Car and Driver R1T 40K mile Test

[Tim-in-CA]

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[Bar_Down]

It’s a pretty fair review. My biggest want is faster charging speeds. Gotta get that 10-70/80% time down. The peak charging speeds is fine, but it would be nice to hold if for longer.

 

[zefram47]

It’s a pretty fair review. My biggest want is faster charging speeds. Gotta get that 10-70/80% time down. The peak charging speeds is fine, but it would be nice to hold if for longer.

Didn't I hear them claim 59 minutes 10-80% though...while sitting on a ChargePoint unit they wouldn't get more than 62 kW from? I have a charge session I documented in extreme detail showing 10-80% in 42 minutes (it was actually 9-80% in 43 min) and holding over 200 kW for 15 minutes (adding 51 kWh in that 15 min). Now, not every charging session is perfect, but it's certainly capable of dumping energy in quickly from low in the pack. That said, if you're towing it's thoroughly unacceptable, especially as on a 1000 mi roundtrip I needed to charge beyond 80% a lot and it's slow AF above 70%.

 

[Marchin_MTB]

I thought this was a pretty fair review as well and enjoyed watching it. The bit about proximity lock and unlock… so true. But they also do a great job at highlighting how practical and fun the vehicle is.

 

[Bar_Down]

Didn't I hear them claim 59 minutes 10-80% though...while sitting on a ChargePoint unit they wouldn't get more than 62 kW from? I have a charge session I documented in extreme detail showing 10-80% in 42 minutes (it was actually 9-80% in 43 min) and holding over 200 kW for 15 minutes (adding 51 kWh in that 15 min). Now, not every charging session is perfect, but it's certainly capable of dumping energy in quickly from low in the pack. That said, if you're towing it's thoroughly unacceptable, especially as on a 1000 mi roundtrip I needed to charge beyond 80% a lot and it's slow AF above 70%.

Yes. I see similar and typically go 10-70 on road trips. I’d love to see that 10-70 time get down to 15 or 20 mins. Probably need 800v architecture and better battery cooling (add a cooling plate in the middle of the pack?) to make a significant improvement.

 

[zefram47]

Yes. I see similar and typically go 10-70 on road trips. I’d love to see that 10-70 time get down to 15 or 20 mins. Probably need 800v architecture and better battery cooling (add a cooling plate in the middle of the pack?) to make a significant improvement.

Cooling is definitely the big one. For the pack voltage, we're already pulling 500A to get 200-220 kW. Rivian only uses a single cooling plate in the middle of a double-stack of 2170 cells which leads to a temperature gradient large enough they have to slow down charging prematurely. If they made the cooling more robust, it's likely with this big of a pack they could stay at the 200+ kW rate much deeper into the pack and for longer...who knows why they haven't done this yet. I've probably done around 8-10k miles on road trips so far. In my personal experience, 20 min is on-par with dealing with restroom needs and potentially a quick bite to eat...even 30 min stops are fine at that point. Once the needed charge time exceeded 30 min is when I started to get annoyed and was waiting on the truck rather than the other way around. While towing or extreme cold/wind I occasionally needed upwards of 90-94% and that pushed charging time up to an hour...that was particularly annoying, but needed with sparse charging infrastructure.

 

[dfacto]

I just think its cool he drove it to Copper Harbor, MI. Go Huskies!

 

[Rivdog]

I thought this was a pretty fair review as well and enjoyed watching it. The bit about proximity lock and unlock… so true. But they also do a great job at highlighting how practical and fun the vehicle is.

Yep, and the new update has dramatically improved proximity locking for me. It’s been horrible for the last maybe 6 months or so but it’s working pretty well again for the past couple of days!

 

[iamnid]

Their test was 10-90%.... charging starts throttling pretty heavily at 80%

 

[Ecupip]

Yep, and the new update has dramatically improved proximity locking for me. It’s been horrible for the last maybe 6 months or so but it’s working pretty well again for the past couple of days!

It’s wild to me that so many people have issues with the prox locking. I have a 12k VIN 2022 R1T here and an iPhone 14 the whole time and it’s worked 100% of the time for me. I wonder what is causing the inconsistency for many.

 

[bfilippo]

My proximity locking was fairly sensitive so I literally turned it off about a month after delivery. To be fair, I live in rural Maine so I am not super concerned about locking my truck in most scenarios.

 

[adatel]

It’s wild to me that so many people have issues with the prox locking. I have a 12k VIN 2022 R1T here and an iPhone 14 the whole time and it’s worked 100% of the time for me. I wonder what is causing the inconsistency for many.

2025 R1S for 6 months; never an issue with iPhone proximity locking.

 

[iansriv]

It’s wild to me that so many people have issues with the prox locking. I have a 12k VIN 2022 R1T here and an iPhone 14 the whole time and it’s worked 100% of the time for me. I wonder what is causing the inconsistency for many.

Agree. It doesn't seem to be the phones. My '23 R1S has worked great from day 1. Seems to be an issue with the individual cars. Rivian would get a lot of goodwill by proactively fixing this for those that are experiencing issues.

 

[iansriv]

My proximity locking was fairly sensitive so I literally turned it off about a month after delivery. To be fair, I live in rural Maine so I am not super concerned about locking my truck in most scenarios.

I grew up in a place like that. Miss it a lot.

 

[Glembi2]

Agree. It doesn't seem to be the phones. My '23 R1S has worked great from day 1. Seems to be an issue with the individual cars. Rivian would get a lot of goodwill by proactively fixing this for those that are experiencing issues.

In general, I think you are right. I’m thinking one of the 4 Rivian BT sensors is not returning a strong enough signal along with the PaaK sensor to alert the truck that the phone is really close (and time to open the doors).

But I’ve also seen phone BT fails that I do not understand. E.g., I was helping my wife set up a WiFi /BT door lock for one of her condos. Neither of us could get her phone to connect via BT to the lock. As a test, I connected using my phone with no issues.

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