Gen 1 Vampire Drain (Possibly) Solved (or Hacked)

[shrink]

Amazing results and I've seen only 1 mile loss of range over 72hrs in my tests above. Others in this thread have also seen excellent results using 12V battery maintainers.

Looks like we can finally point the finger at the culprit robbing all the battery energy day... it's the 12V battery charging system and the other systems that need to be/or just by poor design power on to maintain the 12V batts. Obviously an extremely wasteful way of doing things as shown by results above.

I'm back on island tomorrow and will end my experiment after 21 days, but I just checked and my SOC is still at 68%.

1% loss over 20 days; and no loss from the HV battery since I think I noticed the update downloading over LTE about 2 weeks ago.

I don't anticipate any changes tomorrow when I arrive and disconnect the battery charger.

Sponsored

 

[josh0]

I found a review if the 4Runner version of Lensun’s hood solar panels. It‘s not quite as in-depth as I’d like, but it doesn’t raise any red flags. It does look like the panel installed in the review has metal eyelets at the corners, which I don’t love the look of. The pictures on the Lensun site don’t show those, which makes me wonder if it’s an older version or what. I wish it was a little cheaper, so I’d feel better about buying It to test. I wonder if we can get Cascadia to do a Rivian one, if they aren’t already planning it.

https://trail4runner.com/2022/05/18/lensun-100w-hood-solar-panel-5th-gen-4runner/

 

[chops]

happy to report that after 5 days of no driving hooked up to the battery tender jr 800ma and i've lost 2%. the car does keep waking up all the time when i go in and out of the 90-100F garage (hear the clicks and beeps). i might consider buying a 1-2A tender to see if that does better in the future, but i'll keep using my 800ma for the time being as it shows noticeably better drain than 1% a night or more guaranteed without it

 

[Fmc]

@shrink thanks for your work..sorry if I missed it but do you have 1 or 2 12v batteries? I have 1, I guess it does not matter if I go direct or through the trailer hitch.

 

[shrink]

@shrink thanks for your work..sorry if I missed it but do you have 1 or 2 12v batteries? I have 1, I guess it does not matter if I go direct or through the trailer hitch.

The R1S on which I have the battery tender has one (1) 12V battery.

I also have an earlier VIN R1T that has two 12V batteries.

 

[emoore]

I found a review if the 4Runner version of Lensun’s hood solar panels. It‘s not quite as in-depth as I’d like, but it doesn’t raise any red flags. It does look like the panel installed in the review has metal eyelets at the corners, which I don’t love the look of. The pictures on the Lensun site don’t show those, which makes me wonder if it’s an older version or what. I wish it was a little cheaper, so I’d feel better about buying It to test. I wonder if we can get Cascadia to do a Rivian one, if they aren’t already planning it.

https://trail4runner.com/2022/05/18/lensun-100w-hood-solar-panel-5th-gen-4runner/

Not surprising they had one for the 4Runner. My old 4Runner used to drain the battery if it wasn’t driven for 3 or more weeks. Less in winter.

 

[NY_Rob]

I'm back on island tomorrow and will end my experiment after 21 days, but I just checked and my SOC is still at 68%.

1% loss over 20 days; and no loss from the HV battery since I think I noticed the update downloading over LTE about 2 weeks ago.

I don't anticipate any changes tomorrow when I arrive and disconnect the battery charger.

I'd call this a 100% successful experiment! 1% loss over 20 days is unheard of in a Rivian vehicle.

I ordered one of those "Remove Before Flight" tags that I customized for this situation, I'm going to make a velcro loop and just leave it on the steering wheel as a reminder to unplug before departing.

 

[josh0]

I'd call this a 100% successful experiment! 1% loss over 20 days is unheard of in a Rivian vehicle.

I ordered one of those "Remove Before Flight" tags that I customized for this situation, I'm going to make a velcro loop and just leave it on the steering wheel as a reminder to unplug before departing.

I need one of these for the driver’s door when I drive my wife’s car that says ‘turn engine off before exiting’.

 

[Yossarian]

I'd call this a 100% successful experiment! 1% loss over 20 days is unheard of in a Rivian vehicle.
. . .

Big props for the work and especially the reporting and photos. While I'm really glad this appears to solve the VD issue, I'm more that little upset that Rivian owners need to go to such lengths to mitigate the problem.

More worrying to me however is what Rivian Service, or at least the rep I talked to, is saying about vampire drain. I'll spare you the details here and will instead put them up in a sepate posting, but per the tech that called me, a daily loss of up to 12% should be expected and Rivian does not recommend parking your vehicle unconnected to a charger for any extended period.

It's inconceivable that what this tech told me is truly accurate and I wonder if it means that Rivian service is getting a lot of complaints and inquiries about VD after the last update and just trying to tamp things down.

 

[CBRacerX]

Big props for the work and especially the reporting and photos. While I'm really glad this appears to solve the VD issue, I'm more that little upset that Rivian owners need to go to such lengths to mitigate the problem.

More worrying to me however is what Rivian Service, or at least the rep I talked to, is saying about vampire drain. I'll spare you the details here and will instead put them up in a sepate posting, but per the tech that called me, a daily loss of up to 12% should be expected and Rivian does not recommend parking your vehicle unconnected to a charger for any extended period.

It's inconceivable that what this tech told me is truly accurate and I wonder if it means that Rivian service is getting a lot of complaints and inquiries about VD after the last update and just trying to tamp things down.

12%??

 

[josh0]

I guess I could maybe see 12% in the winter, with the truck having to heat the battery. I certainly wouldn’t want to leave it unplugged for long in freezing conditions. And I doubt our battery tender solution would be sufficient to do much about that, anyway.

 

[Yossarian]

12%??

That was my reaction when I first heard the figure. I made sure that I heard it correctly by replying "I'm sorry, did you say 12%?" and "Do you mean a 12% daily loss?" The answer was yes, up to twelve per cent (12%) is considered to be within normal daily SOC loss limits. As I posted, I have to think this can't possibly be accurate as a routine, daily, to-be-expected SOC loss.

 

[NY_Rob]

That was my reaction when I first heard the figure. I made sure that I heard it correctly by replying "I'm sorry, did you say 12%?" and "Do you mean a 12% daily loss?" The answer was yes, up to twelve per cent (12%) is considered to be within normal daily SOC loss limits. As I posted, I have to think this can't possibly be accurate as a routine, daily, to-be-expected SOC loss.

That's absolutely insane.. .12% daily loss?
12% is something like 16kWh/day which around here would $4/day to replenish.

I guarantee that if that somehow happens, you will see tons of Rivians go up for sale

We've had three winters since Rivian started delivering vehicles in Oct 2021 and no one has ever reported even close to 12% loss/day even in the coldest locations. My educated guess is that so called "tech" was just talking out of his ass or was just trying to get you in a happy space with your 2%/day loss so he would not have to deal with the issue. Rivian has a lot of really terrible employees who should no better.

Maybe you should post what the "tech" told you on Wassum's (sorry if I misspelled it) social media page

 

[DeafPug]

12% or 16 kWh per day is more than my whole house uses during the winter!

Let’s hope they are just saying that to keep people off their backs since it’s a known issue for them and they are actually working on addressing the VD in some fashion.

 

[usulio]

One question for the successful experimenters ... how much external power was used to power the 12V battery?

Sponsored