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

[Citibeach]

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

I’m not writing a long post about y experience this week doing a round trip mid week from Los Angeles to Phoenix, but I will share that I won’t be doing it again until they at least quadruple the EV chargers available on Hwy 10. To be traveling in the desert and have a handful of level 3 chargers between Palm Springs and Phoenix is stupid, especially when a third aren’t working. There are now too many EVs other then a Tesla driving around now and it’s only going to get worse. My trip back to Los Angeles, I calculated that looking for level 3 chargers, waiting our turn, finding one that actually works, we spent 4 hours charging on a trip that takes normally 6 hours So our 6 hour trip took 10 hours.
I won’t attempt that again until major improvements are made on that highway.

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[martinb8]

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"

@Aag12 not sure why others aren't questioning why you have this setup, but why would you put aftermarket ram 1500 wheels on? I can only imagine those would weigh much more then the standard OEM 21s. You couple that with the winter tires, your range / efficiency will take quite a hit and would almost entirely justify you're poor efficiency ratings.

 

[carmigo]

The trip
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

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.

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.

Love how detailed this is. Great post!

 

[Aag12]

@Aag12 not sure why others aren't questioning why you have this setup, but why would you put aftermarket ram 1500 wheels on? I can only imagine those would weigh much more then the standard OEM 21s. You couple that with the winter tires, your range / efficiency will take quite a hit and would almost entirely justify you're poor efficiency ratings.

You're right in your questioning! There are a few cheap people like me looking for a winter tire setup. The ram wheels were $275 on fb. Along with tpms sensors and a few other parts it cost me 400 all in to get the wheels (excluding tires of course). The oem setup was $2500 for just the wheels/tpms and i couldn't find a better 3rd party wheel that would be cheaper and was in stock. I really needed the winter tires due to a majority of my winter driving being to/from ski resorts.

The weight is similar to the oem 20 setup based on the numbers I've seen. I believe the efficiency hit is really from the winter tire and the offset issue. To be honest I haven't noticed as big of a difference in efficiency driving to/from ski mountains, but I believe that's because I'm in traffic for a majority if it thus lower speeds, and higher altitude. These should lower the aero penalty. While on my documented road trip I was cruising at 80-85mph

Since these wheels are so cheap, I may get a better wheel setup if the market has an affordable option. Everything I've seen so far that matches the offset is crazy expensive.

 

[martinb8]

You're right in your questioning! There are a few cheap people like me looking for a winter tire setup. The ram wheels were $275 on fb. Along with tpms sensors and a few other parts it cost me 400 all in to get the wheels (excluding tires of course). The oem setup was $2500 for just the wheels/tpms and i couldn't find a better 3rd party wheel that would be cheaper and was in stock. I really needed the winter tires due to a majority of my winter driving being to/from ski resorts.

The weight is similar to the oem 20 setup based on the numbers I've seen. I believe the efficiency hit is really from the winter tire and the offset issue. To be honest I haven't noticed as big of a difference in efficiency driving to/from ski mountains, but I believe that's because I'm in traffic for a majority if it thus lower speeds, and higher altitude. These should lower the aero penalty. While on my documented road trip I was cruising at 80-85mph

Since these wheels are so cheap, I may get a better wheel setup if the market has an affordable option. Everything I've seen so far that matches the offset is crazy expensive.

@Aag12 I see. Makes sense. Nothing wrong with finding cheaper solutions, just seemed odd at first. But I think you’re right, the offset and tires will have a lot of impact.

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