Defaulting to Auto Ride height

[beatle]

Don’t be so dramatic. You literally hit the screen 2x to change ….you’re not “digging through the menu”….or if you are, then you should probably spend a few minutes familiarizing yourself with your vehicle…

Interacting with the screen is always distracting. But you view this resetting as a good thing? There is zero benefit to the owner by doing this. It's actually insulting that by resetting the suspension and drive mode, they presume everyone made a mistake on their previous drive and they are simply correcting that mistake on future drives by putting it back to the setting used for their range test.

Owner education of the settings should be sufficient. "Please note that the truck was placed into all purpose mode with the auto suspension setting selected during the range test, and these settings will yield the highest range." This is an EV with zero emissions, after all.

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[teartags]

I am new to Rivian in the past six weeks so this may be a silly question, but what is the reason not to prefer ride height on auto? For my daily driving I like the auto setting where it is at standard height at lower speeds, which allows more suspension travel. At highway speeds it lowers for better efficiency. I assume some prefer to always have it in the lowest setting for better performance.

A lot of people on here also believe that the lower ride height increases uneven wear on the tires. The suspension is "dialed in" in Standard height. So when you lower it, you are cambering the tires.
Dunno if that's true, but I only use low mode when I'm ripping through windy mountain roads because it's fun. Otherwise, it's pretty uncomfortable, especially when you hit a bump/ hole you didn't notice.

 

[teartags]

If you remove your aero covers, it's basically the same as removing the cat in your exhaust. /s

Rivian responded to my inquiry, but it was basically just a form letter.

I also sent customer service a complaint email. I got a somewhat personalized canned response. I think everyone should start sending those so they know this is a "feature" nobody wants. I hate it.

 

[bigsky]

Since day one, my R1S Quad is forever set to All Purpose, Standard Height only. No Auto anything.

 

[beatle]

I also sent customer service a complaint email. I got a somewhat personalized canned response. I think everyone should start sending those so they know this is a "feature" nobody wants. I hate it.

So we can compare notes, this is the first half of the email I got. The second half was basically just how to contact customer service.

I hope your day is going well so far! I appreciate you taking the time to reach out to us at the Rivian Customer Engagement Center.​

​

This is honestly a great idea, I definitely share your opinion on that point. We take things from our community very seriously because we try to make the product better and more user-friendly. What I can do on my end here is I will flag your email with any other relevant information so that our team here that handles requests like yours will be able to see it. We appreciate your understanding and patience. I will be sure to make notes about your concerns.​

​

Note that there's no mention in their email about what my point was. I think they just carefully crafted this letter to cover as many complaint types as possible.

 

[CarGuyCarl]

EPA regulations. Other vehicles will also do something similar.

 

[Dark-Fx]

As for the explanation that it's an EPA thing, if that's Rivian's line I think I'm going to call bullshit.

EPA rules require testing the vehicle in the least economical mode it can be left in. Rivian wants their numbers to be as high as possible, so they do user unfriendly things to only allow you to leave the vehicle in the most economical mode possible. They aren't doing this with the gen1 quad motor vehicles because you're not "supposed" to use conserve mode all the time.

This isn't exclusive to Rivian at all, and it's a trend I wish the industry wouldn't follow.

 

[Morphine]

A lot of people on here also believe that the lower ride height increases uneven wear on the tires. The suspension is "dialed in" in Standard height. So when you lower it, you are cambering the tires.
Dunno if that's true, but I only use low mode when I'm ripping through windy mountain roads because it's fun. Otherwise, it's pretty uncomfortable, especially when you hit a bump/ hole you didn't notice.

Just picked up my Gen 2 Dual R1T and my SC Advisor said the same thing about the tires and specifically showed me how to turn off Auto. I don't recall if he told me that it goes back to Auto after 4 hours (as it says in the manual) and I don't think he knew that.

 

[mpshizzle]

FWIW - I was driving around in a Gen 1 for a few weeks just now. And just picked up my Gen 2 R1S. Low is SIGNIFICANTLY more comfortable in the Gen 2

 

[Kaiju]

EPA rules require testing the vehicle in the least economical mode it can be left in. Rivian wants their numbers to be as high as possible, so they do user unfriendly things to only allow you to leave the vehicle in the most economical mode possible. They aren't doing this with the gen1 quad motor vehicles because you're not "supposed" to use conserve mode all the time.

This isn't exclusive to Rivian at all, and it's a trend I wish the industry wouldn't follow.

Assuming that were true, the auto level feature works the same in the quad motor vehicles too. Were they not tested with auto ride height enabled and the dual motors were? Is this 'feature' coming to gen 1 quads too? I'm not buying that this whole thing was a mistake from Feb 2023 onwards.

I am concluding instead that there's some fuckery at hand here and it has to do with those dramatically smaller batteries in the Gen 2 vehicles and their posted range numbers. It is entirely possible that you are correct, and they did such a thing for Gen 2. Then they forced it on Gen 1 so they didn't have to manage them being different.

If the tri motor has this 4 hour auto-level reset, I suspect when the Gen 2 quads come everyone will come to enjoy having to stab that button constantly.

EDIT: You know what? I decided to just go find the EPA certification documents.

2022 quads: https://dis.epa.gov/otaqpub/display_file.jsp?docid=53765&flag=1
2023 duals: https://dis.epa.gov/otaqpub/display_file.jsp?docid=58043&flag=1
2024 duals: https://dis.epa.gov/otaqpub/display_file.jsp?docid=59913&flag=1

These documents are rather voluminous, but after poking through all of them I have yet to find any mention of auto ride height settings in testing. So it begs the question. Why are the duals and quads different?

 

[Electrified Outdoors]

They just added this and have claimed it is to abide by EPA regulations about range statements.

Interesting. I suspected that might be the case. low ride height is very uncomfortable on anything but completely smooth highway. My wife will not allow low ride height when she is in the car.

 

[beatle]

These documents are rather voluminous, but after poking through all of them I have yet to find any mention of auto ride height settings in testing. So it begs the question. Why are the duals and quads different?

We don't know yet what the gen2 quad will look like, but the tri max has two different ratings:

In this case, they may throw all the efficiency settings such as forced all purpose mode and auto suspension under "conserve," or at least we can hope. Do gen1 quads force you into all purpose mode as well?

 

[vandy1981]

What do mean because of regulations?? I have had my DM T since last November and it just started defaulting to Auto after the last update.

The vehicle "key in" settings must match the EPA certification conditions. That's why you have to manually disable start/stop engine settings in ICE vehicles every time you get in.

 

[godfodder0901]

We don't know yet what the gen2 quad will look like, but the tri max has two different ratings:

In this case, they may throw all the efficiency settings such as forced all purpose mode and auto suspension under "conserve," or at least we can hope. Do gen1 quads force you into all purpose mode as well?

No, Gen 1 Quads do not do this.

 

[beatle]

The vehicle "key in" settings must match the EPA certification conditions. That's why you have to manually disable start/stop engine settings in ICE vehicles every time you get in.

This makes sense in an ICE vehicle where emissions are affected by the setting, but it's silly to force the setting reset upon an EV owner.

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