I connected each of my two batteries to a separate trickle charger. I wanted to keep the batteries separate so I could check their health status separately with my battery tester.
5kwh loss per day is way way too much. That's not normal. Personally I'd rather have Rivian investigate and fix that, rather than trying to mask the issue with a trickle charger. While you were away - was s gear guard off, and was your phone/fob far enough away from the vehicle to not be constantly waking it? At the very least, sign up for electrafi and see if your car is sleeping at all as a first step in the debug process.
Thanks tjrivian, I've signed up for the electrafi (I was wondering how people had accessed that data!) and will start tracking right now.
I think you made a wise decision, and you're correct on the load.. it takes more than 1.5 amps to keep the batts charged. The NOCO unit in my photo seemed to be a very high quality unit and was 100% sealed up. I expect it would last many years in use.
I hooked it up to the main battery and the results were worse than just using the OBDII port for some reason. I'll likely hook up the secondary battery at some point, but using the OBDII works for my intended use case. I'm not so concerned about vampire drain at home, just when we are on trips.
This would be my main use case too, unless something permanent and without requiring plugging in is figured out.
Yeah, this is all cool but for me I'm interested in vampire drain solutions when out camping or other cases where the range hit is the main problem. Some of these could lead to that, but it would still have to be a long trip to be worth it.
I usually run the DC-AC frequently while camping, or have a fridge in there, so DC-DC can fire up during the cycle and recharge without much impact. I factor in 5-10% drain each day for those reasons. Mainly heated blanket at night.
While I usually love ROI analysis, I don't think these numbers are relevant with regards to a $100,000 vehicle. I do think a valid alternative approach would be to just proactively replace the battery(ies) every 2 years to minimize the risk of a bricked/stranded vehicle. I wish Rivian would make battery replacement options easier from a parts and self-install perspective, ala ICE batteries. I do understand that it's different when a HV battery is involved but this could have been anticipated and better planned for owner management and replacement.
Not to pile on, but it's far from assured that the 12v battery in many Rivians will make it to the three-year mark. Mine was replaced (I have single battery/super cap setup) after just six months, and there are many stories of failures well before even the two-year mark. In fairness however, my battery was apparently only in the early stages of mortality, and didn't absolutely need to be replaced. It's likely that it would have lasted a bit longer, albeit with increasing risk of catastrophic failure with little advance warning.
Exactly the same here. Single 12V setup and I have had 2 12V batteries replaced in 1.5 years. I only noticed something was wrong by observing the VERY frequent sleep/wake cycles using Electrafi. Service confirmed that the 12V's were in the early stage of failure. If I hadn't noticed, I probably would have had a 12V failure in the worst possible situation (late night/far from home).
Which charger do you use?
