My Rivian completely dead from ~40% vampire drain after a month long vacation

[Trandall]

I just wrapped up my week long test of vampire drain on my R1T vs the F-150L to see if the latest software updates really had a significant improvement. Overall I found the vampire drain was roughly half of what it was in early January on the R1T. The F-150L has stayed consistent.

Northeast region, 14-38F. Some light snow over two of the days. Both vehicles checked via app once a day. Parked side by side.

Both trucks started at 100%. After 1 week I came back to the R1T at 86% SOC, the F-150L was at 99%.
*Different class but in case anyone is wondering the Model S saw similar drain to the R1T.

Overall to me it's a minor drain when we're looking at one vehicle. We're talking roughly 2-3kWh/day. The problem is with multiple cars - as a 3 car household will consume 6-9kWh/day - almost 30% of what a typical household consumes on a daily basis.

It seems that, not unlike our R1's, F150 Lightnings experience a wide variance in vampire drain. Also it seems that the SOC the lightnings display are subject to wide variation margins so that it might say 99% but after driving 5 miles it says 92% the numbers don't seem to be as trustworthy. Lastly I have noticed in both the Lightning and the Mach-e considerable power is used to warm the battery with temps in the mid 20F range.
Have you noticed that the Lightning uses power to heat the batter before/ during charging. Both my Ford EV's seem to do this in anything below mid 40's. this is a bigger energy cost than my R1T vampire drain.

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[emoore]

Let's put this in perspective----Ford says that the Lightning can power an average house for 3 full days during a power outage. I don't know if that's true, but that's the claim and other people seems to believe it. But a vehicle can sit parked for a month and completely consumer it's batteries?

Sure ford can power a house for three days if that house is using 40kwh per day. That’s not a ton of energy. A 1000W over 24 hours is 24kwh.

 

[White Shadow]

There is ~100W load all the time so it adds up. If you are at 70% charge (95 kWh) it would take 40 days to drain to zero with a 100W load on all the time.

100w load is 0.1 kwh. That seems excessive for a "sleeping" vehicle.

 

[White Shadow]

Sure ford can power a house for three days if that house is using 40kwh per day. That’s not a ton of energy. A 1000W over 24 hours is 24kwh.

Supposedly, the average house uses 30kwh per day.

 

[duessell]

100w load is 0.1 kwh

100 W = 0.1 kW.... not 0.1 kWh

Watts are a unit of power. Kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy.

100 W constant load/power for a full hour uses 0.1 kWh of energy.

 

[Zoidz]

Where is a 100 watt load coming from? And all the time? Why?

One known load is the mobile hotspot and whatever system(s) are phoning home to the Rivian Mothership. I recall a thread here that someone sniffed their network for traffic from the vehicle and it was connecting almost every hour and uploading megabytes/gigabytes of data to the mothership.

Edit: Here's a little info on who Rivian talks to

 

[CheezyNachos]

My Rivian stopped charging at 6:06 pm yesterday. I just checked it at 2:32 pm today and I lost 3%.

Proximity on. Gear Guard off. 50°F in my garage.

 

[White Shadow]

100 W = 0.1 kW.... not 0.1 kWh

Watts are a unit of power. Kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy.

100 W constant load/power for a full hour uses 0.1 kWh of energy.

I realize that. I meant to say for an hour. I was thinking about the power a house uses in 24 hours versus the drain on an EV battery.

 

[brancky3]

Sure ford can power a house for three days if that house is using 40kwh per day. That’s not a ton of energy. A 1000W over 24 hours is 24kwh.

If your power is out you probably are not going to live like your power is on, assuming your vehicle is powering it. I would set up maybe 1 A/C unit, 1 fridge, and my router / modem. We use about 45kwh / day averaged over 12 months, in a large house with 3 A/Cs and 2 EV's

 

[5cats]

NOCO makes a really good portable jump box, the GB70. It’s a smart jumper, but has a manual override which lets you charge a completely flat battery. I keep one in each vehicle just incase and even jumped a dead F-350 7.3 with one a few weeks ago.

This sounded promising: I found that NOCO has added a newer "GBX" series that improves performance over the GB series. But I found all NOCO booster user guides have this to say:

Before connecting to the battery, verify that you have a 12-volt lead-acid battery. The GB[...] is not suitable for any other type of battery.

I couldn't find the specification for the primary and secondary 12V batteries in the current user guide, and wonder if these might be Li chemistry?

 

[emoore]

Supposedly, the average house uses 30kwh per day.

It’s just going to be going up as more and more things get electrified.

 

[RivAW]

I'm only seeing about 1-2% of drain per 24 hour period... wonder why this varies so much from vehicle to vehicle? In any case, I'd have serious reservations about buying an EV in today's world if I didn't have access to home charging and could leave it plugged in every night.

I have the same. About 1%-2% in 24 hours with gear guard off and some app-discipline

 

[Yellow Buddy]

It seems that, not unlike our R1's, F150 Lightnings experience a wide variance in vampire drain. Also it seems that the SOC the lightnings display are subject to wide variation margins so that it might say 99% but after driving 5 miles it says 92% the numbers don't seem to be as trustworthy. Lastly I have noticed in both the Lightning and the Mach-e considerable power is used to warm the battery with temps in the mid 20F range.
Have you noticed that the Lightning uses power to heat the batter before/ during charging. Both my Ford EV's seem to do this in anything below mid 40's. this is a bigger energy cost than my R1T vampire drain.

I haven’t had that issue with the Lightning even after my tests. It does seem to retain the amount. That said, overall the usage/GoM is more accurate on the Rivian than it is on the Lightning, and the Tesla is a joke.

As for cold weather, the trucks operate very differently. The Ford seems to consume a LOT of initial energy if you don’t keep it preconditioned and parked in a garage. If you do, it’s not much of a concern.

The Rivian seems to consume a lot of energy as well, but for a far shorter period of time. In fact the harder you drive it, the faster it warms up - likely because of the thermal system pulling from the motors.

There is a caveat, which is the HVAC. The Ford does a better job at comfort, while utilizing a reasonable amount of energy. The Rivian…does not. They really need to tune the heating system as often it consumes too much energy for the amount of heat it actually pumps into the truck. Not sure if it’s the mix, the temp sensor or what.

 

[Craigins]

There is ~100W load all the time so it adds up. If you are at 70% charge (95 kWh) it would take 40 days to drain to zero with a 100W load on all the time.

Have you measured the 100W drain, or are you going off other people's measurements.

I typically see a 100W that is categorized as "Accessory" when charging on my 120v.

Sadly my truck gets stuck in a weird state sometimes and that jumps up to 400W, which is unacceptable. That's essentially Bitcoin mining lol. Today i did the diagnostic log and I'm going to put in a service ticket for them to look at it and figure out what gets stuck.

Luckily a deep sleep typically fixes the issue.

 

[kayabusa]

Side note, I listen everyday an internet radio on my R1`T.. I park at my work at 9 am and leave at 5 pm, the software does 15-20 minutes of radio buffering when I leave the truck..... When I get back to the truck at 5 pm I Listen the 9 am show.... thats where it goes part of the vampire drain.

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