R1S Extreme cold weather performance

[Esteban Elfaseno]

Starting outside temp -22F, battery temp 40F in a fully loaded first gen quad motor R1S.

Drove 40 miles at 70 mph to a super charger and watched estimated remaining range drop from 129 to 50 upon arrival, about a 50% difference between actual and estimated range with the best efficiency at 1.4 mi/kWh.

Interestingly after DC fast charging and getting the battery temp up to 100 F, efficiency at same air temp and speed jumped with a steady improvement to 1.8 mi/kWh and only a 26% difference between estimated and actual range.

Presuming the improved range accuracy and performance is secondary to battery temp, given most other factors remained unchanged. Any ideas for getting the battery temp more optimized prior to departure with a level 1 or 2 charger?

Sponsored

 

[Mellowyellow]

precondition the battery with scheduled departure in the app, while plugged in charging, and click the toggle to pull shore power

 

[edk]

Starting outside temp -22F, battery temp 40F in a fully loaded first gen quad motor R1S.

Drove 40 miles at 70 mph to a super charger and watched estimated remaining range drop from 129 to 50 upon arrival, about a 50% difference between actual and estimated range with the best efficiency at 1.4 mi/kWh.

Interestingly after DC fast charging and getting the battery temp up to 100 F, efficiency at same air temp and speed jumped with a steady improvement to 1.8 mi/kWh and only a 26% difference between estimated and actual range.

Presuming the improved range accuracy and performance is secondary to battery temp, given most other factors remained unchanged. Any ideas for getting the battery temp more optimized prior to departure with a level 1 or 2 charger?

Was the battery being preconditioned for fast charging at the supercharger? Heating up the battery can consume a lot of power, although I don't know how much. Personally, I find it annoying when the car picks a charger to navigate to and starts preconditioning, when I really prefer to charge at a site that is further away. A few times I found myself canceling navigation just to get it to stop preconditioning.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

precondition the battery with scheduled departure in the app, while plugged in charging, and click the toggle to pull shore power

This is the solution to your problem OP.

 

[Jonger1150]

Was the battery being preconditioned for fast charging at the supercharger? Heating up the battery can consume a lot of power, although I don't know how much. Personally, I find it annoying when the car picks a charger to navigate to and starts preconditioning, when I really prefer to charge at a site that is further away. A few times I found myself canceling navigation just to get it to stop preconditioning.

Supposedly we're getting a manual precondition button. It's desperately needed. Right now there's no indication that the battery is "preconditioned".

 

[Esteban Elfaseno]

precondition the battery with scheduled departure in the app, while plugged in charging, and click the toggle to pull shore power

I think it was preconditioned? At the very least it had been "preconditioning" with a scheduled departure set at least an hour prior to departure and was set to draw from the level 1 charger. It also did not notify while driving that it was preparing the battery for fast DC charging which it typically does when using the navigation, leading me to believe it had completed it's conditioning

 

[ThirteenElectrics]

precondition the battery with scheduled departure in the app, while plugged in charging, and click the toggle to pull shore power

This is as close as you can get, but note, at least on the G1 Rivians, "pulling from shore power" isn't quite what one would expect. It doesn't pull from shore power directly to precondition. Rather, it preconditions using power from your battery, and only later, after some time or threshold is met, does it recharge the battery from the wall. So, depending on when you leave you might not have as much charge on-board as you had set. At least, that's what I observe. I've only seen it a few percent off, so maybe it's not too bad, but I don't precondition in very cold temps regularly. I wonder if they fixed this with G2.

Sponsored