Front Motors running hot

[Duquesne]

I’ve had my Rivian R1S for a while and I’m approaching 10,000 miles. I did a road trip from Georgia to Pennsylvania for the Thanksgiving holiday, mostly on conserve mode as I drove through EV hell of WV arriving in PA on Saturday.

Sunday I jumped in the truck, and it was still in conserve mode from the road trip and as I’m driving it just feels like it’s a little bit sluggish. I clicked into the data center and I noticed the front two motors are over 200° and I’d only driven probably 5 to 8 miles.
I immediately switched over to all purpose mode and within seconds the temperature dropped to normal ranges between 100 and 110°.

I watch the entire 780 mile trip and never saw them run hot, I kept watching since then and nothing like this just happened again. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

Sponsored

 

[VSG]

If it was cold then the motors were deliberately running hot to warm up your HV battery.

 

[Electrified Outdoors]

I think I read about this once before. It's possible Rivian is using the motors to generate heat to warm the battery.

 

[COdogman]

What was the battery temp and outside temp that day? Once the battery is up to 65 or so the motor temps seem to come down. Your drive was pretty short so it never got that far.

 

[Duquesne]

Hmmm. Who knew…. It was low 40s

 

[ER1T]

With only 2 motors doing all the heavy lifting (conserve mode), it would make sense that they would run hotter than normal. Especially on short trips. On longer trips, the airflow and less regen would help reduce temps.

 

[W1SE]

I’ve had my Rivian R1S for a while and I’m approaching 10,000 miles. I did a road trip from Georgia to Pennsylvania for the Thanksgiving holiday, mostly on conserve mode as I drove through EV hell of WV arriving in PA on Saturday.

Sunday I jumped in the truck, and it was still in conserve mode from the road trip and as I’m driving it just feels like it’s a little bit sluggish. I clicked into the data center and I noticed the front two motors are over 200° and I’d only driven probably 5 to 8 miles.
I immediately switched over to all purpose mode and within seconds the temperature dropped to normal ranges between 100 and 110°.

I watch the entire 780 mile trip and never saw them run hot, I kept watching since then and nothing like this just happened again. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

Were you routed to go to a DC charger. Remember that the motors create heat to heat the battery when they are pre-conditioning. It does this by creating resistance in the motors (heating them up) then running the fluid to the batteries.

 

[jeeden]

What makes you think they were running out of spec? Unless you got a warning from the truck don't worry about it.

I love the ability to see the data from the truck, but this is probably why Rivian doesn't show us more stuff because they don't need the headache of people drawing their own conclusions about good and bad indicators

 

[Riviot]

Hmmm. Who knew…. It was low 40s

He ?? knew

If it was cold then the motors were deliberately running hot to warm up your HV battery.

 

[sub]

Normal or not, Rivian is going to get a million complaints from people about this sort of thing.

Adding a temperature gauge without including anything in the documentation about what temperatures are desirable is just begging for people to misinterpret the data and think their vehicle is broken.

I hope they add more data, but they also need to add documentation for how to interpret each piece of data. Because it isn't obvious or common knowledge.

Even if they just added disclaimer saying something like "the information below is for entertainment purposes only. If any values are concerning there will be a warning on the other display" it would be a huge improvement.

As is, it feels like you're supposed to watch that for problems, but there's no information about how you would know if there was a problem.

 

[jeeden]

Normal or not, Rivian is going to get a million complaints from people about this sort of thing.

Adding a temperature gauge without including anything in the documentation about what temperatures are desirable is just begging for people to misinterpret the data and think their vehicle is broken.

I hope they add more data, but they also need to add documentation for how to interpret each piece of data. Because it isn't obvious or common knowledge.

Even if they just added disclaimer saying something like "the information below is for entertainment purposes only. If any values are concerning there will be a warning on the other display" it would be a huge improvement.

As is, it feels like you're supposed to watch that for problems, but there's no information about how you would know if there was a problem.

I see the point but think about normal gauges on an ice car. You see the gauges for oil pressure and nobody worries about it until it hits the red. I guess the difference here is it's showing the actual numbers which I can see in some of my vehicles like my mustang, but I guess people don't care because it's a non ev

I think if they just put a little label over each gauge that says "normal" and then replicates whatever warning would be on the main cluster when it's out of spec it would probably limit a lot of concern from people.

As a side note it's amazing how many folks are buying rubians without being obsessed about them like a lot of us and just saw them around and decide to pick one up. The Facebook forums are full of people buying them and really have no knowledge of the vehicle at all until they get in it. There are a few people that were taking off on road trips this week that had no idea there was even a mobile charger in the car. Really good to see them selling the vehicles for the little worrisome about potential bad experiences through the user error or lack of user knowledge

 

[Duquesne]

What makes you think they were running out of spec? Unless you got a warning from the truck don't worry about it.

I love the ability to see the data from the truck, but this is probably why Rivian doesn't show us more stuff because they don't need the headache of people drawing their own conclusions about good and bad indicators

Well I think they were running hot because the gauges were glowing red and were past the actual red line on the Guage…. So my conclusions were that they were running hot…

I am sure some one will tell me I’m wrong but it is what but is what it is…. The guages were amber when I turn the guage page on and as I processed what I was reading they transitioned to red. I changed it to all purpose from conserve and the temps almost immediately began dropping quickly

 

[ciderarchitect]

Mine did that a couple of weeks ago on a really cold morning (around 30F), driving to work in All Purpose. All four motors hit 260F degrees and the gauges were orange. After about 30 seconds, they all dropped by about 100F quickly. As others have suggested, I believe Rivian is intentionally running the motors inefficiently to create heat that they can shed to the battery to warm it up. My battery was below 40F when I left my house and the rapid motor cooling happened about 25 minutes later when I was just pulling into work (so I couldn’t really monitor the subsequent change in battery temperature.)

 

[emoore]

Well I think they were running hot because the gauges were glowing red and were past the actual red line on the Guage…. So my conclusions were that they were running hot…

I am sure some one will tell me I’m wrong but it is what but is what it is…. The guages were amber when I turn the guage page on and as I processed what I was reading they transitioned to red. I changed it to all purpose from conserve and the temps almost immediately began dropping quickly

It’s normal.

 

[Hillbilly]

Hmmm. Who knew…. It was low 40s

Apparently a lot of people?

Sponsored