Giving up on keeping my Rivian?

[elatrickWheels]

Speaking of energy costs, I know a lot of folks grumble about the cost of EVgo, but we could not have done this trip without the EVgo station since we don’t have our NACS adapter yet. Until EVgo opened this station in Yucca Valley, we were at the mercy of a 50kW Loop station with 2 dispensers. Early on, there was supposed to be a RAN location in this general area, but I think it got removed from the potential site map. It’s a shame because we’ve seen up to 4 Rivians charging simultaneously at this EVgo station so there seems to be decent demand with Joshua Tree National Park and Johnson Valley OHV area a short drive away.

I’ve prepared a little comeback line for someday I might find myself on an off-road trail talking to an EV-skeptic about range anxiety on my Rivian. “I wanted to get a Jeep Rubicon but was put off by the limited range of a gas-powered vehicle“ (with a 17-gallon tank, doing about 5 mpg in trail conditions).

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[SoCal Rob]

Yeah, I'm really hoping something with this patent comes to fruition.

Here’s an example of the routing failures I’m seeing.
Rivian nav locates the street address perfectly. It even shows the street name properly.

Driving directions, however, take you to a location 2.5 miles away straight line distance and 8.1 miles away driving distance.

Google, on the other hand, provides driving directions to the edge of the property.

I have never seen another nav system which can display an address properly yet cannot get you to the address despite showing mapped roads to get you there.

 

[SoCal Rob]

I’ve prepared a little comeback line for someday I might find myself on an off-road trail talking to an EV-skeptic about range anxiety on my Rivian. “I wanted to get a Jeep Rubicon but was put off by the limited range of a gas-powered vehicle“ (with a 17-gallon tank, doing about 5 mpg in trail conditions).

I was really happy with the economy, especially with continuous air conditioning use.

I think someone else mentioned this on here, but another benefit is that getting out of the car to spot was SO much more pleasant without the incredible amount of waste heat generated by an engine and without the noise of an idling engine.

Last but not least, I was always really careful about parking our Land Rover in hot dry environments with dead grasses because of the possibility of the exhaust system, especially the catalytic converter, being hot enough to light dried grass on fire if they were touching.

 

[Zoidz]

Great click bait title, great post and great pics!!!

I feel your pain. I scuffed/dented the front lower plastic piece under the bumper a couple of months ago while off roading. Fortunately I was able to remove some screws, get to it from inside the wheel well and pop it back into shape with a little help from a heat gun. You have to be looking for it to see any residual damage. These events are almost a relief - OK, I messed it up, now I don't have to worry about THAT so much anymore!

 

[Dark-Fx]

Here’s an example of the routing failures I’m seeing.
Rivian nav locates the street address perfectly. It even shows the street name properly.

This alone is a side effect of using google for the POI search but mapbox for mapping. There is going to be some disconnects in places, but it's likely considerably better than just using mapbox on average.

Driving directions, however, take you to a location 2.5 miles away straight line distance and 8.1 miles away driving distance.

Google, on the other hand, provides driving directions to the edge of the property.

I have never seen another nav system which can display an address properly yet cannot get you to the address despite showing mapped roads to get you there.

I've seen things like this happen when they have a routing engine that's independent from the mapping one, but in this particular case it looks like it's probably because mapbox is missing some of the proper road information in that area.

It looks like the data they do have is from OpenStreetMap, which pulled the data from the US Census Tiger dataset. OSM appears to have a lot of the roads in the area marked as a "track". I know for a fact that OSM doesn't like to route those, so I suspect Mapbox is configured the same way. I'd bet flipping all of these "track" roads over to "road" in OSM would fix the routing issue here once mapbox picks up the change. "track" is generally used for things like forestry roads where general traffic shouldn't normally be routed.

Did you actually go out to this particular spot and were the roads more like roads vs "track" as described? I could probably just flip a route over in OSM to fix this issue for others.

 

[SoCal Rob]

This alone is a side effect of using google for the POI search but mapbox for mapping. There is going to be some disconnects in places, but it's likely considerably better than just using mapbox on average.


I've seen things like this happen when they have a routing engine that's independent from the mapping one, but in this particular case it looks like it's probably because mapbox is missing some of the proper road information in that area.

It looks like the data they do have is from OpenStreetMap, which pulled the data from the US Census Tiger dataset. OSM appears to have a lot of the roads in the area marked as a "track". I know for a fact that OSM doesn't like to route those, so I suspect Mapbox is configured the same way. I'd bet flipping all of these "track" roads over to "road" in OSM would fix the routing issue here once mapbox picks up the change. "track" is generally used for things like forestry roads where general traffic shouldn't normally be routed.

Did you actually go out to this particular spot and were the roads more like roads vs "track" as described? I could probably just flip a route over in OSM to fix this issue for others.

Yeah, I hope that Rivian is gathering feedback to determine if MapBox is meeting the routing needs of customers or not. If they’d switch to Google for everything I think this would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.

We did actually go to this spot since our friend has a place there and it’s very close to where we own raw land. These are dirt roads which are not maintained by the county, but are legitimate enough that there are legal street addresses on them. The condition varies but all in this area can be traversed by, say, a Honda Civic if driven carefully.

 

[RivianRunner]

Speaking of energy costs, I know a lot of folks grumble about the cost of EVgo, but we could not have done this trip without the EVgo station since we don’t have our NACS adapter yet.

To be fair, people with ICE vehicles grumble about the cost of gas, but they couldn't do the trip without it! Just because something is necessary, doesn't mean we can't grumble about how much it costs!

 

[HaveBlue]

On this trip we didn’t need our 3rd row so the donut was in the spare well, and our full-sized spare was strapped to the cargo area above it. We will not go off-road without a full-sized spare, plug kit, and a bunch of other stuff I keep in milk crates that I stow in the frunk.

This drive wasn’t particularly grueling, we’ll probably do Rattlesnake Canyon which has small boulders and large rocks located along its length. The Rivian width may make that VERY interesting.

You shouldn't have trouble on rattlesnake canyon. It's long but straight forward, however I went up it a few years ago before the epic rains we had and it's a tight canyon.

 

[SoCal Rob]

You shouldn't have trouble on rattlesnake canyon. It's long but straight forward, however I went up it a few years ago before the epic rains we had and it's a tight canyon.

We did it a couple times in our LR3 and it was fine, but that was before 2019. My recollection was that it was a bit of a squeeze at times in the Land Rover and our Rivian is wider.

 

[HaveBlue]

True but some of the vehicles I went through with were 80 series Land cruisers and one f150 that was ridiculously big. But these trails change dramatically season to season. You'll have fun.

 

[White Shadow]

Those features should apply to both generations, too. I know I shouldn’t necessarily make the comparison, but our 2006 LR3 let you leave breadcrumbs so you could backtrack if you need to. I’ve always used GaiaGPS for that because I like being able to see the (offline) satellite view for landmarks, too.

That's a great point. My Jeep has the breadcrumb feature too and I've found it very valuable when out on unmarked maze of trails. Rivian should definitely add that functionality to their system since they market it as an adventure vehicle. Another really cool thing Jeep does is allow you to enter desinations using geo coordinates. This is extremely useful for finding trailheads, especially when you can spot the trailhead using Google Maps and then right click to get pinpoint coordinates. Then your navigation system will take you right to the trailhead every single time.

 

[White Shadow]

I’ve prepared a little comeback line for someday I might find myself on an off-road trail talking to an EV-skeptic about range anxiety on my Rivian. “I wanted to get a Jeep Rubicon but was put off by the limited range of a gas-powered vehicle“ (with a 17-gallon tank, doing about 5 mpg in trail conditions).

Depends upon the terrain, but it's typically more like 10 to 12 mpg on the trails. And even then, that's why they make jerry cans. Some day I think they'll make an electric equivalent to a jerry can for offroad EVs. Until then, I have to say that ICE offroaders are still far less limited in range compared to EV offroaders, even without a jerry can.

 

[SoCal Rob]

That's a great point. My Jeep has the breadcrumb feature too and I've found it very valuable when out on unmarked maze of trails. Rivian should definitely add that functionality to their system since they market it as an adventure vehicle. Another really cool thing Jeep does is allow you to enter desinations using geo coordinates. This is extremely useful for finding trailheads, especially when you can spot the trailhead using Google Maps and then right click to get pinpoint coordinates. Then your navigation system will take you right to the trailhead every single time.

Our ancient Land Rover let you put in coordinates, too. I rarely used the coordinates or breadcrumbs after getting GaiaGPS since it did all that with satellite view map caching for offline use. Plus, I can pre plan routes and save driven routes with everything available from my phone or tablet.

Using a separate device also means I can keep an off-road screen up on the central display which was handy in our LR3 and remains handy in our R1S.

I wish Rivian could provide the utility, but I’m not sure it’s worth the development time. Scale bars on the nav map, though, are part of basic functionality to me so I’d like to see them added. I wouldn’t mind a measure function, either, where you could select two points on-screen and then see the true distance between them.

 

[White Shadow]

Our ancient Land Rover let you put in coordinates, too. I rarely used the coordinates or breadcrumbs after getting GaiaGPS since it did all that with satellite view map caching for offline use. Plus, I can pre plan routes and save driven routes with everything available from my phone or tablet.

Using a separate device also means I can keep an off-road screen up on the central display which was handy in our LR3 and remains handy in our R1S.

I wish Rivian could provide the utility, but I’m not sure it’s worth the development time. Scale bars on the nav map, though, are part of basic functionality to me so I’d like to see them added. I wouldn’t mind a measure function, either, where you could select two points on-screen and then see the true distance between them.

I actually use coordinates all the time, even for regular destinations. The reason being, it's really pin point accurate and sometimes using an address can be hit or miss. On my Jeep, I can keep the navigation on the center screen and then show all of the offroad page stuff on the instrument cluster screen, so it's easy to have both available simultaneously. I really like that kind of modern tech.

 

[Shavaloo]

Gosh, I sure hope a Rivian has better suspension than an almost twenty year old LR3. I mean LR3’s aren’t too shabby, but almost anything newer will feel much better. I’d like to hear a comparison of off-road comfort and handling with a new Defender, probably one of the most comfortable riding off road vehicles I’ve ever been in.

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