R1T trip report : 800mi, sub-freezing temps, grade: B+

TLDR; I took the truck up from Baltimore to VT (Mt Snow) for skiing. Packed with 2 adults, 3 kids, and all our skiing gear. I continue to be impressed by how easy it is to fit anything and everything in here and how easy the truck is to drive. Charging was effective though not perfect. Truck performed well in the elements.

Sat Dec 24 trip north: Temps ranged from 5 to 12 degrees and a 15-20mph west to east crosswind the entire day. Also about 1700ft of net elevation gain. Overall efficiency was good for the conditions at 1.80mi/kwh. The first 30 minutes efficiency was less than 1mi/kwh as battery was warming. Our first charging stop was great at EA. Peak of 181kw on a 150kw terminal. The preconditioning flag came up about an hour before the charging stop. More on charging below. Second stop was at a Shell Recharge in Shadock NY. Peak of 212kw on a 350kw terminal. We encountered a lot of snow/slush/frozen goods on rt 9 across southern VT. Truck handled perfectly with no issues. I used snow mode here and it was great with slightly less regen than usual.

Wed Dec 28 trip south: Temps ranged from 18 to 50 and light winds with same elevation lost as gained earlier. We did encounter some traffic so slightly lower avg. speed. Efficiency nearly 20% higher at 2.14mi/kwh, probably as expected. Only one charge at EA. Peak of 174kw on 150kw terminal. Preconditioning again came up about 1 hour before the stop.

Positive notes:
1) Range estimates were accurate. I built in 30-50mi buffer on each leg and that's basically what I had left each time.
2) EA performance was outstanding. No issues and it hit peaks above expectations. No throttling here.
3) Snow mode worked well. Truck is confident in winter conditions on hilly/mountainous driving terrain, despite being on AS 22s.
4) Driver plus better on this latest software than on either of the 2 previous versions my truck has had.

Areas for improvement:
1) Navigation still falls short of ABRP for charging. It's a bit unpredictable when it will change it's preferred stops. It's also not flexible if I want to use a slightly different stop than the recommendation. Dear Rivian: Users should have ability to change the preferred station or network AND turn on battery preconditioning if not using navigation. When you go off the route and Rivian can't direct you to a charger, the preconditioning turns off.
2) Navigation still falls short of Google for navigation/traffic. Amongs other things, It decided rt 9 was closed and kept trying to route me 45min around the best route.
3) Due to the lack of preconditioning on my second stop in upstate NY on trip north, the BMS throttled the charge after running at over 200kw for ~12min up to about 45%. The note was that battery needed to cool which is ironic considering it was 7 degrees outside and windy too.

The overall experience of road tripping this truck was great despite tough temps and conditions. Aside from the shortcomings on the navigation noted above, nearly everything else is exactly as I would design it. Space for everyone and everything. I have read complaints about this UI, but I find it to be fast, simple and intuitive. Also, I loved ripping this thing around some empty snow covered parking lots. Drift mode is perfect!!!

Now if only Rivian could figure out that fix for the tonneau ASAP! Mine broke 2 days before this trip and I'm pretty sure I could hear the snickering from at least one or two in the know drivers who noticed my 1.5 slats sticking out at a 45 degree angle! Even the dry graphite lube I applied 6 weeks ago couldn't stop the inevitable.

so all your gear was under the tonneau? I’m planning to put a roof box on bed crossbars but haven’t seen anyone with that setup yet.

cardad said:

so all your gear was under the tonneau? I’m planning to put a roof box on bed crossbars but haven’t seen anyone with that setup yet.

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All our skis, boot bags, poles, etc were in the bed. Not really under the tonneau since it's mostly open. I tied it all down and used a ratchet to hold the boot bags against the cab. I didn't have any security issues and no rain so no problem being uncovered. All our clothes and other "indoor" stuff fit easily in frunk and gear tunnel. I considered using my roof box on the crossbars but it just wasn't necessary.

Ironically we went somewhere this past weekend that passed by the only two rivian fast chargers in Colorado and the truck didn’t pick either, despite great positioning along the route. We navigated there manually

Andystroh said:

Ironically we went somewhere this past weekend that passed by the only two rivian fast chargers in Colorado and the truck didn’t pick either, despite great positioning along the route. We navigated there manually

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The Rivian navigation is horrible compared to literally anything else when it comes to routing with charging. I routed it from Park City to the RAN station in Telluride and it claimed there were no fast chargers on the route despite showing 3 chargers on the map. This is a clear failure by their software engineers to create a functional product and I thought VW/Porsche was bad, but so far charge planning in the Rivian gets 0 stars.

I still don't quite understand the 'preconditioning'. As far as I can tell, the manual mentions it but doesn't say "do this to precondition" or your "battery will precondition if..."
What I've gleaned from my FRFF (Fine Rivina Forum Friends) is if I navigate via the vehicle nav specifically to a charging stop, it will precondition. One person said plan your route with ABRP, then just input the chargers as a destination one at a time in the vehicle nav.
Would that precondition it? I've yet to take it on a long trip. I chickened out Christmas morning on a 330 mile trip to Western NY and took the ICE vehicle.

I'm surprised the manual isn't a little more clear and emphatic about preconditioning since it seems to be rather important.

jbronkoR1T said:

I still don't quite understand the 'preconditioning'. As far as I can tell, the manual mentions it but doesn't say "do this to precondition" or your "battery will precondition if..."
What I've gleaned from my FRFF (Fine Rivina Forum Friends) is if I navigate via the vehicle nav specifically to a charging stop, it will precondition. One person said plan your route with ABRP, then just input the chargers as a destination one at a time in the vehicle nav.
Would that precondition it? I've yet to take it on a long trip. I chickened out Christmas morning on a 330 mile trip to Western NY and took the ICE vehicle.

I'm surprised the manual isn't a little more clear and emphatic about preconditioning since it seems to be rather important.

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On my recent road trip I sometimes had the charger as the destination and sometimes the charger was en route to final destination or just the following charger as destination to know what charge I needed. Seems that pre conditioning happens more often when the charger is the final destination but had pre conditioning happen both ways. Generally preconditioning started around 58 minutes prior to charger arrival. Did see it start 27 minutes prior to arrival but that time my arrival SOC was low. I was also in warmer temps part of the time and high mileage days with 4 hcarging stops so maybe that's why it did precondition sometimes?? Have no idea what ideal pack temp should be.
Love to have manual precondition option in future OTA...let the truck decide if it's helpful or not.

WSea said:

On my recent road trip I sometimes had the charger as the destination and sometimes the charger was en route to final destination or just the following charger as destination to know what charge I needed. Seems that pre conditioning happens more often when the charger is the final destination but had pre conditioning happen both ways. Generally preconditioning started around 58 minutes prior to charger arrival. Did see it start 27 minutes prior to arrival but that time my arrival SOC was low. I was also in warmer temps part of the time and high mileage days with 4 hcarging stops so maybe that's why it did precondition sometimes?? Have no idea what ideal pack temp should be.
Love to have manual precondition option in future OTA...let the truck decide if it's helpful or not.

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I'll try navigating directly to the charger next time. The reality is I'd like to be able to make that call on the fly depending on observed consumption. But to do that, the system would have to allow you to click the charger, which doesn't seem possible at the moment. To navigate to the charger while driving requires more ability to multi-task than I can do safely. On the plus side, they are showing consistent progress on many software items. I'll be hopeful on this.

You are able to click on a charger icon, and then navigate to it. But only if there isn't already a route being used. Once a route is active you can see the charge icons, but not click on them for information, or to route to them. Something a future update should fix.

Rally1 said:

You are able to click on a charger icon, and then navigate to it. But only if there isn't already a route being used. Once a route is active you can see the charge icons, but not click on them for information, or to route to them. Something a future update should fix.

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Excellent tip. Thank you.

The ability to precondition should not require use of a decent but not great nav system. Why is preconditioning not something that can be manually initiated, if only for a limited time?

whyasky said:

TLDR; I took the truck up from Baltimore to VT (Mt Snow) for skiing. Packed with 2 adults, 3 kids, and all our skiing gear. I continue to be impressed by how easy it is to fit anything and everything in here and how easy the truck is to drive. Charging was effective though not perfect. Truck performed well in the elements.

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Thanks for all the details. Sorry about your tonneau. Mine is still working (a little more than 6 months and counting) and I love having it.

Great write up - thank you.

I'm hoping that Rivian monitors these forums, or if someone has made these points to Rivian. This is all fantastic feedback for the company and I'm pretty sure they can work through much of this stuff with OTA fixes and updates.

P.S. I'm sure they've got the message about the tonneau cover!!

Nice, Sounds like a decent trip. I grew up 15 minutes from Mt Snow. Waiting on my max pack rivian here since May 2019