I bricked my R1S in the Oregon Outback - Learn from my mistake!

[LivingInKaos]

Plugshare is your friend. There is an RV park 3.5mi from Summerlake listed

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[tkauftheil]

Aside from your charging woes, I just want to say you are living out my dream. One dog, one car, one adventure ahead.

 

[s4wrxttcs]

Indeed. Am I the only one who is so over AI? Remember, "Artificial Intelligence" could just as well (and more accurately) be described as "Artificial Stupidity". Why people behave as if it's reliable or authoritative is endlessly incredulous to me.

Why do humans constantly put the idiots in charge?
Why do we trust GPS navigation all the way into a lake?

We love having authoritative sounding guidance and we trust it to such a degree that it often harms us.

I think we need to restore at least some aspect of do it yourself to try to reclaim freedom.

To navigate without GPS
To code without AI
To have a political position without a politician telling you what to think.

 

[TractorJackie]

ChatGPT can be tremendously beneficial in terms of coming up with a plan but everything it says has to be verified.

I think RV Campgrounds often get overlooked in the EV community but they provide a huge lifeline to EV owners driving in the middle of nowhere. If I ever do drive in the middle of nowhere I'll make sure to have any adapter needed to charge at RV Campgrounds. I have charged at Oregon State Parks at RV spots with no issues.

One thing I learned from the OP's post is I never considered using my drone for payment. Who knew?

Not me. I just happened to have it with me and asked if they could use some video and photos, since I was going to be stuck there a while. I also offered tractor work or firewood splitting, but they had that already.

 

[skyguyscott]

Why do humans constantly put the idiots in charge?

Aristotle wrote about this 2000 years ago.

 

[ghostowl]

You need to remember that AI knows nothing. It is just doing predictive generation based on probabilities calculated on what its seen before. And because it is doing things probabilistically, it won't reliably generate the same answer.

But its really good at generating things that sound real. Everything it says is a hallucination, even when it is accidentally correct. Anything it generates involves no "knowledge" or "intelligence" or "thinking". Its all just probabilities. It is never intentionally correct - its always accidental. A more accurate description would be "Extremely Good Lying Engine."

 

[Supratachophobia]

This is the story of how my R1S behaved when I didn't plan far enough ahead, and what I learned from it.

For context: I’m a 65-year-old woman road tripping alone with my dog in my 2026 R1S.

I was staying at The Lodge at Summer Lake when I realized I had a charging problem. I asked to use an exterior 110 outlet overnight and was refused due to “insurance issues.” (Oh, whatever.) An employee told me that Santa’s Hardware in Christmas Valley had an EV charger. Great!

At the time, I had about 60 miles of range. Mind you, this is the Oregon Outback. Middle of NOWHERE. Christmas Valley required backtracking roughly 30 miles—so 60 miles round trip. Tight, but theoretically possible. I called the hardware store before leaving and confirmed the charger existed and worked. That part was true.

I drove there, plugged in, and quickly realized the charger was effectively no better than a standard 110 outlet. Painfully slow. After waiting long enough to gain just enough charge to return, I unplugged and drove back to the lodge—now with about 15 miles of range left. Worse than when I started. Overnight temps were forecast in the 20s, which made everything more precarious.

Across the highway from the lodge is an Oregon Fish & Wildlife station. I walked over, explained my situation, and the rangers generously allowed me to plug into a 110 outlet in their barn overnight. It technically charged, but in those temperatures it was barely effective. After another night at the lodge, I looked at my Rivian app and saw I still had only 15 miles of range, and declining before my eyes, due to the frigid temps. I had to get out of there.

Warning: Do not rely solely on ChatGPT for navigation, especially in remote areas.

Good news was Chat told me that if I could get to the RV campground at Summer Lake Hot Springs "just up the road," my portable charging cable would work on their RV hookup. I did not know this, so that was great to learn. It said the campground was about 3 miles away.

Bad news: It’s closer to 17.

I started driving toward the RV spot and after just six miles realized I wasn’t going to make it. I turned around and crept into Playa, an artists’ retreat just before the hot springs. They kindly let me use a standard 110 outlet, for which I gratefully repaid them with drone footage of their property.

After about two hours, I had a whopping 14 miles of range—actually much better than expected. I was optimistic because I believed I only needed 10 miles to get to the RV hookup.

My optimism evaporated quickly. As soon as I was back on the road, my range suddenly dropped from 14 to 9 to 6 to 0, in just a few minutes. I crawled, watching for downhills to regen. The display read zero for maybe a mile. Then the car told me—very firmly—to pull over. "You're done." The vehicle rolled to a stop on the side of the road. The worst part? I could see the hot springs ahead of me, no more than 1,000 feet.

I called a tow operator out of Paisley and told him not to bother with a flatbed—just a rope. I was that close. He pulled me the short distance (I was able to put the vehicle in neutral), and all interior electronics were still functioning, which lulled me into thinking I was in the clear.

This is probably the most important thing I learned...

There are two kinds of “dead” in a Rivian: Brick and Cinder Block

The moment the tow truck rolled me up to the RV hookup, the Rivian threw a warning about sensors going offline and the wheels locked completely. Not “can’t drive” dead—full doornail dead. If that had happened 20 feet earlier, I’d have been in real trouble.

I plugged into the RV’s 240V (NEMA 14-50) outlet using the Rivian portable charger and immediately began charging normally. They put me up in their deluxe cabin and they also gladly took payment in the form of drone footage! Wow.

My dog and I were back on the road the next morning with a full tank and the rest of the road trip went without any further hitches.

What I learned:

• Zero means zero.
• Cold weather dramatically accelerates range loss at low SOC.
• Plan beyond the next charger.
• 110 outlets are not reliable.
• RV campground hookups are your friend.
• Carry 220V adapters.
• Know Brick vs. Cinder Block.
• Always pack the drone.
• Stay calm. You'll figure it out. Enjoy the journey.
• 
  
• 

You should also look at getting a TT-30 adapter for older campsites just in case you find yourself on a similar situation. Glad it worked out for you.

 

[skyguyscott]

ChatGPT can be tremendously beneficial in terms of coming up with a plan but everything it says has to be verified.

Ok, not saying it has no role. But at the moment, I put as much faith in it as I would, say, a Magic 8 Ball, -- In fact, "Hey, magic 8-ball, will AI bring humanity benefits that outweigh the sacrifices?"

Stupid 8-ball, what does it know?

 

[Conseil]

Wow! Excellent write up. I too bricked my R1T GEN2 this winter in the California mother lode. Had to get it towed 100 miles to the Sacramento SC. Said they had to reflash the charge controller that killed the 12V battery.

 

[s4wrxttcs]

Ok, not saying it has no role. But at the moment, I put as much faith in it as I would, say, a Magic 8 Ball, -- In fact, "Hey, magic 8-ball, will AI bring humanity benefits that outweigh the sacrifices?"

AI is one of those topics where odds are I'm going to have empathy for someone regardless of their position on it. Excited, terrified, amused. etc.

I tend to see three camps of attitudes towards AI

There is the AI will save humanity camp and usher in new a era of prosperity
There is the AI is evil camp and will steal jobs
There is the AI is overhyped and not to put any faith in it.

For myself all those are applicable in how I feel towards AI.

Just today:

• Used ChatGPT Enterprise to code a HW/FW test app in 10 min that would have taken a few hours without it.
• I strongly agreed with articles about how AI is ultimately about enriching the very few at the cost of the many. We have completely failed humanity in not taxing the AI companies to pay back humans for the work they did. Pretty much every coder on the planet that contributed to open source had their work leveraged to train AI to code. Most people train their replacement but coders were in a unique position to code themselves out of a job.
• I still view Generative AI as an autocomplete of sorts so I try to advise people not to get tricked regardless of how confident the AI sounds in its answer.

In short I'm very conflicted.

At the end of the day its just a tool.

To use the tool properly you have to understand how the tool works and what the pitfalls of it are.

 

[s4wrxttcs]

I put as much faith in it as I would, say, a Magic 8 Ball

I'd say I put my faith in technology. Part of why I even own an EV is that faith in technology. The OP's story is a good write up of how that technology can fail us and how to have a backup plan.

My GF reads tarot cards. Not sure she really puts her faith in it but enough that I wonder what it says about me. Is it really just a way for her to listen to her subconscious?

Other people put their faith in spirituality. I certainly understand this despite not being one of them.

Going back to AI it tells you where it got its answer from. So its not like it just gives an answer. All one has to do is verify the source and verify that the interpretation was correct. Seems way simpler of a task then googling something and having to go through all of it to find what you're looking for. I think most of the people who fall into the AI Lied to me camp simply didn't do due diligence in verifying the answer. Ultimately they expected too much out of the tool.

 

[s4wrxttcs]

Not me. I just happened to have it with me and asked if they could use some video and photos, since I was going to be stuck there a while. I also offered tractor work or firewood splitting, but they had that already.

I still have a dream of having a tractor.

The problem is I'd have to buy land to buy a tractor to use it on.

 

[emoore]

I don't have the hatred of AI that some others do but I don't use it for day to day stuff. I think it will be extremely useful for things like drug research, materials, and especially fusion. I don't think we get fusion as a commercial power plant without AI.

 

[tragicmonkey049]

You should also look at getting a TT-30 adapter for older campsites just in case you find yourself on a similar situation. Glad it worked out for you.

Don't use the wrong TT-30 adapter!

Quick Campsite Charging story: I plugged my R1S into a 30-amp campsite outlet and the charger threw the Red Light at me. Turns out, I was using an "appliance/RV" adapter instead of an "EV" adapter. Others have described this.

As a usability hobbyist, I am not amused that the two adapters could look identical, yet function so differently!

 

[TractorJackie]

Why do humans constantly put the idiots in charge?
Why do we trust GPS navigation all the way into a lake?

We love having authoritative sounding guidance and we trust it to such a degree that it often harms us.

I think we need to restore at least some aspect of do it yourself to try to reclaim freedom.

To navigate without GPS
To code without AI
To have a political position without a politician telling you what to think.

As the OP, I'm going to clarify something about my use of ChatGPT on that trip. It's important.

I don't use Chat for navigation, ever. I use the Rivian app first, send to the car, etc. Or I just use the car's navigation.

My mistake on this trip, not Chat's...
My mistake was that I didn't map out the entire road trip into a single trip with waypoints. I started to do that with ABRP, but found it to be so overwrought with nerd data, I ditched it and just used the car's nav.

I had it map out my trip from Portland to Summer Lake. The car figured—rightfully because I didn't tell it otherwise—that Summer Lake was my final destination. So it had me "gas up" in Central Oregon just enough to get me there.

I arrived at Summer Lake with 60 miles of range—great!—but when I looked at where the next charger on my route was, in Lakeview, OR, it was 73 miles away, with no chargers in between.

That's why I wanted to "top off" at the Lodge, and then at the hardware store's charger. Once I made that trip and ended up back at the lodge with 15 miles left, that's when I knew I was in trouble.

Back to ChatGPT...
I was working on a solution when I decided to strike up a conversation with Chat about my predicament. I have to say, Chat made me feel much better and hopeful, and was "with me every step of the way." It was quite comforting, actually.

That's when I learned I could charge at an RV campground, which is still a nice revelation for me. It even had me send it a photo of my charging cable to verify it's the same as campgrounds use (it is). So I was feeling hopeful about things.

Where Chat effed up big time was insisting I was much closer to the campground than I actually was. In fact, I got into an argument with it, because Google Maps said it was 17 miles away, while Chat swore up and down it was three.

There have been MANY times I've used Chat where my gut and life experience told me its information was incorrect. When I call it on those answers, it always corrects itself. So yes, trust but verify.

In this situation, though, it was SO emphatic about the campground being there, I didn't have a reason to doubt it until I did. At that point—while I was charging at Playa—I researched and asked the people there, and they all said, "Noooo. It's 10 miles from here, and 17 from the Lodge."

We have since made up. Chat owned up to its mistakes, but I've learned to not rely on it in situations where I could be in danger. But I use it for other things every day and wish it had been around for all sorts of things in my younger life, such as explaining highly technical concepts in easy to understand terms.

The upshot about ChatGPT for me
Trust but verify. It is a life-changing technology that's still in its infancy for the general public. There are always knee-jerk haters when big new technologies emerge. As an earlier adopter, I'm still very excited about it.

Oh, and when is the new Rivian assistant coming out??

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