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

[mudito]

For what is worth, before my 12V died last week, I wasn't experiencing "excessive" VD on my truck... I do use it every day at least for a short trip which makes it harder to track VD but there were a few times I so a 1% drop after a longer period (18hrs? ish...) but most times I had 0% drop (I don't know about range, which might be a bit more precise).

Only once did I let it sit for a couple of days for a work trip (Wed thru Friday night) and it dropped 1% on that occasion. Then, 12V just died with no warning and I woke up to a bricked car.

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[Tim-in-CA]

24 Hour update : According to Electrafi data, my vehicle (single 12V battery using OBD2 to 3A Battery Tender) has slept for an entire 24 hours! I woke the vehicle by unlocking, depressing the brake pedal, then relocked To confirm that there was no power loss. This method may be the way to resolve VD once and for all. I’ll test for about a week, then will test again without the Battery Tender connected.

Another update, after waking the locking the vehicle last evening, my R1S stayed awake for an hour and observing Eero activity it sent/received 15/5MB of data. This morning, it woke up on its own 12 hrs later. Maybe the vehicle still needs to phone home. VD is at 0.1% for 36 hrs. Still a huge improvement from the ~2%/day I was previously seeing

 

[shap]

For what is worth, before my 12V died last week, I wasn't experiencing "excessive" VD on my truck... I do use it every day at least for a short trip which makes it harder to track VD but there were a few times I so a 1% drop after a longer period (18hrs? ish...) but most times I had 0% drop (I don't know about range, which might be a bit more precise).

Only once did I let it sit for a couple of days for a work trip (Wed thru Friday night) and it dropped 1% on that occasion. Then, 12V just died with no warning and I woke up to a bricked car.

I think this is the actual issue that Rivian fails to debug - what is actually happening? Why 12V battery can be depleted to the stage it becomes damaged? What triggers this?

 

[Yossarian]

Let's give this a think from a corporate perspective.

I'll be assuming that Rivian knows ALL this (VD related to 12V charging, Guard Drive, etc.). Now they go out and say, "Yes, we are aware that 12V top-off of our AGM batteries is causing higher-than-normal drain from the main battery SoC, and we are working on ways we can avoid this in the future."

That will just elevate the crap out of Service requests just by stating this comment and will overload an already maxed-out Service Center network.

Continuing with the assumption that they are aware of it and maybe working on avoiding this for future cars, once they are deemed solved for newer units they might develop a back-porting strategy for older vehicles and release a Service Bulletin to fix those.

At least, I think that's how they would react. Personally, I would do it differently, but corporate America is weird sometimes. I think that going from dual-12V to single-12V has a lot to do with this and other issues, and they might already be starting to tweak their 12V BMS to further improve this.

Also, in order to avoid dying cars due to 12V failure (like what happened to me last week), they can simply add another very small emergency DC-to-DC circuit that bypasses the 12V battery, and when Active it can read "SERVICE IMMEDIATELY, 12V battery Failure, please leave the vehicle plugged in and charge when not in use to avoid bricking your beautiful R1T/S".

But again, that cost money

I worked for three decades for a very large US company that everyone in the country is familiar with, and most people have personal experience with.

In the distant past, that company was run by engineers, and anytime there was an issue, we notified our users immediately, and fixed the problem. Sometimes the fix took a while because the only thing worse than a problem, is a fix that doesn't address all aspects of that problem. Of course we tried, and mostly succeeded at making a profit, but when there was an issue that needed to be fixed, but that meant we sacrificed profit, there was no debate about the path the company would take.

That changed when we allegedly merged with a smaller, financially troubled company, one who's executive management was focused almost exclusively on cost and profit. It turned out not to be a merger, but a takeover by a company that though failing in the marketplace, was highly adept at C-suite maneuvering. In short order, our senior managers were replaced with theirs, and we became an enterprise that focused not on engineering and product excellence, but on "shareholder value."

To make a long story short, the focus on shareholder value often produced short-run profits, but in the long run, cost the company far more. The company's reputation is in tatters, and profits are now far more difficult. The takeaway should be that it's nearly always far more expensive to fix a poorly designed and indifferently made product to make quarterly numbers than to take the time to engineer it properly and ensure that it works as intended from the start.

Rivian seems to be mostly simlar to the earlier iteration of the company described above, but also appears occasionally at least a little susceptatible to the sweet song of the Jack Welch Sirens. That certainly seems to be the case in some instances, such as the handling of the excessive parasitic drain problem. For now at least, this kind of thing appears to be infrequent and isolated, and we can only hope that RJ lashes himself and the rest of his exec team, to the mast when the Rivian corporate ship hits really troubled waters.

 

[NY_Rob]

I think this is the actual issue that Rivian fails to debug - what is actually happening? Why 12V battery can be depleted to the stage it becomes damaged? What triggers this?

Indeed... they simply replace the 12V batt(s) and it's on to the next vehicle. There seems to be no investigation as to what's causing the failures. If they blame it on the battery manufacturer, then time to get a better manufacturer. If they haven't done that and they're still using DCS, it means it's probably on Rivian and they can't solve it because they would have in the three years the R1's have been in production.

 

[NY_Rob]

I worked for three decades for a very large US company that everyone in the country is familiar with, and most people have personal experience with.

In the distant past, that company was run by engineers...

That changed when we allegedly merged with a smaller, financially troubled company, ... and we became an enterprise that focused not on engineering and product excellence, but on "shareholder value."

You're pretty much describing the downfall of Motorola from a once great company

 

[srkz]

You're pretty much describing the downfall of Motorola from a once great company

Sounds like the Boeing story to me, but it's the same everywhere really.

 

[mudito]

Sounds like the Boeing story to me, but it's the same everywhere really.

Motorola, Boeing, Intel, Nokia, BlackBerry, and the list goes on

Wall Street might kill you. Being a public company you're obliged to respond to the fiduciary interests of your shareholders. And more times than not, they only care about short-term ROIs.

 

[shap]

Guys, quick question - can I monitor the Rivian 12V battery from the 12V socket inside the car? I have Shelly Uni who can check the voltage and report to Home Assistant. But it is much easier to install near a 12V outlet than on the battery itself. Any problems with this approach?

 

[shrink]

Just wanted to post some battery charger data. I did reset the energy monitor after the 12V was fully charged because I wanted to get a sense of how much juice it takes to maintain the battery. My car has been sitting for 2 weeks now with 0% loss from the HV battery.

Trickle charger usage over the past 11-1/2 days has been a total of:

3.617 kWh

or

0.31 kWh per day

 

[NY_Rob]

^ excellent!

Too bad we have to go through all this effort and expense (about $150 for me) to solve something Rivian should be concerned about and actively working to eradicate.

 

[HighVoltOverland]

Solar Update:

As mentioned earlier in the post, I pulled the trigger on the Lensun.
It arrived this morning and I played around a bit and took some photos and decided to give my first thoughts.

1. This version seems to be their "universal" 85w panel.
It would have been nice if it was cut/ designed to fill the full hood scoop/void

2. This does not have the metal eyelets like some mentioned/were concerned about
3. No Adhesive is provided. I have some 3M tape from other projects so I should be okay but that goes into my major gripe:

Do not buy the vinyl they offer.
It came folded, even after letting it soften up in the sun most of the day it still had a crazy crease that stayed even after application and squeegee process.

For unclear reasons, the precut vinyl that is the same size of the panel came folded
(the panel was shipped and boxed flat)

I'm not a pro but I also have done this enough to know how to prep and apply, and holy shit it looks like dog water.

As mentioned it came with no actual adhesive so I mocked it up with painters tape.

I think it will look okay and it covers the line fine, but, even after being applied and undisturbed for about 6 hours, the vinyl came up with the painters tape!


Very discappointed


Will likely just find a local shop to wrap my whole hood and use VHB on that.

The hood opens and closes no issue, the panel is pretty light weight
I didn't notice any straining or audible struggling from the motors/struts when cycling

I was giving the vinyl as much time to succeed before a very rough test so by the time I got around to testing the panel itself I didn't have good sunlight (very close to sunset), I plugged the panel into a power station to verify and it works as expected.

Next up I have to make cables to go between the charge controller and the batteries themselves.

ETA: The panel comes with mc4 connectors, I opted to not buy the cheap charge controller they had as a bundle option as I wanted to use a dual output charge controller.

Here's the main portion of the "wiring harness" that I made this evening:

I somehow ended up with an uneven number of mc4 pins and plastic bits
and alas, nobody I know of sells connectors in person.
So I'll be waiting on Amazon to send me a new pack so I can make a short pigtail and wire the panel in to the controller.

Stay tuned, once I get my GFC I will be throwing 600-800 watts of panels on the roof of the camper
(still playing Tetris with panels)

 

[NY_Rob]

^ Nice work @HighVoltOverland ... will be watching for your results during a sunny day

 

[NY_Rob]

I parked my R1T on Sunday afternoon after backing the boat into it's shelter. I had 152 miles range indicated. I immediately plugged in my NOCO dual bank (I have two 12V batts in my R1T) charger and haven't touched the truck till just a few min ago which means it sat idle/on the trickle charger for approximately 2.5 days. I was happily surprised to see this morning it now indicated 153 miles range

Of course the tiny 5 amp NOCO charger can't actually add range, but at least it's keeping up with VD losses at this point!

It's been 6 days since I last touched my R1T, I just checked and now I'm at 148mi range. Lost just 4 miles range over a 6 day span with the trickle charger attached. For reference, without the trickle charger I was losing about 3mi/day on average. To break it down to simple terms, I'm now losing 2mi range every 3 days where I was losing 9 mi range every 3 days without the trickle charger.

 

[HighVoltOverland]

It's been 6 days since I last touched my R1T, I just checked and now I'm at 148mi range. Lost just 4 miles range over a 6 day span with the trickle charger attached. For reference, without the trickle charger I was losing about 3mi/day on average. To break it down to simple terms, I'm now losing 2mi range every 3 days where I was losing 9 mi range every 3 days without the trickle charger.

Seeing Gary as a Vampire probably hits too close to home

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