manishie
Member
- First Name
- Manish
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2023
- Threads
- 2
- Messages
- 20
- Reaction score
- 38
- Location
- Bodega Bay, California
- Vehicles
- R1S
- Thread starter
- #1
copying my Facebook post here:
all right friends. allow me to share my electric car nightmare (still in progress, unfortunately). don’t get me wrong. I’ve been an EV driver for four years but I’ve never had anything like this happen to me before.
so, with my old electric car, a nice simple Chevy bolt, I could leave it unplugged for weeks without any issues. well, not the case with my Rivian R1S. apparently, this car has quite a big “vampire draw.“ Meaning it uses a lot of power even when it just sits there doing nothing overnight. So I had something like 10 or 20 miles of range when I parked my car at the parking lot in the Berkeley Marina the other night. and then when I woke up the next morning, nothing. Zero battery power. not even enough that I could unlock the doors. Zip. Zero. Zilch.
with the first tow truck, we were able to charge the 12V battery enough so that eventually I could unlock the doors and the dashboard kind of turned on. Kind of. Sort of. But not really. Enough that the dashboard button to turn off the parking brake was there right in front of me, but it wouldn’t let me turn off the parking brake, no matter what I did. Nothing we could do would turn off the parking brake. luckily, the front two wheels were spinning freely, so the tow truck guy only had to put “skates” on the back two wheels which were locked. anyhow, long story short and the first tow truck couldn’t get my huge vehicle on the truck so I had to wait hours for a second tow truck.
Six hours later and my SUV was finally on top of the second tow truck. I was elated as we drove through Friday rush-hour traffic to get to a car charger. I had used Google maps to find a nearby charger that had enough space for this ginormous tow truck to maneuver to get my SUV to a charger. oh, an interesting point to note. In order to charge a fancy dancy car like my Rivian, you need enough power so that the computer can turn on so that it can accept the charge. So we had to jump the battery from the tow truck to some little cable buried in the back of the SUV by the trailer hitch. That would get the computer started enough that it sort of kind of seemed like it would charge.
imagine my dismay after 30 minutes of trying when EVgo customer service told me that yes there is a known problem of fast chargers being unable to charge EVs with zero battery power. so we gave up and drove five minutes away to a slower charger, which was supposed to work. And of course, 30 minutes later that charger also wouldn’t work with the car. I felt really bad as it was now late at night and the tow truck driver was already an hour past his end of the day. It took him another 30 minutes to get the SUV off the truck (remember the locked wheels).
so now, my useless car is parked on the side of the road. And I have to get it towed again to the Rivian service center in South San Francisco so they can figure out how to charge my damn car.
My astute friends might notice that I am posting this at 5 AM… Yes. The stress of this nightmare woke me up in the middle of the night and I have not been able to get back to sleep.
Arrrrrrrgh
all right friends. allow me to share my electric car nightmare (still in progress, unfortunately). don’t get me wrong. I’ve been an EV driver for four years but I’ve never had anything like this happen to me before.
so, with my old electric car, a nice simple Chevy bolt, I could leave it unplugged for weeks without any issues. well, not the case with my Rivian R1S. apparently, this car has quite a big “vampire draw.“ Meaning it uses a lot of power even when it just sits there doing nothing overnight. So I had something like 10 or 20 miles of range when I parked my car at the parking lot in the Berkeley Marina the other night. and then when I woke up the next morning, nothing. Zero battery power. not even enough that I could unlock the doors. Zip. Zero. Zilch.
with the first tow truck, we were able to charge the 12V battery enough so that eventually I could unlock the doors and the dashboard kind of turned on. Kind of. Sort of. But not really. Enough that the dashboard button to turn off the parking brake was there right in front of me, but it wouldn’t let me turn off the parking brake, no matter what I did. Nothing we could do would turn off the parking brake. luckily, the front two wheels were spinning freely, so the tow truck guy only had to put “skates” on the back two wheels which were locked. anyhow, long story short and the first tow truck couldn’t get my huge vehicle on the truck so I had to wait hours for a second tow truck.
Six hours later and my SUV was finally on top of the second tow truck. I was elated as we drove through Friday rush-hour traffic to get to a car charger. I had used Google maps to find a nearby charger that had enough space for this ginormous tow truck to maneuver to get my SUV to a charger. oh, an interesting point to note. In order to charge a fancy dancy car like my Rivian, you need enough power so that the computer can turn on so that it can accept the charge. So we had to jump the battery from the tow truck to some little cable buried in the back of the SUV by the trailer hitch. That would get the computer started enough that it sort of kind of seemed like it would charge.
imagine my dismay after 30 minutes of trying when EVgo customer service told me that yes there is a known problem of fast chargers being unable to charge EVs with zero battery power. so we gave up and drove five minutes away to a slower charger, which was supposed to work. And of course, 30 minutes later that charger also wouldn’t work with the car. I felt really bad as it was now late at night and the tow truck driver was already an hour past his end of the day. It took him another 30 minutes to get the SUV off the truck (remember the locked wheels).
so now, my useless car is parked on the side of the road. And I have to get it towed again to the Rivian service center in South San Francisco so they can figure out how to charge my damn car.
My astute friends might notice that I am posting this at 5 AM… Yes. The stress of this nightmare woke me up in the middle of the night and I have not been able to get back to sleep.
Arrrrrrrgh
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