Fast Charging Failure

[BradSholl]

I don’t travel with my R1 S often so fast charging hasn’t been much of an issue in the past. I did take one trip to Atlantic City in spring a year ago in which two stops 2 stops at an EVgo charger failed to initiate charging. I barely made it home.

In July, I traveled to Rehoboth Beach. DE for a week. I wasn’t terribly concerned with charging while I was there since I planned on stopping at the Christiana Mall on the way home to use the bank of Rivian chargers. Unfortunately, I tried five different chargers there and even with Rivian Support, could not initiate a charge. I subsequently stopped at an EVGo station just up the road and could not charge there either. I hypermiled home and pulled into my garage with less than 5 miles remaining in my battery. I contacted Rivian and a mobile service technician came out the next week. He informed me that while level two charging appear to be working properly, he did see some sort of error in the fast charging loop. I scheduled an appointment at the Trenton service center and took a half-day off of work to transport the vehicle there. They were nice enough to provide a rental and offer to return the vehicle to me when finished. I was quite surprised when they called a day later to inform me that they were returning it. They stated that they checked fast charging, and it seemed to be working properly. Two hours after the vehicle was returned, I again took it to an Electrify America charging facility approximately 18 miles from my house. I took care to properly condition the battery. Again three separate chargers failed to initiate charge. When I contacted the service center I was told that perhaps my Electrify America app wasn’t functioning properly and I should try to fast charge initiating with a credit card. The following day, I traveled to an EVGo charger approximately 25 miles from my house and this also failed to charge despite using both their app and a credit card. On the way home, I was informed by a friend that a KumPower (??) charger had just opened locally. Once again, initiating this with a credit card did not activate charging.

At this point, I refuse to believe that the vehicle is functioning normally and am quite frustrated as I have travel plans in a week which necessitate using the Rivian to transport my bicycles. I am hopeful that Rivian will get to the bottom of this problem, but this will need to be done on an extremely tight timeline.

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[moosetags]

Best wishes on getting this problem solved. Please let us know the outcome of your efforts.

Brian

 

[COdogman]

Do you see any successful fast charging sessions in the charging history during the time they had it at the service center? If so it does make sense it’s an app or payment issue and not an issue with your truck.

Another test you could attempt is to initiate an L2 charge that requires payment. If that doesn’t work either then it would almost definitely rule out an issue with the truck.

 

[RivianRiverRat]

I don’t travel with my R1 S often so fast charging hasn’t been much of an issue in the past. I did take one trip to Atlantic City in spring a year ago in which two stops 2 stops at an EVgo charger failed to initiate charging. I barely made it home.
.........
At this point, I refuse to believe that the vehicle is functioning normally and am quite frustrated as I have travel plans in a week which necessitate using the Rivian to transport my bicycles. I am hopeful that Rivian will get to the bottom of this problem, but this will need to be done on an extremely tight timeline.

I've found that EA works better starting the charging session thru the app (select location, select charger station, the use slide bar to start charging). For some reason EA tap-n-charge doesn't seem to work for me. Charge Point tap-n-charge works fine. Maybe get another Rivian (or another EV) to go with you to test the charger and your account.

 

[Audiotek]

Since this is important to you I would suggest moving with a sense of urgency.
As others have suggested: go with your friend to the KumPower charger and their EV and see who's account can successfully initiate a successful charge. If both of your accounts are successful then rinse and repeat.

Take your Rivian and repeat the last step if both of you fail to initiate a successful charge then the issue is with the Rivian.

 

[Electrified Outdoors]

Nothing is more frustrating or anxiety provoking than not being able to charge on a road trip.

I like the suggestions here. If your near Frederick MD I'm happy to help try and diagnose what's going on.

I would strongly recommend against just using a credit card at the charger. Those can be very problematic. Using the app will eliminate The credit card reader as the problem point.

I would suggest either going to a RAN charger or another charger and using the charging operators app to initiate your charge. A RAN charger would be best as Rivian should be able to see both sides for troubleshooting. You could even call Rivian while at the RAN charger to troubleshoot.

Take note of exactly what happens when you plug in to the charger or try to initiate a charge.

What does the charge port light ring do? Is there any error message or other messages on the driver display? Does the charger display a message?

Lastly, when you run into an error you can press and hold either the driver profile icon or the hazard flasher button. Continue to hold it (about ten seconds) until you see a message that a diagnostic log has been captured. This will help service to see what is going on with the vehicle.

Also, if you go to EA or another non Rivian charger you may want to call their support to see if they can provide some data to isolate this to a problem with the car.

Sorry I know this is a pain but sometimes the problems are tough to track down.

 

[Joe Hoffman]

I had some similar problems with an EA charger and the problem was credit card was near its expiration date, but not beyond its expiration date. I configured my EA account to use a debit card and that fix the problem.

 

[SwaziCAR]

Have you tried a RAN or a Tesla Supercharger location? If not, please do, as those will bypass many of the user error issues.

Plugshare shows a SuperCharger open to non-Teslas at

5060 Perkiomen Ave,
Reading, PA 19606, USA

You'll need to borrow an adapter for the Supercharger, of course.

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

I don’t see hard reset mentioned. Try that if not done. Try also RAN and Supercharger. Both support plug and charge as long as you have a valid credit card associated with your Rivian account. A2Z Typhoon NACS adapter are available second hand… if you’re going to be road tripping it’s not a bad thing to have anyway. If charging fails at both of these more reliable networks, then there has to be something wrong with vehicle hardware. Especially at RAN, if it fails there, harder for Service to look the other way.

 

[SANZC02]

I had some similar problems with an EA charger and the problem was credit card was near its expiration date, but not beyond its expiration date. I configured my EA account to use a debit card and that fix the problem.

I would discourage using debit cards for consumer transactions, they do not have the same level of consumer protections as credit cards. Unless I absolutely have to I never use a debit card.

Here is an article that explains some more details between the differences.

 

[Joe Hoffman]

Agreed on not using debit cards unless desperate. When I’m super low on charge, away from home and the damn EA charger refuses to honor the credit card on file, I feel desperate.

The long term solution was to delete the credit card that EA had on file and re-enter it with updated expiration date. But that was not obvious at the time to myself nor the EA Customer Service agent on the phone.

 

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I've always been frustrated using an app to initiate a charge. It might just be user stupidity, but I can't figure out how to tell some of them "I'm at charger xyz, just start the damned process". Probably a combination of me being dumb and poor/unintuitive UI design.

That said, EVgo has their own card. I know you probably don't have time to get one in the mail but maybe another thing to try?

 

[BradSholl]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

To be clear, I do have the apps with active accounts on EA, EVGo and Rivian and tried using them without success. I did contact support at both EA and Rivian by phone and they were unable to initiate charging, even after multiple resets. I also have a Lucid and have charged using the EA app successfully several times.

The charging history suggestion was interesting. I forgot about that. The Trenton SC claimed their employee took my vehicle to an EA station and fast charged, but when I reviewed the history, the only charge that day managed 59 miles of range and took 2.5 hrs. Not exactly “fast charging”. I basically do that with my level 2 garage charger.

I’m waiting for my promised update “sometime today”. Stay tuned…

 

[Tango45]

Several others (myself included) have had fast charging issues. Here's a thread where it's discussed and, specifically, to a post where I add some links to other threads where it is discussed (and resolved).

I'll note that taking video of the behavior, noting the time of the failure, doing a reset just after the failure, and calling support to establish a timestamp in their system all help with diagnosis and resolution.

 

[BradSholl]

Thanks. I did send pics of the charge failed screens on several of the incidents, but no video.

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