2022 Rivian R1T's Fast-Charging Performance Is behind the Best

[kurtlikevonnegut]

Very likely based on your hopes?? Maybe it'll get slightly better, maybe they'll decide it's best as is. You have no way of knowing. People should buy the car as is and if it gets better it's just a perk.

I strongly disagree with this idea. It's a legacy way of looking at it and it's not reflective of reality. This is especially true for a new company with limited testing data.

If you buy a ICE truck today, then yes you should expect performance of that truck to be roughly equivalent over the life of the truck with a moderate degradation of performance over time. If you buy a Tesla today, you expect the performance to actually improve over the life of the vehicle and that has been supported by previous experience. Progress is iterative, and it is fully reasonable to expect the experience to improve over time, especially in the first 18-24 months.

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[SANZC02]

Maybe my Tesla has just trained me to be patient but those numbers from 10% to 90% are better than I get in my 2016 Model S.

I can live with that and the possibility it could improve over time.

Unless you are traveling all the time living at DCFC chargers this really isn’t that bad.

I know people always want the latest and greatest but for me DCFC charging really is in the middle of my selection criteria as far as importance.

 

[ajdelange]

Rivian claims that its R1T electric pickup can withstand peak charging rates of up to 220 kilowatts on a DC fast charger. In the future, it says, its vehicles will be able to accept energy at a rate of 300-plus kilowatts after an over-the-air update.

The fascinating thing about this is that it strongly implies that the battery splitting hardware (switches) is in place. They can’t get 300 kW @ 500 V without pulling 600A and a CHarIN HPC350 charger (EA) can’t deliver that.

 

[Craigins]

The fascinating thing about this is that it strongly implies that the battery splitting hardware (switches) are in place. They can’t get 300 kW @ 500 V without pulling 600A and a CHarIN HPC350 charger (EA) can’t deliver that.

That implies 300kW at random DCFC.

Do we have any specs for the hardware they will use at the RAN chargers. My guess is their fastest charging will be on their own controlled hardware.

 

[ajdelange]

also, what's up with the taycan curve?

Nothing. It isn’t at all unusual for the vehicle’s BMS to behave in this way. Can’t say, of course, what happened in this particular case. I wasn’t there. Cold battery at the start might explain it.

 

[SeaGeo]

Nothing. It isn’t at all unusual for the vehicle’s BMS to behave in this way. Can’t say, of course, what happened in this particular case. I wasn’t there. Cold battery at the start mind explain it.

As @Taycanfrank mentioned, it seems like a bit of an.... atypical curve for a Taycan (at least if warm). I would have guessed it's a cold battery or a communication issue with the charger too, but it seems odd to me that a company would run a battery down to zero, let it get cold, and then charge it.

 

[SeaGeo]

That implies 300kW at random DCFC.

Do we have any specs for the hardware they will use at the RAN chargers. My guess is their fastest charging will be on their own controlled hardware.

we saw some long ago. They're your typical 300 to 350 kw CCS specs. That doesn't mean that they won't have a software limit in place that only let's it work on RAN. I'm not saying they will do that, but that wouldn't surprise me.

 

[SeaGeo]

Fake graph, bad data.

I doubt it's a *fake* graph, but it doesn't look like a particularly good charging session. lol.

 

[ajdelange]

That implies 300kW at random DCFC.

Do we have any specs for the hardware they will use at the RAN chargers. My guess is their fastest charging will be on their own controlled hardware.

Most charging will be done at EA charger which are presumed to be CHarIN compliant as EA is a core member. Rivian is also a member so I’d guess their chargers would be compliant too but of course I don’t know that to be the case. More to the point is that it is the truck’s load line that dictates how much current is drawn. To get 300 kW it needs a load line originating near 800V unless more than 600 A is drawn.

 

[McMoo]

Can’t help but wonder about temperature. I consistently hit 125kW in my ID4 in the summer, but haven’t seen more than 55kW this winter, charging at similar SOC below freezing. I feel like we are not going to see faster charging until the weather warms up. I don’t know if teslas are impacted this severely as well but even after driving up and down mountain passes (same route as that Ike gauntlet) I haven’t seen fast charging in the cold.

It wouldn’t have ever hit 185kwh if a cold battery was an issue since the battery heats up with DC charging. Usually cold issues are the opposite. Start with very slow charging and ramp up as the battery warms up. The ID4 doesn’t precondition at all so it never gets to temp to take higher rates. Ioniq and EV6 have seen some issues too.

They need to get this figured out ASAP.

 

[ajdelange]

At this rate going from 30% to 70% (~50kwh) would take ~30 min. Yikes.

Yes, indications are that the nominal charge rate is about 1C - half a battery in half an hour. What’s the problem with that?

 

[McMoo]

Yes, indications are that the nominal charge rate is about 1C - half a battery in half an hour. What’s the problem with that?

The problems are people are impatient and expect they will use fast charging way more frequently than they actually will.


But, truthfully, this isn’t anything revolutionary and other manufacturers are willing to push far past 1C. People don’t want their new $80k truck to charge like an 8 year old Tesla.

 

[Lionel_Hutz]

Hopefully Rivian is able to improve this OTA, or even update hardware as it ramps production. Charge curve has the potential to be a significant limitation on utility given the large size of Rivian's battery packs. This reported charge curve is somewhere between 50-70% the speed of a TM3/TMY and I consider those to be close to minimum acceptable speed for road trip charging.

 

[Atlrivian]

Yes, indications are that the nominal charge rate is about 1C - half a battery in half an hour. What’s the problem with that?

More the shape of the curve than anything else. If they can truly improve the middle portion of the curve via OTA I'd be happy.

To those who don't believe this is a concern I say great for you. Don't minimize our concerns. Some of us regularly drive 300+ miles and don't want to stop for an hour (ok 45 min) to finish the trip.

I would love to show you some of the ridiculous ways through the backroads of Georgia to visit some out of the way state parks ABRP wants to route me. It either isn't possible with a 130kwh R1T or adds an hour to an otherwise 3-4 hour trip.

Edit: I forgot to add that ABRP assumes completely functional chargers, no long waits at charging stations, etc. For one example of a route I regularly take, the fastest charging station in the 225 miles between Stockbridge and Savannah georgia is 62.5 kw (walmart's fast charging stations in Macon are currently down for repair). Obviously NOT optimal for a weekend down and back I make to my parents 5ish times a year considering I'd have to trickle charge at their house. ABRP gives 2 hrs of charging needed for the round trip even assuming the Macon 350kw chargers are functioning.

 

[ajdelange]

I understand the road warrior’s concern but that’s not most of us. Much as I love BEV I am forced to admit that they aren’t for everyone and the road warriors are in the excluded group. There are BEV advertising 500 mi range meaning working range that will handle 350 mi trips but they are expensive. And they have bigger batteries which take time to charge. At a 2C rate it takes 15 minutes to get half a charge. Is that really so much better than half an hour? I don’t expect to see average rates of 2C for quite a while. It seems a Large R1T isn’t the vehicle for you.
Note that it isn’t the shape of the curve that determines charging rate but rather the solution to the implied differential equation. The BMS manages things to hit its desired overall rate without violating local conditions. Currently that overall rate seems to be struggling to get above 1C by a significant amount. I think 2C is a way off.

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