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Minimum Power Mode

Timothykf

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I've had a chevy Bolt for over two years. I'm curious if the Rivian has a minimum power mode? For maximum range, turn off all the cool wiz-bang screens and accessories that cunsum power. The Bolt has a a low power mode that disables the entertainment screen but not much else. It would be nice to have a true minimum power consumption mode that gives basic info and maintain the performance. Allowing the music but shutting down the screens, ditch the running lights, minimum instruments, etc.

On the Bolt, there is some savings but a lot of stuff is still on and consuming power (even just a little).
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ajdelange

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I think you can count on some sort of range enhancing setting but I have no idea what it might do except in general. Turning heat down or A/C up, limiting acceleration, limiting speed, setting regen to max, turning off some lights, suggesting you use autopilot for speed control might be some of the things it would do or suggest you do.
 

kylealden

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Outside of climate control, the other systems have a negligible impact on range. Even with the sound system, displays, and lights at full tilt, youā€™re talking about maybe a mile or two an hour in added drain. Not something drivers should be thinking about.

Climate can be a real drag and I hope they do a better job surfacing & giving drivers tools to grapple with this than Tesla. But donā€™t sweat the lights and screens.
 

R1Tr8000

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Outside of climate control, the other systems have a negligible impact on range. Even with the sound system, displays, and lights at full tilt, youā€™re talking about maybe a mile or two an hour in added drain. Not something drivers should be thinking about.

Climate can be a real drag and I hope they do a better job surfacing & giving drivers tools to grapple with this than Tesla. But donā€™t sweat the lights and screens.
Iā€™d also like to confirm, know if there is a power reduction mode for both valet or 3rd party service shops?
 

Smithery

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Range mode on my Model X only remotely makes a difference on highway drives with constant speed.

In any sort of stop-and-go traffic or around-town driving, *even with regenerative braking*, the power used to get the car going overwhelms all other power usage BY FAR.

I commonly run a few errands around town in the Model X, get home, and notice my 15mi average for the trip was 400wh/mi.
Then when I get in the car after my wife last ran a few errands I'll notice the 15mi average was 300wh/mi. ?

The single lowest hanging fruit for improving range is to have your right foot go on a diet. Accelerate and cruise more slowly and you can massively improve your numbers.

The next lowest hanging fruit besides actual motor use is HVAC. Turn the heat down or the A/C up (or better yet, open the windows on an 80Āŗ day instead of using the A/C) and that'll be the only truly noticeable improvement you can make... besides slowing down.

---

Yes, slowing down is hard to do when you have Earth-twisting torque and obscene power available from 0 rpm.

I sometimes put my Model X into valet mode for a solo drive and watch my numbers get almost as good as my wife's...
 

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ajdelange

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I commonly run a few errands around town in the Model X, get home, and notice my 15mi average for the trip was 400wh/mi.
I look at the statistics and see that X drivers average about 85% efficiency meaning that they use 17.6% more energy than the EPA rating. Several here (and elsewhere) think that's because Elon Musk is a scoundrel of the first magnitude who has duped the EPA into giving his cars much better ratings than they are really capable of but it's not. It is because of the way people drive them. I don't know how you get 400 Wh/mi around town and I don't want tips. I guess you have a lot of fun driving though. 85% suggests 332 Wh/mi for my model X - close to what your Mrs. gets. I tend to see more like 273 and the rated is 282. I am an old guy and definitely do not drive aggressively but I am an old guy - not a little old lady.


The single lowest hanging fruit for improving range is to have your right foot go on a diet.
I tell my wife "keep it off the pedals". Of course you can't do that but the more you can the better your "fuel" economy will be. Around town this means don't accelerate aggressively or to higher speed than you need to. Don't touch the brake pedal unless you have to i.e. let regen do the braking in order to recover as much of the inertial load as you can. Inertial load becomes relatively less important at speed (drag emerges) but doesn't go away and you can minimize it by using the autopilot (which gets your foot off the pedal) as it can hold speed better than you can and it is speed variation that causes inertial load (we're assuming flat terrain for the moment). Drag load really comes up fast with speed (as it's square) so slowing down is really the most potent way to improve consumption on the freeway.

This leaves the other major load: rolling resistance. You don't really have any control over it and the per mile consumption from it is the same at 80 mph as at 8. Where it leaps out unexpectedly is if it starts to rain or snow or you have to drive off paved roads. Clearly this will be a big factor with an "adventure" vehicle and it can have surprising consequence (kWh/mi magnitude on sand, for example).

Otherwise the picture for Rivian is going to be about the same as for Tesla. One significant difference is that Rivian is going to give you the option to "turn down" thin pedal regen. This means either that you will lose some inertial load recovery or that they will give you the option to recover it by other means such as manual paddles or "blended braking" in which the earliest pressure on the wide pedal invokes regen and further pressure then engages the friction brake. The obvious disadvantage to this is that it is difficult to stay exclusively in the regen part of the range unless there is some clear detent which results in, effectively, putting your foot on the brake when you don't need too. Saying this is likely to provoke a fire storm so I will loudly proclaim that if you like doing it this way (Bolt has this mode), do it this way (assuming that Rivian offers it). Evidently doing it this way makes transition to BEV from ICE easier for some drivers. Tesla does not offer this mode.

The next lowest hanging fruit besides actual motor use is HVAC. Turn the heat down or the A/C up (or better yet, open the windows on an 80Āŗ day instead of using the A/C) and that'll be the only truly noticeable improvement you can make... besides slowing down.
I've never taken an X across Death Valley in August nor across the plains of midwestern Canada but I don't find HVAC setting to make noticeable difference. I know the physics say they must. Wh/mi reading are all over the map from acceleration/decelleration, wind gust, grade variations etc. that one definitely cannot turn on the heater and see the Wh/mi trend up. I'll mention that opening windows increases drag but I can't see an effect from that either.

Yes, slowing down is hard to do when you have Earth-twisting torque and obscene power available from 0 rpm.
Never really thought of it but yes, it is literally earth twisting (conservation of angular momentum).
 

Smithery

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I look at the statistics and see that X drivers average about 85% efficiency meaning that they use 17.6% more energy than the EPA rating. Several here (and elsewhere) think that's because Elon Musk is a scoundrel of the first magnitude who has duped the EPA into giving his cars much better ratings than they are really capable of but it's not. It is because of the way people drive them. I don't know how you get 400 Wh/mi around town and I don't want tips. I guess you have a lot of fun driving though. 85% suggests 332 Wh/mi for my model X - close to what your Mrs. gets. I tend to see more like 273 and the rated is 282. I am an old guy and definitely do not drive aggressively but I am an old guy - not a little old lady.
For ours "exactly EPA rating" is almost exactly 333 whi/mi.

I fall way short of that, while my wife beats it handily.

We weigh 100lbs different, which is negligible compared to the weight of the car.
And we almost never touch the HVAC settings for any reason.

So that difference is 100% due to "how you drive"

She doesn't drive "like a grandma" - Far from it. But "spirited driving" isn't really in her wheelhouse.

She drives as a chore and I drive for fun.

Caution to future Rivian owners: If you like driving "for fun", make sure you set aside additional buffer in your range calculations, as well as additional $$$ for tire replacements.
 

ajdelange

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For ours "exactly EPA rating" is almost exactly 333 whi/mi.
I had on older X with that rating. I'm happy to have the extra range of the newer models but 333 sure makes the 'rithmetic easy.
 

Smithery

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I had on older X with that rating. I'm happy to have the extra range of the newer models but 333 sure makes the 'rithmetic easy.
Yup, easy math.

And we've looked at the increasing efficiencies since 2017 with envy but... At this point we're all but certain our daily driver will the the relative "gas guzzler" R1T :)
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