1st Tow - Battery Severely Overheated

[Trinculo73]

The TigerMoth is tiny and light. No way it stressed your R1S beyond its capabilities. I think the "towing" aspect of this problem is a red herring.

Almost certainly this is a problem with your vehicle's charging hardware. There have been some cases of this, most often when the vehicle is new because things like this tend to fail early if they're going to fail.

For future reference, a hard reset or an infotainment reset might have helped at the time. Also, capturing the vehicle diagnostics, for example at the charger where it stopped at 69%.

Agreed, I tow a Taxa Cricket almost every weekend and it barely touches the truck's capabilities. I've towed much larger and heavier trailers in the past without issue as well.

Unfortunately this vehicle has some issues and hopefully the SC will be able to resolve them.

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[justinkitswa]

Our R1S would overheat during DC fast charing in the summer in the Sacramento area - we weren't towing. Couldn't get it to charge above 60%.

The problem is the lithium in the battery is a huge thermal mass, and once it heats up from heavy charge or discharge, the thermal management system in the R1 platform isn't up to the task of rejecting that heat quicker than it's being generated.

I'd open a service request and make sure they are aware of the issues. I opened a NHTSA ticket when my screens blanked out during driving- if enough of us do this, they will investigate and force a recall for Rivian to fix it.

 

[MD89]

Sounds like more of an electrical issue, but this reminds me of when my R1S coolant tank leaked this winter in Tahoe while prewarming and I saw the blue coolant leaking in the garage so had a clue to what happened. Rivian roadside assistance only offered to tow the car (to Reno, which was closest to Tahoe, but I live in San Francisco), they could not tell me how to check the coolant tank (and I just asked Rivian AI assistant now and they could not either), but the internet and google AI could, and it was almost empty. I decided to just risk it and drive the car home (since it was downhill and winter) and monitor the battery and motor temps. Luckily it made it home fine and the service center in South SF found a coolant leak and fixed it. What concerned me was that while driving home, there was no warning light about a low coolant level, and I would have never known it was leaking or low if the leak had started on the road rather than in my garage. Interestingly, there was a coolant issue recall about a month later, and I had to bring it to S. SF again (how many times I've been there for recalls, etc. in the past year and a half of owning it is another story). If anyone has overheating issues, I would definitely check the coolant tank. You have to lift up the plastic panel near the windshield wiper fluid opening in the frunk. Good luck with your fix.

 

[CrazyOne]

I've done a fair bit of towing and have never experienced anything like this. Absolutely open a service ticket. There's either a battery issue, a cooling issue, or a massive software bug. This is well within the expected use case of the R1S.


It's not normal regardless of temperatures (unless maybe we're talking summer in Death Valley).

That's exactly why I asked, if we are talking about Death Valley temperatures.

 

[scissormetimberz]

Not normal. Likely something wrong. Try to repeat the test, L3 charging at similar temps. Also open SC ticket.

Curious what you consider a good ambient battery temp? In MA during the heat wave last week inside my garage which was hot, like 90, but not 105 like outside, it didn't get below 80 in my brand new R1S when checking the next AM. Later when the weather cooled i saw it started at about 70. Im trying to figure out an expected baseline

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