What would you do? Get LE version (300+) or wait for MaxPack (400+)?

[kylealden]

buyer beware is how I will end this ongoing debate. Good luck to all of you.

That would be wrong for young think that. I use one pedal driving in the streets and drive rather conservatively. i let the Regen slow the car down, feathering the right pedal. I only need the brakes to actually make a stop or in case of a light charge or traffic related forced breaking. Regen does not add to your city stop and go range. It might extend what your using efficiency but does not add range.
you can believe it or Not

Sponsored

 

[timesinks]

I’m saying there is zero effect on the range meter.

I went 8 miles in stop and go city streets and it cost me 12 Miles of total range.

without regen would it have cost me 13? I don’t know.

Without regen, it would probably have cost way more than that.

Regen captures a portion of the energy from going down the hill back into the battery instead of converting it to heat with the brakes. In both the Volt and the ID.4, I watch the range number increase from regen every time I leave my house (I live a couple hundred feet up a hill).

So yes, regen does have an effect on the range meter. Go watch the TFL videos of towing Teslas to see that this phenomenon isn't just limited to Chevy and VW.

You may not notice it change the range meter in stop-and-go traffic because you don't use a full "miles-worth" of energy to get up to 30mph, and you don't recapture a full "miles-worth" of energy when you slow back down to a stop. But very real energy is being stored back in your battery for later use.

Another complication of slow traffic is that the overhead of running the climate control starts to be more noticeable. If the AC is about 1kW on average, for every hour you sit in traffic you may well lose an extra ~3 miles of range.

 

[YamaLink]

I don't have a dog in this fight (above friendly discussion about regen and city vs highway), but I do know my passenger excitedly said "you're making 'gas' right now" as we one-pedaled the Tesla down a wide swooping 4 lane mountain pass for about 15 minutes. She was enjoying the scenery while I was giddy over seeing the range calculator putting gas back in the battery, ha!

 

[TessP100D]

I don't have a dog in this fight (above friendly discussion about regen and city vs highway), but I do know my passenger excitedly said "you're making 'gas' right now" as we one-pedaled the Tesla down a wide swooping 4 lane mountain pass for about 15 minutes. She was enjoying the scenery while I was giddy over seeing the range calculator putting gas back in the battery, ha!

Yes. Down hill from a mountain will add range. Depending on the SOC, I get an extra 10-14 miles from 5200 feet to sea level.

 

[timesinks]

I’m saying there is zero effect on the range meter.

Yes. Down hill from a mountain will add range. Depending on the SOC, I get an extra 10-14 miles from 5200 feet to sea level.

I give up.

 

[TessP100D]

I give up.

Good. Dam. Everybody knows downhill you gain range. Everybody knows against the wind or uphill you loose range. Stop, and go traffic. No help there

 

[Craigins]

I give up.

The ignore function on the forums works great fyi. It can save you a lot of headaches.

 

[drcarric2650]

Do to the secrecy that Rivian has, this question can't be asked correctly, it requires a timeline.

i.e.
Would you get the 300 mi version, if the 400 mi version wasn't available until 2023?

 

[Blur1t]

I’d wager a battery replacement is not much more difficult than a frame replacement on a body on frame pickup(cough Toyota cough cough)

Can you say Rodeo/Passport? Lol

 

[Blur1t]

You will find that you come to think of your fuel condition in a very different way than you are used to doing from your ICE driving experience. I can talk about it all day long but you won't appreciate it until you experience it. In reality the world isn't any different in a BEV than it is in an ICE vehicle. If conditions chage en route such that your fuel consumption goes way up your range will go way down (if the condition persists) and you will run out unless you top up. The way in which your experience is different is that if that happens in an ICE vehicle (the light comes on way before your next planned fuel stop) you just pull off at the next exit and get gas. In a BEV you don't because there probably is no place to charge at the next off ramp. This results in obsession with fuel condition at all times throughout the trip. I don't have to explain this to pilots because they already know all about it.

A pilot knows how many gph his plane burns and what it's airspeed (TAS) is and picks an altitude where the wind speed is such that his ground speed is sufficient to get him to his destination with a comfortable reserve. A BEV driver knows how many Wh/mi his car burns when there is no wind an recognizes that head winds don't change his ground speed but that they increase the Wh/mi he will consume. He knows that he may not make it to his destination unless he can lower than Wh/mi number (which he does by slowing down) or can refuel.

Most of you don't want to mess with any of the stuff I have just described and so the car gives you a display like this one:

The gray line shows how much energy the car thought would be used in accomplishing this trip - that you will start out with about 80% charge and arrive with about 20%. Note that the line is not of constant slope because the navigation system knows where you are planning to go, that the speed limits vary and that the terrain isn't level. Sometimes the jogs in the line are much more dramatic than they are in this example.

The heavy red line shows the actual trip consumption history up to the open circle (your location) and a projection based on recent history beyond that point out to the destination. In this case the first 20 or so miles confirmed the original prediction but at that point it starts to become clear that you are really going to do better than the early prediction and at 150 miles you have obviously done quite a bit better than originally thought. Consequently the prediction for the destination is much better than the planner originally said things would be. The planner would use the rated range adjusted for terrain and speed limit to make its prediction of 20% SoC at the destination so obviously the rated range is not the appropriate range to use here. Why not? Probably, in this case, because of a tail wind but a more conservative than average driver might be the answer too. Were I to drive this route a month or even a day later the result might be substantially different. Your job is to observe what conditions lead to better and what conditions lead to worse performance. Or at least to understand what you need to do if the red meatball dips beneath 0 at the destination end of the plot.

There is much more detail on this plot in another thread but the essence is somewhat obscured in that thread by extensive discussion about what the planning system can and cannot know a priori.

The obvious assumption in all of this is that the Rivians will have a similar display as I think they must.

It's inherent with this sort of estimator that it is always going to be right at the end. The real question is as to whether being told before setting out you will have 37 miles range left at destination you can be assured that you will in fact have 37 miles range when you get there. No display can do that because it can't know that it might start raining heavily or that a head wind might spring up mid trip. It is the job of this graph to let you know if something that does impact end SoC comes up in enough time that you can do something about it if that's necessary.

This example picture shows that the story based on the first 20 miles can be deceptive with regard to the rest of the trip (especially if it is a long one). But note that just as this display can warn you that you had better slow down and/or charge sooner than plan it tells us, in cases like this example, that we could, on observing the more favorable than anticipated consumption at, say the 35 mile point, dial another 10 mph into the auto pilot. This means more consumption so as we drive at this higher speed the red line slope increases and the red meatball starts to descend the right axis. If it stabilizes at a lower SoC value lower than we are comfortable with we just dial the autopilot back a bit. Getting used to this is what requires the experience and some thought.


Some will be pleased and some will be pissed off. I can guarantee posts in this forum a few months hence to the effect that that Scaringe bastard is as much of a scoundrel as that Musk bastard. These will come from people who have no clue about the physics involved and who think they should get 300 + miles range while driving 85 mph in hot weather. No reasonable person would think that but these are not reasonable people. I sure RJ is being fitted for his lead underwear as launch approaches.


This may be one of the hardest things for new BEV drivers to grasp. You will almost never achieve the advertised range. Sometimes you will get more and sometimes you will get less. It depends on how you drive, where you drive and when you drive. In the west where there are long stretches of road with 75 mph speed limits you will not get 300+ miles of range. On the east coast where speed limits are lower you will and might even get a bit over.

Absolutely love and appreciate the details you lay out for everyone. It really makes more sense, I was having a hard time explaining it my wife. Thank you for your insight.

 

[Lmirafuente]

90% of my trips are within 100 miles back and forth, considering the fact Tesla is about open up their charging network, upcoming RAN and other charging infrastructure for my needs 300mi is good enough.

I don't want to pay extra $10K, carry extra load (battery weight) and pay penalty on efficiency to satisfy less than 10% of my long distance travels.

Just deliver my LE R1S s00n!

I’m with ya on this!

 

[ja_kub_sz]

I am a launch edition R1T preorder holder (Apr 2019), but I am considering changing my order to the MaxPack. I know this will push me out of the LE group and delay my delivery, but I really want that 400-mile range for some of the road trips I plan to take. I talked to a CS rep and they said if I end up changing I will still maintain my preorder rank among the non-LE group. And they recommended I wait and talk to my guide before making any decisions, since they might have more info at that time regarding delivery timing of each one.

What are your thoughts on the dilemma?

1. Get the truck sooner, and sacrifice the extra 100 miles
2. Be patient and wait for that MaxPack

Range is the most important thing in my opinion when it comes to these electric vehicles. Seriously as soon as you find yourself in a position where a little bit of spontaneous travel and an unexpected charger fail has you looking at a $80,000 vehicle that you're afraid to drive you'll be kicking yourself.

Also I can't really foresee that battery materials will be getting exponentially cheaper anytime in the next 18 to 36 months. I wouldn't even be surprised if that 100 extra miles from a Max pack is going to cost a lot more than $10,000 in the future. That would also be something I would take into consideration.

These things do happen

MAXPACK ?

 

[KootenayEV]

Yeah..I’m thinking that a higher percentage of future Rivian owners - truck or SUV, compared to other current EVs - are intending to either tow and / or use them off road. Both of those ‘use cases’ will chew up the battery / range.
In my case I want to be able to drag the trailer 50-75 miles from here, and then be able to start exploring numerous avenues of dirt roads, photo ops etc. Where I’m talking will not have any chargers for a very, very long time; likely never..
Sure, I’m planning some work arounds to be able to add range and extend my stay while boondocking (yes, 3rd party hardware and more $$). But for me I’ll need the Max Pack to make even that feasible.

This is exactly why I ordered a Max Pack. There's a number of scenario's in the BC and AB mountains where we will park the trailer somewhere away from civilization (with no power) and take day trips with the truck to trailheads etc.

 

[crashmtb]

This is exactly why I ordered a Max Pack. There's a number of scenario's in the BC and AB mountains where we will park the trailer somewhere away from civilization (with no power) and take day trips with the truck to trailheads etc.

and I’ve gone max pack to get to the mountains with less stops. I’d like to keep Winnipeg to Nelson under 15 hours drive time.
Also to deal with winter.

 

[KootenayEV]

and I’ve gone max pack to get to the mountains with less stops. I’d like to keep Winnipeg to Nelson under 15 hours drive time.
Also to deal with winter.

You'll have to come visit! With your user name, I'm guess you also bike? (I do like to keep the rubber side down though lol)

Sponsored