I did what any sane person would do…I hit “END” and set the destination to the next charger….an additional 60 miles away.

Perhaps I was channelling my inner Kramer, but it was at that moment I realized I had a good amount t of comfort with the truck now.

What was your moment?

Wow, this is great. However it makes me think I’m doing something very wrong or something is wrong with my truck. I seem to only get ~250 miles on a full charge at 40 degrees driving at 65-70mph. Not only that, but the nav consistently overestimates how much range I’ll have on arrival and adjusts down as I drive. I’m on the 21” OEM road tires.

 

[Mister Person]

360 is an easy trip. If you’re conservative think of it this way, you need to stop once, and it really doesn’t matter when you do it. Plug it in, take a bio break and go. I’m willing to bet it will be at least 10 minutes of charging whether you’re taking a piss or grabbing a coffee

Cool I'm excited. Hopefully the Benton Harbor, MI RAN station will be operational by the time I take delivery (July-Sept '23). Rivian also shows Grand Rapids and Cadillac RAN stations on the roadmap, which would be very helpful for my drive. There are a lack of level 3 chargers around Grand Rapids, oddly.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

Wow, this is great. However it makes me think I’m doing something very wrong or something is wrong with my truck. I seem to only get ~250 miles on a full charge at 40 degrees driving at 65-70mph. Not only that, but the nav consistently overestimates how much range I’ll have on arrival and adjusts down as I drive. I’m on the 21” OEM road tires.

I’ll get about 260-280 on 22s, crossbars on when I’m doing daily driving, or a trip with multiple stops. 46-48psi all purpose mode/auto.

On long trips where I don’t stop until she’s out of juice, crossbars go into the gear tunnel. Conserve, lowest, soft, 50PSI and she does 320 miles easily on those same 22s.

I had range mode in my Tesla, but it doesn’t get anywhere near that many more miles out of it. It’s phenomenal

 

[WSea]

For my Ohio trip I don’t start at 100% anymore. I need to stop regardless so the extra 50 miles doesn’t buy me enough to skip the stop.

I would probably set the charge to 100% for that 360 mile trip, just because the entire way I’d probably wonder if I could make it without stopping and might try depending on how it’s going.

Fun facts:
*On a 150kW charger we charge at ~300mi/Hr or 5mi/min. 10 min = 50 miles.

*On a 350kW charger we charge up to ~540mi/Hr or 9mi/min. 10 min = 90 miles.

360 is an easy trip. If you’re conservative think of it this way, you need to stop once, and it really doesn’t matter when you do it. Plug it in, take a bio break and go. I’m willing to bet it will be at least 10 minutes of charging whether you’re taking a piss or grabbing a coffee

It does matter when you charge on your hypothetical 360 mile trip. Doesn't make sense to charge during the first half. Charge with lower SOC so you get faster charging, You're fun facts are just a snapshot and shouldn't be relied on. Too many variables with SOC, temps, chargers, and charging curve.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

It does matter when you charge on your hypothetical 360 mile trip. Doesn't make sense to charge during the first half. Charge with lower SOC so you get faster charging, You're fun facts are just a snapshot and shouldn't be relied on. Too many variables with SOC, temps, chargers, and charging curve.

For @Mister Person going from Chicago to N. Mi, there’s not an abundance of DCFCs or routes. He’s looking at the earliest DCFC being at University Park mall, which would be 100 miles or so into his trip already.

By that point, it’s to tough to be at a high state of charge. Even if you assume 350miles of range, he’d arrive with with 70% remaining and with a cold battery you’ll pull 60-70kW, or 100-130mi/Hr at 70% so even with 10 min of charging that’s 16 miles and enough to get you there if you’re running at a rate of 350.

To your point, going further would just improve his charge rate. So for that trip being 360…doesn’t matter. We’ll spend more time thinking about it than he’ll need to charge

 

[goldburger]

For @Mister Person going from Chicago to N. Mi, there’s not an abundance of DCFCs or routes. He’s looking at the earliest DCFC being at University Park mall, which would be 100 miles or so into his trip already.

By that point, it’s to tough to be at a high state of charge. Even if you assume 350miles of range, he’d arrive with with 70% remaining and with a cold battery you’ll pull 60-70kW, or 100-130mi/Hr at 70% so even with 10 min of charging that’s 16 miles and enough to get you there if you’re running at a rate of 350.

To your point, going further would just improve his charge rate. So for that trip being 360…doesn’t matter. We’ll spend more time thinking about it than he’ll need to charge

Why would the battery be cold after driving 100 miles? Doesn’t driving warm it up?

thanks for this thread, as a first ev owner who likes to road trip with the family this is good stuff

 

[Yellow Buddy]

Why would the battery be cold after driving 100 miles? Doesn’t driving warm it up?

thanks for this thread, as a first ev owner who likes to road trip with the family this is good stuff

It’s warmer but the charging gets more efficient at even higher temperatures. It’s why the car tries to precondition as you get close to a charger.

On that note for the Rivian specifically I find I have better sustained success if I don’t precondition. It takes several minutes for my charging to ramp up but if I precondition I find I hit the speed limits and it goes into an overheated mode much faster.

If I’m going to be charging for less than 15 minutes I precondition, more than 15 I don’t precondition.

 

[PappaBolt]

The drive from Whistler BC to the ferry terminal in Seattle is 218 mies. I was able to complete this on a single charge even with starting temp at 6° F. Started at 98% charge, ended at 16%. That included an hour wait at the US/Canada boarder and heavy traffic (stop and go) headed into the downtown corridor. Mostly in conserve mode except for the fist ~50 miles down the mountain. The range estimator was accurate and there were chargers along the way to divert to if needed. No anxiety.

 

[WSea]

The drive from Whistler BC to the ferry terminal in Seattle is 218 mies. I was able to complete this on a single charge even with starting temp at 6° F. Started at 98% charge, ended at 16%. That includes an hour wait at the US/Canada boarder and heavy traffic (stop and go) headed into the downtown corridor. Mostly in conserve mode except for the fist ~50 miles down the mountain. The range estimator was accurate and there were chargers along the way to divert to if needed. No anxiety.

Great to hear Don! Assuming 16% was plenty to get to you home. How was the trip up?

 

[WSea]

The drive from Whistler BC to the ferry terminal in Seattle is 218 mies. I was able to complete this on a single charge even with starting temp at 6° F. Started at 98% charge, ended at 16%. That includes an hour wait at the US/Canada boarder and heavy traffic (stop and go) headed into the downtown corridor. Mostly in conserve mode except for the fist ~50 miles down the mountain. The range estimator was accurate and there were chargers along the way to divert to if needed. No anxiety.

Were you L2 charging up to the time of departure?

 

[PappaBolt]

Were you L2 charging up to the time of departure?

The trip up was the first long distance trek for me in the R1S. It was a dark and storm night and I was less confident in the charging options north of Vancouver. A bit desolate out there. So we stopped in Vancouver for a 20 min top-up at a Shell L3. It worked great.

We stayed in Whistler Village and our accommodations had a Flo L2 charger so we were able to leave on an almost full charge. The Flo charger was fiddly. I have the app but it didn’t understand my US address. A quick call to their CS and it got sorted out.

52 miles left when loading onto the ferry. Yep, that’s another R1S in front of me

 

[paariv]

360 is an easy trip. If you’re conservative think of it this way, you need to stop once, and it really doesn’t matter when you do it. Plug it in, take a bio break and go. I’m willing to bet it will be at least 10 minutes of charging whether you’re taking a piss or grabbing a coffee

This is all correct, but DCFCs aren't nearly as common/reliably available as gas stations. If there happens to be a working, available fast charger whenever you need to stop, then yes, a road trip in an EV isn't much different from one in an ICE. It's the need to plan around charging deserts that makes it difficult.

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