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The good, the bad, the ugly - 2,600 mile round trip Denver to Michigan in the R1T

Aag12

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2600 miles from Denver to MI with my r1t.

I've already driven 4k miles prior to the trip, and prior to this had no material issues. My setup is 20" aftermarket ram 1500 wheels with a +18 offset that poke out an inch with blizzak winter tires. Oem setup is 21". Drove both ways entirely on conserve with cabin temp around 70 degrees

Software Version 2022.47.0

Rivian R1T R1S The good, the bad, the ugly - 2,600 mile round trip Denver to Michigan in the R1T 20221220_114008


We left during the coldest part of the week on 12/20 and stopped overnight and started again on the 21st. Temperatures were in the single digits on the way to Michigan and in the 40 to 50s on the way back. Both ways we had a head wind which also impacted range.

The good
Driving Comfort: I liked the frequent breaks, the amount of room, and seat comfort for the long drive. Had the wife in front and dog taking the whole back seat in the hammock.

Surprisingly EA charging : We intentionally drove during the weekdays and that was a great call. Every charger we went to had either a 150 or 350 available. Never had to wait. We of course saw a lot of stations down, had to replug a few times, had a few Chevy bolts charging in 350 etc, but usually we were the only ones charging. I predominately charge at home and after all the horror storries about EA, i was expecting the worst.

The bad
Charging speed: Had two issues
1) when the temperatures were in the single digits, charging speeds were definitely slower and this added a ton of time to the trip. We constantly sat at 80-100kwh even with batter pre conditioned and low SOC

2) When the weather was warmer we were able to get 200 for the first 10/15 mins but I had charging issue which I attribute to something wrong with my cooling system. I go into detail later on

Driver +: When it worked, the car would slightly ping pongs between the lanes. It's not horrible and better than my genesis suv. I never recognized this with older software versions. We also had a few phantom breaking event. Usually it was in sunny conditions and my wife would look at me confused. We had other issues pop up which is listed in the ugly section

Efficiency On my way to Michigan and Temps <10° i got 1.6 mi/kwh at 70mph avg. On the way back Temps at 30-60 i got 1.5 mi/kwh with 69mph. Both had headwinds, so not sure what to make of this. 3 contributing factors to poor efficiency

1) wheel/tire choice. Wheel pokes out an inch, my setup is heavier than 21" oem and winter tires
2) Elevation change back to Denver (wouldn't think it would contribute that much over such a long drive
3) I think there is something wrong with my vehicle cooling/fan issue mentioned lower in the text. I suspect this is hurting efficiency.

Because of efficiency we stopped at almost every ea charging stop. I overestimated the range when we first started our road trip and had to draft behind a truck. Made it with 5% left. Afterwards we dialed in the abrp efficiency and had no issues like this again

Cabin Heating
I don't understand why the system is so bad and counter intuitive. Here is the frustrating scenario: it's 5 degrees outside and I turn the temp inside to 68. 10 mins later I'm still freezing and realize that the system is blowing cold air. I open the hvac screen and it's showing the cooling icon. I nudge it up to 70 and it switched to the warm air icon. Lol, makes no sense. Hopefully they fix this in a future update

The ugly

I opened about 7 tickets on this trip and made me actually think about selling the car. But hoping my next service visit will fix them


1) fan noise: during dcfc and sometimes while pre conditioning the fan kicks into overdrive, like a leaf blower. It sounds like a bearing is bad as well as its a grinding noise. You can feel the vibration of the fan through the accelerator pedal. It's usually when we are dcfc for 15 to 20 mins. It's almost like car can't cool down properly. After DCFC the fan would whirl for another 15-20 mins Which may lead to the below issue and I suspect worse efficiency. Video below, but downplays the loudness of sound.



2) charger speed slow "charging slowing while battery cooling down". We got this error both when the Temps were in the single digits and also when it was 50 and sunny. We would be at 200kwh and it'd drop to 125 or even 80kwh. This would happen after 10 to 15 mins of charging and wouldn't go away when we were dcfc.
Rivian R1T R1S The good, the bad, the ugly - 2,600 mile round trip Denver to Michigan in the R1T 20221229_122255


3) cabin noise. We have loud wind noise on the driver side. I've taken it in 3 times and still haven't gotten it resolved. They acknowledged that it's louder then normal. We also get vibration/rattle in both doors and top panel where SOS button is.

4) Loose Trim: The passenger side front wheel well trim keeps popping out slightly. I have to keep popping it back in.

5) driver + cruise control not working. We kept getting a system error take control error. "take control now, system fault detected" "truck is stopping, highway assist is off". Not ideal on a road trip. A hard reset would fix it for an hr or so, but it would always come back.

Note on rivian service
Most of the reps were super understanding and helpful, but was disappointed with how they addressed #1 and #2 initially. They had engineers look at the logs and they said everything was normal and closed the ticket. I reopened it since all my dcfc experiences prior to this was much better. No loud fan noise and it charged must faster. They're going to look into it during my next service visit, but it's embarrassing sitting at a stop light and the car sounds like it's a jet engine trying to take off.

Overall experience
Road tripping in an ev was an an adventure. A lot more stress and time than just hopping in an ice vehicle. I really think ev's are the future, but whether it's early adopter issues or ev charging issue, we're easily 10yrs out until I'll feel confident that my parents can road trip in an EV like they can ICE. I did tons of research prior to the trip, had all the charging apps downloaded, ABRP, Plugshare etc.

I'm def a rivian fan too, so really hoping all of these issues can be resolved, but I concluded I'm not taking this car on anything longer than 600 miles in the winter time. I might try this trip again in the summer with my 21" wheels, but I may need a few months to get some confidence back in the car. For a stretch, every dcfc stop I was opening a new rivian ticket. Kind if frustrating, but hoping I'm getting all the kinks of the car worked out.
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kylealden

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Are you on the latest software? I used to have that "leaf blower sound" issue but it completely went away months ago after a software update.
 

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Surprisingly EA charging : We intentionally drove during the weekdays and that was a great call. Every charger we went to had either a 150 or 350 available. Never had to wait. We of course saw a lot of stations down, had to replug a few times, had a few Chevy bolts charging in 350 etc, but usually we were the only ones charging. I predominately charge at home and after all the horror storries about EA , i was expecting the worst.
If you believe some of the anti-EA posters here, your experience was the worst. Seriously.
 

jjswan33

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I'm with @kylealden that the cooling fan is not as loud as it once was.

2) charger speed slow "charging slowing while battery cooling down". We got this error both when the Temps were in the single digits and also when it was 50 and sunny. We would be at 200kwh and it'd drop to 125 or even 80kwh. This would happen after 10 to 15 mins of charging and wouldn't go away when we were dcfc.
Regarding this. It is normal, the battery can only charge at >200kW for so long before it overheats and the external temp doesn't matter as much as you'd think.
 
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Aag12

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Are you on the latest software? I used to have that "leaf blower sound" issue but it completely went away months ago after a software update.
Im on the latest version 2022.47.0

I don't usually DCFC, much. I have only really used a RAN DCFC and that went perfect.
 

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Aag12

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If you believe some of the anti-EA posters here, your experience was the worst. Seriously.
Don't get me wrong, if i wasn't the only car for most of my stops, I would have been upset since most of the stops had at least 1 stall down, if not two. I just personally got lucky :)

Joliet, IL was the only place where i saw people waiting in line for a charger.
 

COdogman

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Thanks for the trip report. Hopefully they can get those issues figured out. That would be frustrating.
 

rhumbliner

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If you believe some of the anti-EA posters here, your experience was the worst. Seriously.
I wouldn’t consider myself anti-EA — I’m strongly in favor of as many charging solutions as possible. But I am an EA realist and what @Aag12 experienced is far from the worst. He’s one of those who had a good experience with EA.
 

huskybrewing

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My six month old R1T with ~9,100 miles on it has similar issues as your ugly 3/5, and sometimes ugly 2.

Cabin noise, specifically wind noise, remains my number 1 gripe with an otherwise terrific vehicle. Compels us to crank the music volume. Had the vehicle serviced in July or August and they said it was normal and a result of wind around the side view mirrors. I don't think that's it, or at least that's not the whole story. Took it to the SC again recently and now Rivian is replacing the panel just above the windshield, which they say was mis-installed and is creating some noise. Tech said it won't solve the problem entirely and that there will be wind noise even afterward. I still think there's noise coming from the small triangle on both sides, but we'll see what happens after the panel is replaced.

I also had them look at the Highway Assist disabling itself regularly, way more now than when I took delivery this summer. I recorded time and date of instances where it was disabling itself with a system error or whatever. They looked at the logs and they checked out. Apparently engineering is working on it. Ironically, ACC and Highway Assist functioned pretty well on a recent ~500 miles road trip up and down the I-15 between Las Vegas and Cedar City. The SC stated that mapping particular roads within LV may be an issue.

EA stations seemed to throttle output during a road trip last week. Could be ambient temp. I preconditioned. The output was still pretty good depending on the charger. Not RAN Barstow good, but hit 160kw-ish for a bit on one before it throttled into the high 100s. I do not notice any noise from preconditioning, BTW. AC was super loud and vibrated a ton until one of the fall software updates mostly cured the issue.
 

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virgnia_rivian

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The slower charging while the battery is cooling is not an error. This is a built in measure to protect the battery pack.
 

Kuro-Rivian

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A quick note on the efficiency. I presume you are on LT winter tires. With LT tires they are inflated to a specific psi to match a vehicles load capacity. When you switch euro metric (oem rivian tires) to LT tires, your door placard recommended psi is useless. But it just so happens that rivian's case it pretty much matches up at 46 psi assuming your on oem 20" size. Anyways, LT tires can usually be inflate up to 80 psi. You can over inflate up to that...it won't hurt the tire. It may be a rougher ride, hurt your wear (a little) and affect grip. It's not something you wanna do on bad road conditions but obviously clear dry pavement it's certainly an option if you ever wanna stretch efficiency or are in a pinch.
 

Inkedsphynx

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None of this would happen in a Model X. So disappointing to read this.
You're right. The Model X would lose the windshield or roof panel or something 3 miles into the trip and therefor never make the trip to have anything negative happen while on the trip.

See, it's not just Tesla trolls that can say really really stupid things.
 

COdogman

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Is it possible the issue with the wheel well trim popping out might be caused by rubbing from the new tire/ wheel set up?
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