Offroading an EV

[Andystroh]

Curious how people feel about taking these trucks off road. I've been holding out on replacing my 4runner until I could get an electric off-road capable vehicle, and here it is. But I'll admit I'm a little nervous about a battery pack being the first line of defense when we are on rocky trails. The rivians have more clearance than my 4runner, but if I look at the bottom of my vehicle there are definitely some battle wounds.
The shielding definitely seems legit, I think I've seen some quotes about holding the weight of the vehicle on like 2 square inches or something. But there's a difference in holding the weight and hitting a rock at higher speeds...

Realistically Im thinking I'll just take it slow and not push it. Have some more caution when I'm not sure I can easily clear an obstacle. But it will be interesting to see these in the field.

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[Inkedsphynx]

Every indication is that the shielding will far surpass anything offered on a stock ICE. Given that Rivian is willing to warranty the vehicles and accessories during off-road use, I am confident they've done all the testing required to validate that nothing can risk puncturing the battery pack.

If I recall correctly (can't find the article or statement now) I believe the test was *dropping* the truck onto a small surface area, which imparts a lot more force than resting it on the same.

You should take everything off-road slow. What's the maxim? As slow as you can and as fast as is necessary?

I've got no concerns in this regard. It'd be a huge brand hit to advertise these as adventure vehicles and then have issues with battery shielding be *common*. That said, nothing is impervious.

 

[JeremyP]

I won't get rid of my 4runner if I get an R1S since it is fairly built up on 35" tires (and then it can become more of a trail toy), but I also won't be worried about taking the R1S on the more popular moderate 4x4 routes in Colorado and Utah. I've even taken our bmw i3 down some mild double track when looking for camping spots (and scuffed the undercarriage on a couple rocks!) I find that as long as you have good tire placement through an obstacle it's more likely that the bumpers or rocker panels will get scuffed than the battery location. I think the bigger question is whether you are comfortable adding a bit of 'trail patina' to your vehicle!

 

[Gshenderson]

I will be replacing both my Tesla S and 4Runner with the R1T. I don’t offroad simply to offroad, but do a lot of hunting and adventuring that can put a rig to the test. I have no concerns that the R1T will match anything I’m willing to take on with my 4Runner. The only exception is whether it will be more prone to high centering in deep snow and losing traction due to the flat skid plate covering the entire underbody. Hopefully we’ll get further details on the winch option S00N.

 

[guernsej]

You should take everything off-road slow. What's the maxim? As slow as you can and as fast as is necessary?

Hold my beer

 

[njcoach24]

Here’s an interesting clip…start at 23 minutes.

They are in a 4xE, road range on electric is about 27 miles and they only got 3 on trail.

maybe I should post this in a battery thread to understand it better but do their calculations make sense on battery life while off roading?

 

[StuartR]

I am coming to this late, but I am quite interested in the R1S. I live in Iceland and drive a Discovery 4, which I think is the perfect car for Iceland. It is very comfortable and drives great on the road, while being extremely capable in the highland roads. We don't really call it "off-road" here, as driving off of established trails is illegal due to the way it destroys the nature, but established trails can be incredibly rough...including wading across major glacier rivers that fluctuate from being passable to big enough to sweep massive off-road buses away.

I am looking forward to taking the Rivian onto these roads, but I think the main thing will be how well the clearance and articulation work, but even more importantly, how the off road modes control the power delivery. I cannot imagine trying to do a slow rock crawl with a motor that can do 0 to 60 in 3 seconds... Land Rover has solved this with the very useful low range mode, as well as terrain response, which really does help. All of this should be within the ability of the Rivian's tech, but it remains to be seen how good their implementation is. It is encouraging that they seem to be testing it off road, but most of the videos I have seen have it tearing through off road sections. Good for videos, but terrible for the trails and not very practical in real life. I hope it is as good at 0-20mph off road as it is in its 0-60 times on the road.

Anyway, a picture or two from my recent rides...nothing that technical, but still need good clearance and ability to handle large rocks in the road, good approach and exit angles for going through streams (the banks are often rather sharply angled) and so on.

 

[bajadahl]

Welcome to the forums Stuart! I think the R1S will be perfect for your needs and I am also very hopeful that at least one of the off road modes has a more subdued throttle response for those more technical off road environments..... and while we haven't yet seen video of all the modes in action I am confident it will exist. Drift mode looks more "fun" in video but I think a little less useful in real world applications versus a more controlled throttle response.

I am coming to this late, but I am quite interested in the R1S. I live in Iceland and drive a Discovery 4, which I think is the perfect car for Iceland. It is very comfortable and drives great on the road, while being extremely capable in the highland roads. We don't really call it "off-road" here, as driving off of established trails is illegal due to the way it destroys the nature, but established trails can be incredibly rough...including wading across major glacier rivers that fluctuate from being passable to big enough to sweep massive off-road buses away.

I am looking forward to taking the Rivian onto these roads, but I think the main thing will be how well the clearance and articulation work, but even more importantly, how the off road modes control the power delivery. I cannot imagine trying to do a slow rock crawl with a motor that can do 0 to 60 in 3 seconds... Land Rover has solved this with the very useful low range mode, as well as terrain response, which really does help. All of this should be within the ability of the Rivian's tech, but it remains to be seen how good their implementation is. It is encouraging that they seem to be testing it off road, but most of the videos I have seen have it tearing through off road sections. Good for videos, but terrible for the trails and not very practical in real life. I hope it is as good at 0-20mph off road as it is in its 0-60 times on the road.

Anyway, a picture or two from my recent rides...nothing that technical, but still need good clearance and ability to handle large rocks in the road, good approach and exit angles for going through streams (the banks are often rather sharply angled) and so on.

 

[ajdelange]

I cannot imagine trying to do a slow rock crawl with a motor that can do 0 to 60 in 3 seconds... Land Rover has solved this with the very useful low range mode, as well as terrain response,

A slow rock crawl and the ability to do 0 to 60 in 3 seconds both rely on the ability to produce full torque at any speed down to 0. This implemented with 4 independent motors should put Rivian way out front in ability to handle dicey situations.

The thing I think people planning to go off road, meaning anything other than a paved road, need to be thinking about is battery consumption. On a well maintained dirt road consumption will be about the same as on pavement (0.5 kWh/mi) but in loose sand it can go up to 6 times this (3 kWh/mi) and perhaps even more. You won't find out which it is until you drive it.

 

[StuartR]

Thank you all for the advice. Battery use was another thing I was curious about. I tend not to use a ton of fuel off road, but I am not sure what the relationship between passive run time and driving time is. In other words, if I am in the car for three hours but only travel 10km, how does that affect battery life? Most of these trails and roads are pretty short in comparison to highways, but you drive them very slowly. Since I am a photographer, there is a lot of stopping and starting.

One thing I am really looking forward to is the silence...when you are completely alone in the nature, the idling of the diesel is very disturbing. I turn the car off in most cases if I am gone for more than a quick second, but it will be nice to be able to jump out of the car and hear the nature, rather than the idling of the engine. I imagine the tire noise of the off road tires will be the primary source of noise.

 

[Autolycus]

Thank you all for the advice. Battery use was another thing I was curious about. I tend not to use a ton of fuel off road, but I am not sure what the relationship between passive run time and driving time is. In other words, if I am in the car for three hours but only travel 10km, how does that affect battery life? Most of these trails and roads are pretty short in comparison to highways, but you drive them very slowly. Since I am a photographer, there is a lot of stopping and starting.

One thing I am really looking forward to is the silence...when you are completely alone in the nature, the idling of the diesel is very disturbing. I turn the car off in most cases if I am gone for more than a quick second, but it will be nice to be able to jump out of the car and hear the nature, rather than the idling of the engine. I imagine the tire noise of the off road tires will be the primary source of noise.

There will also be a speaker-generated low-speed noise, as required by US law. I'm sure it will be off when the vehicle is in Park though, so when you hop out for photos, you shouldn't hear anything at all even with your A/C or heat running!

 

[SoCal Rob]

I think the R1S will be perfect for your needs and I am also very hopeful that at least one of the off road modes has a more subdued throttle response for those more technical off road environments..... and while we haven't yet seen video of all the modes in action I am confident it will exist.

Subdued throttle response also helps with control in very bumpy driving conditions. @StuartR, this modification of throttle response is one of the things the Land Rover engineers do to help us in different Terrain Response modes. On my LR3 (Discovery 3) and your Discovery 4 putting Terrain Response in Rock Crawl mode really helps by cutting back the throttle sensitivity.

Since the electric motors in a Rivian don’t need a low range I am also confident that Rivian will do something similar with throttle response modification to help us on difficult trails. This should be one of the benefits of their extensive off road (off pavement) testing.

 

[crashmtb]

I am coming to this late, but I am quite interested in the R1S. I live in Iceland and drive a Discovery 4, which I think is the perfect car for Iceland. It is very comfortable and drives great on the road, while being extremely capable in the highland roads. We don't really call it "off-road" here, as driving off of established trails is illegal due to the way it destroys the nature, but established trails can be incredibly rough...including wading across major glacier rivers that fluctuate from being passable to big enough to sweep massive off-road buses away.

I am looking forward to taking the Rivian onto these roads, but I think the main thing will be how well the clearance and articulation work, but even more importantly, how the off road modes control the power delivery. I cannot imagine trying to do a slow rock crawl with a motor that can do 0 to 60 in 3 seconds... Land Rover has solved this with the very useful low range mode, as well as terrain response, which really does help. All of this should be within the ability of the Rivian's tech, but it remains to be seen how good their implementation is. It is encouraging that they seem to be testing it off road, but most of the videos I have seen have it tearing through off road sections. Good for videos, but terrible for the trails and not very practical in real life. I hope it is as good at 0-20mph off road as it is in its 0-60 times on the road.

Anyway, a picture or two from my recent rides...nothing that technical, but still need good clearance and ability to handle large rocks in the road, good approach and exit angles for going through streams (the banks are often rather sharply angled) and so on.

Absolutely gorgeous. My greatest travel regret is not going to Iceland in 2010 or so, when I could fly direct from Winnipeg for €330 return, with Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden flying the plane.

@StuartR I think a Rivian would be quite ideal for Iceland, with the way electric vehicles deliver power, slow speed tracks would arguably be easier than a gas car, since there is only one gear - no diff locking or engaging low range to deal with.

if you want to get a Rivian sooner, you could just set your address to Reykjavik, Manitoba, or Hnausa, or any of the other Icelandic towns here. ??

 

[Coast2Coast]

@StuartR. I applaud your concerns about not tearing up "off-road" areas and in fact that being illegal in Iceland. Rivian should do more marketing of the tread lightly sort, emphasizing how the R1T and R1S allow one to go off-road and keep being adventurous without tearing up the landscape or the vehicle.

 

[kylealden]

There will also be a speaker-generated low-speed noise, as required by US law.

Not sure how the regulations work out here, but it would be very cool if this could be disabled in software for off-road use (even if location-gated, similar to Tank Turn).

Otherwise, it's fairly likely that you can trivially silence the PWS - a number of aftermarket companies already make cable terminators for the Model 3/Y to disable the PWS speaker without throwing any errors in the vehicle.

I haven't done this (too much of a goody two shoes ?, and the Model Y's PWS sound is benign and virtually inaudible from inside the vehicle) but I could see how it would be appealing if the PWS sound is obnoxious and you're gently crunching along offroad...

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