Battery preconditioning high scores.

[KBabione]

Battery won't always precondition, only to get the batteries to a point where they are safe to DCFC and charge at an optimal rate. If the truck decides the battery temps are good enough, good enough they stay.

This usually happens to me when they're around 80 degrees.

Thanks for the explanation - I did check our battery temp when I realized it didn't precondition and I think it was around 80 degrees so that makes sense (it had been after about 2 hours of driving each time). I do love this forum! Thanks again!

Sponsored

 

[zefram47]

Reading this just reminded me of our last long trip where the Rivian nav routed us to a RAN to charge about halfway to our destination (and the same coming home) and it never preconditioned the battery. Has anyone else noticed that their battery preconditioning isn't working? I wish we had a simple button that we could press 5-10 minutes in advance to manually initiate preconditioning. Pipe dreams...

It takes *far* longer than 5-10 minutes to precondition the battery, but depends on the temp you started at. Rivian's strategy (or hardware limitation) appears to start preconditioning upwards of an hour out from a charger. That's the same whether it needs to heat or cool the battery...but the target temp is around 76F to get the best charging session. Note, that's assuming you've either previously DC charged (and it's hot...over 100F) on a longer road trip, or your battery started out as an ice cube on a winter morning parked outside (say at a hotel, etc).

 

[BCondrey]

Reading this just reminded me of our last long trip where the Rivian nav routed us to a RAN to charge about halfway to our destination (and the same coming home) and it never preconditioned the battery. Has anyone else noticed that their battery preconditioning isn't working? I wish we had a simple button that we could press 5-10 minutes in advance to manually initiate preconditioning. Pipe dreams...

On-demand preconditioning is on the roadmap for 2025, according to a post I saw recently.

 

[Mathme]

On a recent road trip up to the Pac NW, I noticed mine will precondition up to about 55-60 degrees, and then cool the battery down to about 90 . I also noticed after one charge the battery temp was about 110 degrees, and the battery "preconditioned" for a while until it cooled down into the 90ish range.

The battery will also "precondition" on a cold morning and the motors will run hot just to heat up th battery pack...even without a charge stop entered.

I for one don't worry about what and how the truck is preconditioning as I figure it knows itself better than I do and will do what it needs to do to make itself happy. I'll worry once it throws a code. I saw that manual preconditioning is coming, but don't really see a need for this feature because again the truck likely knows what it needs better than I do to be the most efficient at an upcoming DCFC.

 

[KBabione]

I saw that manual preconditioning is coming, but don't really see a need for this feature because again the truck likely knows what it needs better than I do to be the most efficient at an upcoming DCFC.

I agree, but I've also had times where I can't get the Rivian nav to recognize the charger so there was no way for it to precondition the battery for a fast charge. I'm hoping that a "Start Battery Preconditioning Now" button on the energy screen would allow you to initiate it if needed and would let you know with a message if the battery was already in the zone for most efficient charging.

 

[SPITmadFIRE]

Gen1 Quad uses a boatload of motor heat to warm the battery in the middle of winter while preconditioning to a charger.

Yeah, this is expected for gen 1 because they use the Bosch motors on all four wheels. Those Bosch motors are not oil bathed, so it takes a lot of heat from the motors to effectively warm the components surrounding them. The gen 1 dual motors (and all gen 2 motors) are Rivian built and oil bathed. This means they only have to heat the oil to a desired temp so it can circulate and warm the battery more efficiently.

Essentially, the Bosch motors are space heaters that get super hot to radiate heat all around them and the Rivian motors are like active heat pumps that generate heat and pump it around the battery. They don't need to get nearly as hot to effectively warm other components.

The confusion here is why the Rivian motors would need to ever get that hot when preconditioning since you're not trying to heat the battery up above 200 degrees.

 

[HapticWagon]

Yeah, this is expected for gen 1 because they use the Bosch motors on all four wheels. Those Bosch motors are not oil bathed, so it takes a lot of heat from the motors to effectively warm the components surrounding them. The gen 1 dual motors (and all gen 2 motors) are Rivian built and oil bathed. This means they only have to heat the oil to a desired temp so it can circulate and warm the battery more efficiently.

Essentially, the Bosch motors are space heaters that get super hot to radiate heat all around them and the Rivian motors are like active heat pumps that generate heat and pump it around the battery. They don't need to get nearly as hot to effectively warm other components.

The confusion here is why the Rivian motors would need to ever get that hot when preconditioning since you're not trying to heat the battery up above 200 degrees.

I agree with the confusion and mechanics of the preconditioning.
Side note, I guess this is a classic example of manufacturer needing to be careful about the amount of telemetry they make available to customers ? often a trade off between transparency and customers confusion/worry about the telemetry.

for example, imagine they surfaced the CPU and memory in the dashboard. I’m sure there would be many customers (including myself) obsessed over those numbers.

all that being said, if gen2 trimax owners can share what their numbers look like preconditioning ?

Sponsored