1st Month KWh per mile - owner's results

[No.92]

Your hot takes are fantastic. My Raptor averages 15-16 mpg, I'm paying CA gas prices, the R1S is absolutely the right vehicle for my family, and I'm definitely concerned about Rivian's poor energy management. Wasting 150 kWh per month to unnecessary standby consumption is irresponsible regardless of cost, and needs to be fixed.

I'm not disagreeing with you that it needs to get fixed. My comment was more towards the comment about the loss of pre-orders due to this. If you knew me, you'd know that I loathe wasting of anything (i.e. electricity, water, whatever). But like I mentioned, I strongly believe this will get fixed over time as the SW gets fine tuned

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[urundai]

Modern automotive ICs are designed for sleep mode. It's hard to fathom that Rivian designers would not know this and follow best practices on the selection of hardware during the hardware design phase, some/much of which would be assisted/guided/mentored by the chip and board level OEMs. So it is more likely that it can be fixed with software updates via better/quicker sleep mode management. But yes, if a chip designer screws up on the sleep implementation in silicon, that's certainly a problem.

Just to clarify, my original comment was on how easily we assume everything as fixable in s/w (800v, backup camera resolution, better charge curve, more thermal stabilization while charging - all s/w fixable in this forum).

Coming to this particular issue, I have significant concerns:

• We are dismissing this chatty situation as a debugging noise. I am curious why a production release has debugging enabled to this level.
• Second concern is debugging using so much network bandwidth - It's very rudimentary approach if the info is not locally processed or consolidated to reduce network usage. Feels like it's actually written by someone with no deep software experience and not sure it gives me comfort in the quality of the software in that case.
• Final comment is on what exactly is being processed and reported. What kind of debugging data is needed for a car that's sitting idle? Tesla gathers a ton of data but never see this kind of drain.

Overall, this is raising some red flags. While many of you are calling how the H/W should be capable (and not designed by amateurs), you must acknowledge the software quality is very weak in that case.

 

[Zoidz]

Just to clarify, my original comment was on how easily we assume everything as fixable in s/w (800v, backup camera resolution, better charge curve, more thermal stabilization while charging - all s/w fixable in this forum).

Coming to this particular issue, I have significant concerns:

• We are dismissing this chatty situation as a debugging noise. I am curious why a production release has debugging enabled to this level.
• Second concern is debugging using so much network bandwidth - It's very rudimentary approach if the info is not locally processed or consolidated to reduce network usage. Feels like it's actually written by someone with no deep software experience and not sure it gives me comfort in the quality of the software in that case.
• Final comment is on what exactly is being processed and reported. What kind of debugging data is needed for a car that's sitting idle? Tesla gathers a ton of data but never see this kind of drain.

Overall, this is raising some red flags. While many of you are calling how the H/W should be capable (and not designed by amateurs), you must acknowledge the software quality is very weak in that case.

Agree 1000%. My guess is that little (no?) time has been spent on refactoring to address comms and sleep optimization. They are just working on getting features implemented right now.

Assuming the drain is software/comms based, there could be many scenarios besides excessive debugging data. When reading through the Bosch document, it made me wonder about excessive/unnecessary wake-up events taking place, and how that is managed in software and hardware.

And what about GearGuard? How much power is it consuming continuously? If the cameras are powered on and recording continuously, that's a pretty big drain. It would be interesting for someone to test this issue with Gear Guard enabled, and then disabled (I assume that's an option?) to see if Gear Guard is a major culprit.

 

[electruck]

Coming to this particular issue, I have significant concerns:

• We are dismissing this chatty situation as a debugging noise.

Don't get hung up on this, it was merely speculation from one user. Even if it is a factor, which we haven't confirmed, this is most likely a multi-faceted problem that is going to require Rivian to address a variety of power consumption problems.

 

[Lsthrz]

This topic was just as ‘chatty’ for Tesla and not just at the very beginning of production either - and there was significant improvement, through software, over time, so would expect the smart engineers at Rivian to bring similar improvements.

As for releasing a vehicle with issues, I would agree they made a call where the pros outweighed the cons and pushed vehicles out the door. My favorite is the almost completely non-functional wireless charger - had to be a known issue, but I’m still very happy it’s my R1T nonetheless.

 

[jjwolf120]

We are dismissing this chatty situation as a debugging noise. I am curious why a production release has debugging enabled to this level.

They have all of these issues because it is new and has never been deployed at scale.

 

[Don]

Thinking outside the box here.

If you get under the Rivian and hammer a stake through the battery pack (getting through the armour will be tricky and may require multiple stakes) would that not kill any vampires currently in the battery causing your drain?!?

Then, as a preventative measure to ensure no future Battery Vampires, cloves of garlic draped around the rear view mirror.

Also hope someone from Rivian sees this, because they seem to have an issue within the factory.

Hope this helps.?‍?‍?‍?‍

I know what you’re saying. Either we have vampires in our batteries or skeletons in our closets or bats in our belfry’s or rocks in our heads or the little Devil sitting on our shoulder. We just can’t escape them.
I say we just ignore them and accept them as part of everyday life. ?

 

[Max]

I have a feeling with the little driving I do, I will get much less than OP's 1.6 mi/KWh. I am wondering if we ban Russian uranium and electricity prices shoot up, am I better off driving a bolt? Even if we don't ban it and Russians don't stop selling it to us, wouldn't I feel better about an EV that is not financing a war when it is at rest?

 

[AllInev]

Take away vampire losses:

1038 Miles Driven
498 KWh used

2.08 miles per KWh, with charging losses, which I would be happier with.

and

1038 Miles Driven
438 KWh used

2.39 miles per KWh or 299 miles on a full charge.

I appreciate that OP included charging losses and vampire drain in their calculations. I think the EPA should do the same when rating EVs. I sense there's some green-washing of the true energy usage and costs for EVs that empowers naysayers and skeptics.

 

[AllInev]

If you're concerned about paying a few bucks for electricity then this truck is probably not for you. F150, Silverado, RAM ICE owners probably don't ask how much it costs for gas

Another way to think about this is if a significant amount of gasoline was evaporating from your gas tank every day. I'm pretty sure F150, Silverado, RAM ICE owners would be upset.

 

[AllInev]

I have a feeling with the little driving I do, I will get much less than OP's 1.6 mi/KWh.

Yeah, that's pretty wild. The less you drive, the worse your mi/kWh. ?

 

[LaunchGreen]

Don't get hung up on this, it was merely speculation from one user. Even if it is a factor, which we haven't confirmed, this is most likely a multi-faceted problem that is going to require Rivian to address a variety of power consumption problems.

Ya, I'm pretty doubtful that the Rivian is using this much power just with data transfer, unless it's driving the hard drive to the service center every night.

 

[thedole]

A little more data I found interesting. I just hit 2,500 miles. It took me 70 days. I have only charged at home so far. This gives me data from my charger for total actual KWh consumed including charging losses. 1646 KWh.

I pay 14.5 cents per KWh and gas is about $5 here. So I spent $239 on charging. Based on these numbers I can back into 52 MPG on a cost basis. $239/$5 = 47.8 gallons equivalent. Then 2,500/47.8 = 52 MPG. These numbers change wildly based on your electric cost or price per gallon of gas.

 

[jjswan33]

If Rivian is working on this, if there is a God in heaven, it's being called "Project Garlic".

For the record I was talking to a senior service tech and discussed the vampire drain. He agreed it was a problem and ensured me Rivian was working on it.. ? @Max

 

[Max]

A little more data I found interesting. I just hit 2,500 miles. It took me 70 days. I have only charged at home so far. This gives me data from my charger for total actual KWh consumed including charging losses. 1646 KWh.

I pay 14.5 cents per KWh and gas is about $5 here. So I spent $239 on charging. Based on these numbers I can back into 52 MPG on a cost basis. $239/$5 = 47.8 gallons equivalent. Then 2,500/47.8 = 52 MPG. These numbers change wildly based on your electric cost or price per gallon of gas.

Thanks for sharing. Very good to know for those of us still waiting. Great info for folks cross shopping with ICE. For those cross shopping with other BEVs, it is 1.5 mi/KWh if you driver as much, even less if you drive less.

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