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Joints4Sale

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I think it's interesting that so many people believe what this dishonest and deceiving person posted about a vehicle they didn't own. It was mentioned that this person was a friend of an employee? Certainly not a real friend to risk someone loosing their lively hood. Makes you wonder what their motivation was/is.
On the Chevy front, I can't take my Bolt to anywhere that it needs to be parked in a parking garage because of the recall. I waited for the 2020 version to make sure that the bugs were worked out. That didn't work out for me.
Wait till more "real" customer deliveries have taken place. Once that happens it will soon become apparent if there's a real problem or not.
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Cosmacelf

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It’s true that it was an LG battery but I don’t think GM gets a pass on that since this is part of their chosen process; “it’s LGs fault” is fine for lawyers but at the end of the day, they had to recall all Bolts because of a risk of them spontaneously bursting into flames while charging. I don’t think that all of the owners who want their money back and GM says no are blaming LG. This is creating a huge headache for GM as In Q4’21, they sold 25 Bolts and 1 Hummer. But as we know, this is their first attempt at full EV and it seems like even legacy automakers are not impervious to botching their first attempt. They will learn and get better but I don’t think any manufacture will get it right without some growing pains first. I agree that Rivian will probably have a little more of a learning curve but I would not bet that the Lighting/Hummer will be all smooth sailing from the get-go.
Right. Battery/pack design also had a huge effect on the Bolts completely self combusting. Tesla also has had battery cell issues here and there, but you never hear about them since the worst that happens is that the cell fire is contained completely within the pack and the customer gets a “contact service” warning. Tesla engineered the pack architecture so that if the worst happened, the car wouldn’t be engulfed in flames (I’m ignoring high speed accidents here). GM did not engineer their packs the same way.

This isn’t a small detail. Manufacturing defects happen. Both Tesla and Rivian chose to use small cylindrical cells. These cells are actually a pain to manufacture a battery pack from. BUT they intrinsically provide SAFETY should the worst happen since defects can be contained. GM’s cells are much bigger and hold a lot more energy. When one of those shorts out, that’s a whole lot more energy to contain, which obviously, they have failed to design to do.
 

Cosmacelf

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The bolt issue was a manufacturing defect by LG. No GM. It's fun to pick on GM, but they didn't make those cells.
Both Tesla and Rivian opted to use small cylindrical cells partly because cell short circuits could be safely contained in the pack. GM failed to design their pack to be able to contain cell short circuits.
 

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@Iwantatesla - Would you mind commenting on the defrost/defog capabilities? My R1T will have to live outside in Colorado and I am curious how well the defrost works, especially remote. Since you're in NY, I assume you've had a chance to try it out. Thanks
 

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Please note that the original post on Reddit was deleted as apparently the person who posted it wasn't the owner and it was an employee truck. See this post for the details: Link to weirdness

Update 2: Apparently the owner/employee of the truck was threatened with termination for the Information that was provided. I don’t want that potential consequence on my conscience, so I’m taking the details down.

Sorry all.
Thanks Diddy. Agree that this is the right thing to do.
 

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paariv

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Asking this thread to be deleted is absurd. Would be like asking the news media to refuse to cover Stormy Daniels in 2016. The CA is between the employer and employee not us as general population. Now if prop source code had been posted then that reasonably would be subject to censorship but that’s not the case here.
This isn't censorship. This is a private forum, and the reddit post was a complete d*ck move. If a forum values civility, mutual respect, etc., there's no reason why it shouldn't exercise its editorial discretion and decline to host a discussion that started with dishonesty and a broken promise.

Has nothing to do with an edict barring public discussion of a newsworthy story. Your analogy is absolutely ridiculous, particularly as this was an employee truck and therefore *not* representative of what customers will receive.
 

kylealden

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I'm supportive of deleting this thread, if only because it's providing zero value and we're back to CarPlay and HomeLink again ?

More seriously. I've been in the position of being blamed as the unwilling "source" for leaks or other bad press in the past in a work capacity. It really, really sucks, especially when it comes from someone else's carelessness or betrayal as in this case. I've also been in the position (numerous times) of my work being spoiled or misrepresented by someone leaking it before it was ready, or without crucial context. That's just as bad.

The cat is out of the bag here, and no amount of moderation can un-do what happened here, unfortunately. Hopefully Rivian cuts the employee some slack - nobody is more careful than someone who has learned from painful experience.

As for the folks who are reading into conspiracy theories about NDAs - let me give you a comparable example.

I work at Microsoft. I have access to prelease builds of apps, Windows, services, etc. Very often I have prerelease hardware. Even once that hardware is announced, and even after it's publicly available, odds are I'm still exposed to some private angle - maybe my builds have different experimental flags enabled, maybe they have diagnostic overhead that means the performance isn't representative, maybe I'm running a private branch that represents an upcoming release or future product. Certainly I shouldn't be posting battery life rundown tests or benchmarks on my private build with all kinds of extra diagnostic overhead. Just because the device is public doesn't mean I'm in a position to share anything that isn't already public about it.

This doesn't require some special exotic NDA associated with the hardware - it's just the NDA I have with my employer which requires me to honor the confidentiality of confidential projects. Rivian employees are not the bad guys for not posting charging curves or answering your every demanding questions; it also doesn't mean there's some vast conspiracy. Just that modern, service-connected, software-driven products are complex, testing is multifaceted, and sometimes the only answer is "more s00n."

Be mad at RJ or Rivian all you want, but let's give the folks on the ground a little slack. And please don't leak shit - no exclusive content is worth someone's livelihood.
 

SeaGeo

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This doesn't require some special exotic NDA associated with the hardware - it's just the NDA I have with my employer which requires me to honor the confidentiality of confidential projects. Rivian employees are not the bad guys for not posting charging curves or answering your every demanding questions; it also doesn't mean there's some vast conspiracy. Just that modern, service-connected, software-driven products are complex, testing is multifaceted, and sometimes the only answer is "more s00n."

Be mad at RJ or Rivian all you want, but let's give the folks on the ground a little slack. And please don't leak shit - no exclusive content is worth someone's livelihood.
It's funny you mention the charging curve. My rant the other day about this was specifically because Rivian as a company hasn't produced one, it's exposing their employees to a bunch of people annoying the shit out of them and getting information that's semi-helpful back. None of which is really the employees fault.

Basically, it's this weird situation where Rivian has sold test builds to employees, and has seemingly encouraged them to share that they have their trucks, but at the same time locked down what can be shared about the trucks that are in production. It's this weird mix of a testing phase that I'd assume most manufacturers have done internally with actually selling the vehicles. Seems like a great way to get more data before pushing it in mass to the general public while also show that you're selling the trucks (GM delivered 1 Hummer in 2021...), but it does produce this weird several month limbo that we've been in.
 

Iwantatesla

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here and there, but you never hear about them since the worst that happens is that the cell fire is contained completely within the pack and the customer gets a “contact service” warning. Tesla engineered the pack architecture so that if the worst happened, the car wouldn’t be engulfed in flames (I’m ignoring high speed accidents here). GM did not engineer their packs the same way.

This isn’t a small detail. Manufacturing defects happen. Both Tesla and Rivian chose to use small cylindrical cells. These cells are actually a pain to manufacture a battery pack from. BUT they intrinsically provide SAFETY should the worst happen since defects can be contained. GM’s cells are much bigger and hold a lot more energy. When one of those shorts out, that’s a wh
@Iwantatesla - Would you mind commenting on the defrost/defog capabilities? My R1T will have to live outside in Colorado and I am curious how well the defrost works, especially remote. Since you're in NY, I assume you've had a chance to try it out. Thanks
It works great. Operates quickly. I purposely tried this out when it was freezing/post snow and opened the windows with defrost off (I know so scientific :) ). After running it at full blast I put the fans to 1 and it worked as needed.
 

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Iwantatesla

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Both Tesla and Rivian opted to use small cylindrical cells partly because cell short circuits could be safely contained in the pack. GM failed to design their pack to be able to contain cell short circuits.
This and each bay/module is firewalled with venting via the sides, the issue is GM didn't fully design the pack they shopped it out to a subcontractor I believe while LG Chem made the cells.

Nice to see you on this forum. I've been on TMC since 2012 and remembered your username lol
 

kylealden

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It's funny you mention the charging curve. My rant the other day about this was specifically because Rivian as a company hasn't produced one, it's exposing their employees to a bunch of people annoying the shit out of them and getting information that's semi-helpful back. None of which is really the employees fault.
While this is somewhat reasonable, it's important to remember that there is no one true "charging curve."

What charger? How long have you been driving? How cold is it outside? What's the SoC? What's the pack temperature? is it preconditioned? How long?

Rivian could publish a number or a graph and people are still not going to be happy ("oh sure, in ideal circumstances, but what about the EA at the Ellensburg Taco Bell when it's 118 outside and the charge port is full of beans?").

In fact, they have published a number - "high-power DC fast charging at over 200 kW for sustained periods" and "140 miles in 20 minutes." The specific kW speed at a given rate of charge will vary depending on conditions (sometimes my Tesla gets almost 250 kW, sometimes it never passes 175, at the same charger, at the same SoC. Ignoring the fact that Tesla didn't even have 250 kW chargers or preconditioning when I bought my Model 3, and the now-150 kW chargers were at the time only 120 kW!)

What Rivian has released is on par with what other manufacturers have released (there's no charge curve on Tesla.com either.) What you want is the average or real world experience from buyers. That, necessarily, will have to wait.
 

Iwantatesla

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While this is somewhat reasonable, it's important to remember that there is no one true "charging curve."

What charger? How long have you been driving? How cold is it outside? What's the SoC? What's the pack temperature? is it preconditioned? How long?

Rivian could publish a number or a graph and people are still not going to be happy ("oh sure, in ideal circumstances, but what about the EA at the Ellensburg Taco Bell when it's 118 outside and the charge port is full of beans?").

In fact, they have published a number - "high-power DC fast charging at over 200 kW for sustained periods" and "140 miles in 20 minutes." The specific kW speed at a given rate of charge will vary depending on conditions (sometimes my Tesla gets almost 250 kW, sometimes it never passes 175, at the same charger, at the same SoC. Ignoring the fact that Tesla didn't even have 250 kW chargers or preconditioning when I bought my Model 3!)

What Rivian has released is on par with what other manufacturers have released (there's no charge curve on Tesla.com either.) What you want is the average or real world experience from buyers. That, necessarily, will have to wait.
Literally this. There are a TON of variables to charging rates/curves and battery health and by the time you actually go into detail it's already gone over the average consumers head-- totally not worth the effort. I'm sure once there's wide release of vehicles somebody will find some way to pull the data from the trucks and give people what they want. That day has not yet arrived.

BTW All of this applies to ICE also, but most don't care to scrutinize it enough. Moral of the story is your mileage WILL not MAY vary.
 

SeaGeo

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While this is somewhat reasonable, it's important to remember that there is no one true "charging curve."

What charger? How long have you been driving? How cold is it outside? What's the SoC? What's the pack temperature? is it preconditioned? How long?

Rivian could publish a number or a graph and people are still not going to be happy ("oh sure, in ideal circumstances, but what about the EA at the Ellensburg Taco Bell when it's 118 outside and the charge port is full of beans?").

In fact, they have published a number - "high-power DC fast charging at over 200 kW for sustained periods" and "140 miles in 20 minutes." The specific kW speed at a given rate of charge will vary depending on conditions (sometimes my Tesla gets almost 250 kW, sometimes it never passes 175, at the same charger, at the same SoC. Ignoring the fact that Tesla didn't even have 250 kW chargers or preconditioning when I bought my Model 3, and the now-150 kW chargers were at the time only 120 kW!)

What Rivian has released is on par with what other manufacturers have released (there's no charge curve on Tesla.com either.) What you want is the average or real world experience from buyers. That, necessarily, will have to wait.
Literally this. There are a TON of variables to charging rates/curves and battery health and by the time you actually go into detail it's already gone over the average consumers head-- totally not worth the effort. I'm sure once there's wide release of vehicles somebody will find some way to pull the data from the trucks and give people what they want. That day has not yet arrived.

BTW All of this applies to ICE also, but most don't care to scrutinize it enough. Moral of the story is your mileage WILL not MAY vary.
Other manufacturers have published the "ideal" curve, which I personally find quite helpful. Mostly to set expectations in ideal conditions. BMW, Mercedes (IIRC), Audi with the e-tron Hyundai/Kia to name a few. Lucid went out of their way to have Tom doing a charging test last month to satisfy the nerds.

If anything, I think their published 140 miles in 20 minutes is going to cause more confusion than it's worth. Is that based on the EPA range with the 21 tires? Is it based on your GOM? highway miles? What SOC? The generic nature of it could lead people who are unfamiliar with EV that they can plug in at any state of charge and get 140 miles of range in 20 minutes.

Really, the charging curve aspect of this is tangential to my overall point of agreeing with you. The employees getting delivery are in a bit of a hard position, and them not sharing information is not their fault.
 

Temerarius

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Well, one thing this thread has made clear to me, those that work in a company that builds and releases hardware and software, and those that don't...

As someone who does, I can tell you, there are a litany of reasons to have "non-consumer" builds of software (and even hardware), even on released products.

Some folks on this board understand those reasons, and some... clearly do not.
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