Vampire drain - what's the latest battery % loss people are getting?

[joelster]

One suggestion - take the battery out of your key fob. That might help with the incessant vehicle scanning. Rivian service once told me if the FOB is within 100 feet of the vehicle that the vehicle will still try to ping it. I found that hard to believe, but taking the battery out should certainly stop unwanted scanning and pinging.

Sorry to hear about your injury. Hope you’re back to normal soon and again driving your Rivian!

I assume that the last sentence was aimed at me. Thanks! I expect to be back on my feet and back on the road Monday.

I also found the key fob thing hard to believe but it seems to be true. The one I really have trouble believing is the frunk latch error drain. Seems crazy.

VD is real!

Sponsored

 

[MoreTrout]

Currently, seems like when plugged in, the vehicle is less likely to sleep and does more battery maintaining and other diagnostics since it can use grid power to do these tasks rather than drain the battery?

Based on numerous other threads and discussions on this topic, I'm fairly certain that is not true. The vehicle doesn't use grid power. It still drains the battery. Once it drops below a certain % of whatever target charge it is set to, then it will draw grid power to add that couple of % back. This is exactly what I saw when I left my vehicle plugged in. Once or twice a day it would begin charging again until it got back to 70%. If it was using grid power, there shouldn't have been any drop below 70% to begin with.

 

[HaveBlue]

Rivian says up to 12% is normal. Seems most people are seeing 1-2% per day loss. That's about 1kw per day or 360 kw per year and would equate to three fill ups per year lost. Imagine if at the end of each year you have to go to the gas station with your ICE car and pour out three tanks of gasoline into the gutter. Now imagine that Rivian sells 100,000 cars and 300,000 tanks of gasoline get poured into the gutter; the equivalent of roughly 4.5 million gallons of gasoline. That's not normal according to Rivian. 12x that is normal according to Rivian or 54 million gallons of gas every year. Remember, that electricity is still mostly made from coal and NG. It has to come from somewhere.

 

[DTown3011]

First week with R1T and going thru this experience now. Last night went to bed with 216 (70%) range and this morning 211 (68%).

 

[LL75]

We left our R1S outside in northern MI for the long weekend ~72 hours. 18-45 degrees with gear guard on and the vehicle waking a dozen times or so. We lost 9%.

that is normal with that temp and gear guard on.

 

[MotorCityR1S]

Agreed. I wasn't expecting any better and those are not optimal conditions. Now my wife driving 80-85 with snow mode on, suspension lifted, for 3 hours on I75 did not help our range. It was a nice learning experience for her.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

can folks who have vehicles comment on how much battery percentage they are losing overnight when not plugged in? im wondering if things have improved or not with all the various s/w updates Rivian has been making. if you wouldn't mind sharing your VIN range, that would be appreciated.

i know some folks were seeing 2-3% loss overnight, that seems like a lot.

TFL is saying a service technician told them 3-12% battery loss over a 24 hour period is normal depending on weather. if that's true, that sounds crazy.

I was seeing about that myself, but more recent updates were supposed to address it.

I’m currently in the middle of testing vampire drain from the R1T compared to the Lightning after the most recent updates. Prior test showed it wasn’t even close.

I’m currently 4 days into the test:
R1T: Loss of 11% / 31 miles on GOM.
Lightning: Loss of 2% / 6 miles on the GOM.

Parked side by side, outdoors in the northeast. App is checked on both once a day.

Based on my router, the Rivian checks and stays active much longer than the Ford does. The Ford disconnects and stays off the majority of the day.

 

[brancky3]

Has anybody tried to unplug the camera / heating element from behind the rear view mirror? I saw previously that it was staying heated even when the truck was 'sleeping', wondering if we can disable it.

 

[shrink]

I was seeing about that myself, but more recent updates were supposed to address it.

I’m currently in the middle of testing vampire drain from the R1T compared to the Lightning after the most recent updates. Prior test showed it wasn’t even close.

I’m currently 4 days into the test:
R1T: Loss of 11% / 31 miles on GOM.
Lightning: Loss of 2% / 6 miles on the GOM.

Parked side by side, outdoors in the northeast. App is checked on both once a day.

Based on my router, the Rivian checks and stays active much longer than the Ford does. The Ford disconnects and stays off the majority of the day.

If you're able, can you do an overnight test with Wi-Fi off on the Rivian?

 

[Yellow Buddy]

If you're able, can you do an overnight test with Wi-Fi off on the Rivian?

That will have to wait until next week until I wrap up the weeklong test, but yea I can do that.

The reason for the weeklong test was I found in one of the prior updates the vehicle would initiate a deeper sleep after multiple days sitting. I want to see if it still goes into that deep sleep if I check the app regularly.

Prior tests didn’t show much of a difference but new software could have changed that.

 

[alisdair1941]

Has anybody tested how the various analytics and privacy options affect VD? I generally leave them on because the information does help Rivian, but it makes little sense to keep sending data over long periods of being parked.

That might be the reason it wakes up every three hours and stays awake for another hour. The check-in period may just be for uploading analytics to Rivian. If that's the case, they should really change it so that data upload happens only when the vehicle is explicitly awake/driving.

 

[HaveBlue]

That will have to wait until next week until I wrap up the weeklong test, but yea I can do that.

The reason for the weeklong test was I found in one of the prior updates the vehicle would initiate a deeper sleep after multiple days sitting. I want to see if it still goes into that deep sleep if I check the app regularly.

Prior tests didn’t show much of a difference but new software could have changed that.

I like the scientific way you are going about it. My suggestion is to start pulling fuses over night until you track down which module(s) are causing the drain. I'd probably jump an Ammeter into the fuse block and start cataloging the drain at each. I could care less if Spotify or anything else needs to phone home when I'm not driving.

An old BMW 325 I have sitting around for a year starts right up. No battery issues or lost gas...

 

[shrink]

I've been a bit obsessed with trying to figure out and minimize vampire drain, too. Love that several of us are in the same boat.

Anyone else think a simple and consistently appearing sleep/wake button in the app would help? This would, of course, have to coincide with a setting in the car - e.g., "Put vehicle to sleep 5 minutes after doors lock " or something like that.

I know there's an energy setting in my Model 3 regarding remote access. I can't remember the exact verbiage, but it's something to the extent of keeping vehicle awake for quicker remote access vs. an energy saver mode that will result in a longer initial delay when remotely access via the app. I'd have to look up the exact setting. Regardless, I think something like that would help, too.

 

[Tony R1S]

If you're able, can you do an overnight test with Wi-Fi off on the Rivian?

So I've been doing such a test since I got our R1S last Fri. I have not connected to WiFi yet, and on average, seeing 3 days ~1-2% overnight (~8-12 hrs), and one day was 3% , outside temps around 40-50. Gear guard on. Parked outside in driveway. I think I'll hold off on Wifi for while longer.

 

[Ronimal]

I’m seeing the typical 1-2% per 24 hrs parked in a 50F garage. Better than when I first took delivery 9 months ago, but still needs improvement.

That’s roughly 100W of power running nonstop, which seems excessive. no idea how much of that is BMS, and how much of it is inefficient systems running. I can say the thing seems to be a light sleeper, blinking lights, beeping camp speaker and actuators moving if I walk by. Before a recent update the power steering pump would stay on for hours. Things like that make me think there are more gains to be had.

I do wonder if rivian is sacrificing energy to maximize battery health. Maybe those other EV with little or no vampire drain will see more battery degradation over time?

for my usage, it’s not a big deal other than the energy waste, which I admit is annoying considering Rivian’s ‘green’ marketing bent. And I do think this will continue to improve long-term.

Sponsored