Rants and Raves after 2 months of Rivian R1T ownership [DISCLAIMER: Unauthorized feedback from non-owner]

[_evtrk]

There are rumors that when apples car is ready they will axe CP and that Google may do the same to try and strong arm manufacturers into switching to android automotive OS

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[ironpig]

Why don’t more companies just use CarPlay and dump their own systems that are redundant? I’m not sure what exactly the licensing cost is but surely it’s cheaper than building your own. Even if it isn’t then make it an option and pass on the cost to the customers who want it?

There are a lot of reasons about the licensing and implementation issues that others can explain better, but a big reason is possibility for future revenue streams.

All these companies want to control the ecosystem for multiple reasons, but one of the big ones is selling you apps in the future. Think Tesla App Store or Rivian App Store. If you use CarPlay, Apple gets the revenue from the paid apps you buy in their App Store. Right now if you buy something like a GPS Overlanding app through the apple App Store on your phone and use it through CarPlay, Apple gets a piece of the revenue and Rivian gets nothing. If Rivian or Tesla can sell the app to you through their App Store they get that percentage that Apple would have taken.

 

[Attesan997]

Wonder if the admins are triggered ever time they read Android Auto or Apple Carplay in their every day lives?

 

[electruck]

Passenger…touching..radio controls?!

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Absolutely!! My wife is the designated entertainment director when we take road trips. Happy wife, happy life!

 

[astonius]

There are a lot of reasons about the licensing and implementation issues that others can explain better, but a big reason is possibility for future revenue streams.

All these companies want to control the ecosystem for multiple reasons, but one of the big ones is selling you apps in the future. Think Tesla App Store or Rivian App Store. If you use CarPlay, Apple gets the revenue from the paid apps you buy in their App Store. Right now if you buy something like a GPS Overlanding app through the apple App Store on your phone and use it through CarPlay, Apple gets a piece of the revenue and Rivian gets nothing. If Rivian or Tesla can sell the app to you through their App Store they get that percentage that Apple would have taken.

Tesla's been in the game for a decade now with all the money and experience that comes with that. They have arguably the best native system in the business. They still don't offer an app platform. Rivian will not offer an app platform any time soon.

 

[Taycanfrank]

One thing I can tell you as someone that's owned 3 first production EVs (iPace, eTron, Taycan) is to expect widely varying experiences. The battery & battery integration software can just really cause problems.

My iPace was a lemon, my eTron had issues, and my Taycan has been flawless. But I know plenty of people that have had good iPaces & eTrons and lemon Taycans. I expect the same from Rivian. Some people will have flawless cars, some troublesome cars, some lemons.

I do not expect there to be magical OTA fixes to people with troublesome cars or lemons, although I'm sure there will be some OTA quality of life improvements in general.

 

[Ladiver]

And, just like that, the post is deleted!

 

[Ladiver]

I find it very concerning that we have very few people acknowledging that they received their Rivian, even fewer making any comment on likes/dislikes and even fewer (almost none) complaining about something.

Look at these forums, thousands of posts full of complaints. Do you really think people aren’t going to complain about SOMETHING?

 

[Hopper]

Copied from a Reddit Poster. TONS of detailed info we haven't seen before. Some of it is quite concerning, if I'm honest.

This truck is the best "dumb car" I've ever driven. Period. It's crazy fast, incredibly powerful, but also has enough space to haul five people and almost two weeks' worth of vacation gear.​

Below are a lot of complaints, but I can't stress enough how awesome this truck is. The complaints are only meant to paint a realistic picture of my experience - I'd be lying if I said it was all completely perfect.​

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Range​

We're driving our R1T just as we would any other vehicle - we're not hypermiling (purposefully drafting off of semitrucks, stopping cabin climate, or attempting to drive at slower speeds just for range).​

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In the city, suburbs, and just around town (in SoCal), we regularly get a range of 220+ miles at 70% SoC, and ~330 miles at 100%. That's usually in "conserve" mode with no A/C, seat heaters, defog, etc.​

On our trip to the mountains (~20F, snow, "conserve" mode), we were lucky to get around 240 miles on a full charge on the highway, but we usually charged to ~90%, where we got ~215 miles on the highway. "All-purpose" mode dropped range by ~20 miles. When in the cold, we enabled defog sporadically (climate screen needs work - see software section for some context) but didn't use seat heaters or cabin climate that much.​

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DC Fast Charging​

• After ~10 DCFC sessions, the truck just stopped charging past 33 kW. Rivian says they know about the issue (and that it should be patched with a SW update soon), but it really sucked to be at a 350kW EA station pulling just 33 kW. At that rate, it took ~3 hours to get to 90%. The rest of the points below assume this issue is resolved:
  • No plug-and-charge, and you can't filter by EA chargers on the infotainment screen
  • Biggest issue so far: the car doesn't precondition for a charging session - regardless of how you input the station into infotainment. From "cold and dark" to a reasonable charging rate took ~45 mins for the battery to warm up - really sucked at the EA station in the mountains. During preconditioning, the charging rate was stuck at ~25 kW.
  • Max charging rate observed: 205 kW at 8% SoC - lasted for just a few seconds before dropping to ~180kW.
  • Charging curve seems pretty linear - once you hit ~40% SoC, don't expect any more than 150kW. Rate continues dropping until ~40kW at ~85% SoC.
  • From 10% SoC, it takes ~40 mins to charge to 80%, ~1.5 hours to charge to 100%

Build Quality​

Unless you're looking for issues, the car is fantastic. However, as soon as someone points QC issues out, they're pretty difficult to not notice. There are panel gap issues, panel misalignment issues, trim peeling and paint issues, as well as various other fit and finish issues - with no shortage of small tweaks to be made.​

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Comparing to Tesla, this seems on-par with their perceived QC issues. However, I'll give them a pass for now. Rivian is trying really hard to ramp production, and that comes with some sacrifices.​

We also took delivery of the truck with some missing components (no camp speaker, floor mats, etc) - supposedly we'll get them as parts shortages ease.​

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Other than the above minor fit-and-finish issues, the truck itself is rock-solid. No complaints about actual powertrain/mechanical build quality. Handled excellently in snow, rain, high wind, and ice.​

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Rivian Service​

Roadside and Service both have excellent people manning the phones. They're all friendly, responsive, and quick to help. Service itself is kinda slow (at least right now). All of our trim/fit-and-finish issues are going to be fixed in about a month because Service is currently overloaded with deliveries.​

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Software​

Oh boy...here we go. The software itself is just "OK". Compared to a legacy OEM's software, it's pretty good - but compared to Tesla, it leaves a lot to be desired. We're on software version 2021.45.x, and were previously on 2021.25.x. 2021.49.2 is available to install, but failed after ~30 mins.​

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I've seen A LOT of bugs get fixed via OTA updates. No new features, but bugs are being patched left and right - and that's great.​

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There are a ton of complaints and features that are needed, but here are the big ones:​

• Navigation takes the weirdest paths and is just generally kinda bad. Haven't seen any advancements with OTA updates in this regard
  • There is no way to see tire pressures - even though you can get a warning telling you to inflate "a tire" to 48psi.
  • There's no trip odometer or any info about driving perfomance/efficiency or anything to that extent.
• The manual regularly fails to launch - either wait 5 mins or reboot the displays to fix
  • Apps in general sometimes take a while to come up
• Climate control in general needs a lot of work.
  • Climate randomly turns on in random zones
    • Can't control defog intensity - it's either on full blast or off.
    • Climate system relies on outside temp to determine heating vs cooling. If it's 30F outside, but 80F in the cabin, it'll turn on the heater when set to any temp above 30F.
• There's a noticeable lag in some physical controls:
  • unlocking/locking can randomly take up to 10 seconds to unlock (with the fob)
    • rolling up and down the windows has a strange lag to it (always)
    • pedestrian warning system can sometimes take a few moments to turn on once moving
• The app has so much blank space. Right now, all you can do is the following:
  • lock/unlock (relatively quick now, still prefer to use the fob)
    • check range/SoC
    • check/set cabin temp
    • while charging: view charging status and curve (but with no legend or axis labels)
    • request/contact service
    • get current GPS coordinates of vehicle
  • Alexa voice commands + road noise = bad speech-to-text (and therefore a suboptimal Alexa experience)

Phantom Drain​

In the cold: left for four days, lost ~70 miles of range in freezing temps (SoC dropped ~20%). The car supposedly wasn't conditioning the battery during this time, and we only connected to it once via the app when we were ready to leave. Gear Guard was on, and recorded 2000+ 30s events (all cameras recording, so around 11k videos).​

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Elsewhere: left for three days in 40F-50F weather, lost ~50 miles of range (SoC dropped ~15%). Did not connect via app. Gear Guard was off.​

In the garage: drops ~5 miles/day in LA weather with Gear Guard off and no app connections.​

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Driver+ and TACC​

In the daytime, Driver+ and TACC work alright. Phantom braking is very common (especially under underpasses and on strangely patched parts of the interstate).​

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During the night, Driver+ has issues engaging. It'll flash available for a few moments, but then disappear seemingly inexplicably. Once engaged, it works fine. They both seem to work as well at night as they do during the day.​

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It's a shame Driver+ isn't available on more roads (state routes, for example), but TACC is always available. We've taken to just driving manually because of the phantom braking - but hopefully Driver+ will improve in the future!​

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Rivian Insurance​

It's still in its infancy - most things still need to be done over the phone, and it doesn't (yet) auto-deduct my monthly premium. Rates (for this truck only) are far better than 3rd party insurance, but I guess that's to be expected. Services provided through Nationwide.​

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Misc​

Gear Guard records so many videos! Every event lasts 30s and records and stores all five camera angles, even if nothing moved in four of the camera views. Gets kind of annoying, but it's easy enough to delete all the videos if the truck seems fine when we get back to it.​

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Could not figure out how to get the air compressor to work. Supposedly it needs to detect some pressure in order to activate, but that doesn't really help us when we're trying to inflate tubes or inflatable kayaks.​

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No auto high beams​

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Auto wipers work well in the daytime and alright at night (needs some manual triggers)​

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Rear display is still locked. Hopefully it gets unlocked in a future update!​

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The seats are incredibly comfortable - no complaints whatsoever.​

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No homelink ​

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No remote Gear Guard video viewing or alerts - which is fine, but just something I'd like to have.​

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The frunk open/close button is offset to the left just a little - I can never find it on my first try. It'd be easier to find if it were in the middle of the fascia.​

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Summary​

This truck is just...awesome. Mechanically, it's rock-solid. QC and software need a lot of work, but bugs are already being squashed via OTA updates. Overall - fantastic car, would recommend when major software issues are fixed.​

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Just as I finished writing this, we received 2021.49.2. It failed to install, but release notes mention fixing a few of my complaints above (namely defog controls and some app launch/transition issues).​

Great write-up! Thanks for taking the time.

 

[Taycanfrank]

I find it very concerning that we have very few people acknowledging that they received their Rivian, even fewer making any comment on likes/dislikes and even fewer (almost none) complaining about something.

Look at these forums, thousands of posts full of complaints. Do you really think people aren’t going to complain about SOMETHING?

I'm assuming all current R1T deliveries come with a nice old NDA you have to sign and/or the fact that there are very, very few actual customer deliveries.

 

[pcrampton]

I'm assuming all current R1T deliveries come with a nice old NDA you have to sign and/or the fact that there are very, very few actual customer deliveries.

I'm guessing those who have taken delivery are out having fun with their new toys! And, posting here can lead to so many long threads and questions from those of us (note I included myself!) who are eagerly awaiting any new crumbs of information; drooling for information; etc.

 

[HTownB]

If Rivian just wanted to license other peoples’ innovation, they wouldn’t be in business: that’s why.

The question is whether that is a “core” component or differentiator of their product. Every company outsources or licenses various portions of their business, specifically when they aren’t value add. There’s a reason every Fortune 500 company doesn’t have their own home grown OS for their IT environment.

Regardless, even if there is long-term gain from doing it in-house, it seems they could get to market quicker outsourcing some of that functionality while simultaneously working on their own development for future use.

 

[StoneDude]

FYI, CS confirmed that the truck has the hardware for a garage door opener (not sure if it is Homelink specifically or something else) but has not been enabled in the software yet. This is coming in a future OTA.

 

[Scoiatael]

Phantom braking can be attributed to multiple factors. First of course is the software itself. But also the system itself may need to be recalibrated, or you just have a dirty window.

I've had my model y for 1.5 years now. I use autopilot probably once a week. I've experienced phantom braking twice. I've gone on 2 road trips, 500 miles each way, 80% with autopilot on, and had no incidents. But there are others with model y that experience phantom braking a couple times a week. Rivians software will improve, but there still may need to be hardware recalibration to solve the issue.

 

[lostpacket]

And, just like that, the post is deleted!

Bummer. I hope he didnt delete because so many folks were giving him flak about "user error" but it wouldn't surprise me.

Gotta call out the few toxic folks acting like that. I'm grateful for any info, even if it's imperfect. Dude took time out of his day to write up and share with the community.

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