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White Shadow

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I've not experienced this, or anything like it. I've seen it parroted. So, likely I've just not been in a position to experience it. BUT, I have some hypotheses:

Firstly, from an engineering perspective, I don't think what you're experiencing is actually 'stall' of the motor. I work with servos, steppers and drives. One of the biggest advantages to electric over anything is the near-instant torque. While there's theoretically a point where Rivian's driveline could be compromised enough to prevent the wheels from turning, it's definitely not going to be from an unladen start regardless of the incline. At 908 lbs-ft of torque, it's mathematically improbable. If you could create positive traction, so it wouldn't 'fall off,' it'd climb a vertical wall. If the characteristic between the rotor and stator were such to mean there's a 'stall torque,' we wouldn't be able to launch the 7000 lbs-mass of truck from 0-60 in 3-ish seconds. The motors won't care what vector you're taking. They'll turn.

What's more than likely happening are 1- there is a traction limit imposed by the software (likely due to safety) and 2- here's my personal experience mirrored by many others: you're trying too hard. These trucks are immensely capable. As @zefram47 mentioned above "as slow as possible, as fast as necessary" is the mantra for off-road terrain negotiation (especially rock crawling). I'm betting a LOT that if you're flooring it, Rivian's software limiting your approach (*or even canceling it in the name of safety), because it'd be dangerous as all-get-out to actually let you try to launch your truck up the side of a steep incline.

I've personally negotiated obstacles where the 'climb over' was necessary and I found that literally just sitting there and not adding ANY extra throttle, the truck figured it out. Patience. Just hold the accelerator at the same ~10% and it'll start moving again. If not, take a different approach.
By stall, I'm not literally meaning stall. I'm not sure what other word would describe a situation where the wheels simply will not turn. But that's exactly what I've seen in videos of other people off-roading the R1. Despite the torque, an electric motor can easily have a difficult time starting to move from being dead stopped in a upstate of high resistance. This is something that you never see when an ICE vehicle is off-roading....at least not an ICE vehicle in 4LO. The reason for that is two fold: First, the flexibility and torque curve of an engine. But much more importantly, the gearing. That's really the main thing....the amount of torque to the wheels on the average 4wd ICE vehicle is tremendous to the point that they will pretty much never get into the type of "stall" condition I described earlier. Instead, they spin all four wheels furiously in an attempt to climb. You do see that happen in ICE vehicles that don't have LO gearing though.
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R1Tom

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My experience to date is similar, yet possibly not quite as harsh as this. Lets be honest, the TriMax is one of the most mixed bags of Rivian's troubled 2nd Album:
  • On Gen2 vs Gen1 there's a lot:
    • The interior looks nicer than gen1 adventure. But then it should, the gen1 interior is now (in cost reduced form, e.g. headline material) still the adventure interior, but now relegated to only being available for the dual motor models.
    • Despite being much nicer visually, the interior feels 'cheap' in a few spots - notably the door panels creak when going over potholes/speedbumps etc. as well as when holding the internal door grip - plastic on plastic creaking is not a premium sound folks.
    • I'm yet to see a meaningful improvement from the heat-pump, and frankly doubt I'll see one -yes it consumes a bit less energy, but its not as fast to heat the cabin, and OH BOY IT IS LOUD. Its so loud, much louder than our old ice car, that I genuinely worry about the neighbors complaining while our R1T pre-conditions each morning - we park outside, and i can hear it from inside the house.
    • The electric doors are just dumb; enough people have ranted for me to not need to put much more here - but def a step back from gen1, especially when the truck goes to sleep while they are 'unlocked' and you have this weird thing of having to try and open the door once to wake the truck up and the pull the handle a second time to actually open the door - its a HORRIBLE user experience; anytime you need to explain how a handle works, you know its bad.
  • Gen1 Quad vs Gen2 Tri
    • The performance improvements are super tricky to quantify via the butt dyno: it *does* feel faster, especially between 40-80+..., but as others have pointed out this could just be down to a different throttle mapping.
    • Launch mode is a gimmick - and I'm convinced (please someone prove me right/wrong) that its primary objective is just marketing, I'd put money on the tri being slower on 0-60 against a gen1 quad in AP mode, when testing on the same wheels etc.
      • I'd also put money on launch mode coming to the gen1 quad when the gen2 quad comes out, at which point the gen1 will become 'faster' as rivian no longer have the incentive to push the tri motor as an all round upgrade, but get to market it as the 'middle of the road' model.
    • Range - I'm so far to see any improvement in AP, I've not got enough miles on mine to be definitive, but so far I've seen a lower m/kWh that I did on our Quad (and yes I do understand winter) - trips that used to sit around 1.8m/kWh on the quad are now looking around 1.7m/kWh on the tri - but I'll give it until 8k miles on the tri to actually make a judgement there. The end result so far is that the larger battery is effectively canceled out - out gen1 quad used to have a guess-o-meter around 276 miles at 85%, our tri is sitting at 283 at 85%.
    • Regen SUCKS! We used to be able to drive our Quad, and still drive our dual, with regen on Max and virtually never touched the brake. The regen in our Tri is so weak, even on max that I find us using the brake quite a lot - easily 10x as much as we do in our other Rivian(s). I do wonder if this is done in the aid of making the tri motor feel faster?

Overall it feels to me the tri was created to solve three problems:
  1. Get shippable product as the ascent front motors were running behind schedule
  2. Start working on the kinematics for the top tier R2/3 platform
  3. Taking a leaf out of apples book - by the time you have added premium audio, the utility panel, tonneau cover etc to the dual, you are so close to a tri you might as well get it.. ..and guess what, once you have gone for a tri... ...its only another bit to get the real top of the line model...
I must admit its kinda fun watching the media review evolve over time for the Tri; though sadly it reenforces my perception that they are wholly in bed with the mfrs these days. When Rivian had no other product to sell the Tri was the 'goldilocks' of the range - neither to hot not too cold; now the quad is approaching its becoming the unloved model in the range as it neither has the price/range dual's or the extreme performance of the quad (and boy do I miss having torque vectoring at the front...)

So why did I get one? Well ultimately I really had no choice - Rivian offered me a deal I couldn't refuse on a Tri Motor after damaging our Quad in service (all said and done, we traded in our quad, got the tri and $7.5k back); they would not let us wait for the gen2 quad. Is it a great truck - seems like its a good one. Is it as good an overall package as the gen1 quad was (at full price) - hell no.
Thanks much for this! Seems very nicely balanced and fair type of review. Appreciate it!
 

Electrified Outdoors

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The Tri motor is a beast. 10k is still 10k though and I know a lot of folks who will never buy the top model of anything…just because….so the Tri is a compromise and it’s plenty fast.

The Silverado EV RST has a lot of “passing power”. R1 Tri also seemed to have a lot more 30-70 than the gen1 quad. The 30-70 or 50-70 times I find more important for my daily use than 0-60.
 

Calvin2518

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My profile picture is exactly the sort of obstacle I'm referring to. Typical eroded rock wall obstacle found on plenty of trails here in Colorado. A Toyota with ATRAC and no lockers will walk right up without issue...I took my previous 4Runner up it completely stock and one of the local Toyota 4x4 clubs uses it as a training obstacle for members. Clearance was a big problem, but I expected it to be. About the spot that pic was taken on the obstacle (a little higher), the right rear was on loose soil, left rear was flying, front right was flying, and the front left was on a rock. In an ICE 4x4 with an auto you can slowly increase throttle until the vehicle starts moving and it climbs right up and over. With the Rivian, if you slowly increase throttle you'll pin it to the floor and the truck goes nowhere with fans ripping and will eventually see a turtle until you let it cool down for a bit. The only way to make any progress is to rapidly add throttle and quickly back off as soon as you get any movement, lest you apply 800 hp at the wrong time. The issue is that you're tippy on two-wheels in this situation and wild movements like this could easily land someone in a world of hurt and likely body damage. It has some to do with stall torque of the motors, but mainly how Rivian tuned the drivetrain to estimate grip (friction / mu) at each corner. When two wheels are flying and another is on a low grip surface there's nothing to really bias the one estimate on the one wheel with really high grip, so the truck doesn't apply enough power to that wheel.

In an ICE with traditional 4WD all the power/torque from the engine is delivered to 2-4 wheels depending on differential/locker arrangement and virtual lockers through brake actuation. A quad-motor Rivian will only ever have one motor's torque available at any given time at any given wheel, so if only one wheel has good grip, you're already down to around 210 hp max....but that's geared around 7:1 vs the ICE going through a low range transfer case and a very low first gear to multiply the torque of the engine. Some like to say that an electric motor has full torque from zero rpm, but it's more like from one rpm, so you have to get some rotation first (stall torque). In wheeling you really want to practice the mantra of as slow as possible, as fast as necessary when negotiating obstacles. I'm sure your off-road courses talked about that a lot. I'm just saying that there are common situations you can find yourself in where the Rivian will not do a good job and the typical ICE methods don't work well. Overall the vehicle is brilliant and I really enjoy it on and off road, but knowing its limitations is important. If I'd had a little more clearance or rock sliders at the time I tried this obstacle I probably could've made it, but it was *not* comfortable and pretty damn precarious...line choice wasn't helping, we tried several different ways that day with a very experienced spotter aiding.
For what it's worth, though, I enjoy wheeling my Rivian way more than I did with my TRD Pro Tacoma I had. ☺
There's also been a handful of off road routes where the Rivian did substantially better than my old TRD Pro Tacoma due to bigger wheels, better ground clearance, and a way heck of a lot comfier interior cabin.

Definitely think the Rivian's forte is NOT rock crawling, but for general wheeling, it does pretty freakin' fantastic in most situations.

AND

To be able to beat my neighbor's McLaren 570s on the way home in a 0-60 is just icing on the cake of an incredibly balanced and well rounded vehicle!
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