Announcing our new "CLUBS" section where you can join or create a Rivian club or group! You can use this new feature to conveniently plan and discuss local events, gatherings or other club/group related topics.
So we encourage you to join (or start) special-interest and regional-based Rivian clubs at: https://www.rivianforums.com/forum/group-categories/clubs-groups.1/
There are open RAN chargers in Roanoke, Meadows of Dan, and Blowing Rock, all near the Blue Ridge Parkway. Excellent area to roadtrip! Should be more stations "s00n" in Front Royal, Waynesboro, and Cherokee (NC).Unrelated, I've never heard of "Meadows of Dan, VA". Bit of a hike from Northern Virginia, but looks like a beautiful place to visit. Knowing there's RAN chargers there makes it even more of an upsell. Thanks!
Don't the newer production Teslas have heat pumps? The R1 platform does not. Rivian is said to be working on that in conjunction with 800v.
They do but even the ones with old resistive heating systems can charge at 250kw. I had a 2018 Model 3 and it regularly fast charged at 250kw max.
heat pumps are just A/C that work in reverse as well. For battery cooling you just use A/C.
There is almost nothing in Meadows of Dan, but it is 10 seconds from the parkway and the surrounding area is beautiful.Unrelated, I've never heard of "Meadows of Dan, VA". Bit of a hike from Northern Virginia, but looks like a beautiful place to visit. Knowing there's RAN chargers there makes it even more of an upsell. Thanks!
It's gotten a lot better lately from what I've seen with my trucks and what some other folks have reported. Hopefully that's the same with yours.
This is mostly due to the existing/historic CCS limitations in the standard and Tesla only pushes to 250kw for a pretty short period of time basically.
Interestingly the proposed revisions to CCS from last summer of 2021 or 2022 included higher amperage values, and with Rivian being responsible for both the RAN chargers and truck design I wonder if they'll be comfortable exceeding the rated amperage limits of the charger cables (for example) eventually like Tesla does with the SC network.
Tesla definitely does let their packs get a fair amount hotter than Rivian is.
I agree.... what isn't clear to me is whether the relatively slow rate of charging above ~50% is actually controlled by the SDI battery cells or if RIvian is being conservative with things on purpose.
They seem to have been manually setting it when setting them up like @Dark-Fx noticed below. There have also been chargers setup with 200kw vs 215kw max despite having the same hardware as we know.
Happy Valley has a mix of 215 and 300kW stations. Pretty much a confirmation to me that someone is manually updating these entries and just missed some.
The most prominent theory I've heard put out there about the short 215kw charge level (by @OutofSpecKyle) is that Rivian has some hotspots in their pack that is preventing them for holding that level of charge for longer. They keep making adjustments via software updates and have made some limited progress, but it might be a physical battery pack cooling constraint. If that is true and they can fix that AND shift to 800v, they'll have a killer vehicle in future iterations. For now, it isn't completely horrible and overall it is a great vehicle.
Yeah, I think Kyle's truck has some problems personally. He and I have chatted a bit, and I had an opportunity to do some charges after the podcast he had and my truck was performing better than his. Other folks have also described that recently as well. My truck also kicked on the cooling earlier than Kyle's did in the video and then eventually turned it off before getting to about 42% and starting to ramp down. For example, my truck held 500A from 10% through where it normally starts stepping down at about 40 to 45%, whereas Kyle's ramped down a bit earlier as I'm sure you saw. He also noted from his conversation with Rivian that they think the cooling system and the pack design is "solid." They seemingly were just choosing to collect data and kick the cooling compressor on at after hitting the max tolerable pack temp rather than preemptively.
Super interesting! Thanks for that extra info!
I don't have any issues with how fast my truck charges, would I like faster absolutely but recently I've gotten near what Rivian advertises (140 miles in 20 min)
Which brings up the question- would there be two seperate heatpump systems? Imagine a cold day charging. Battery being cooled but cabin needs heat. I know there are more advanced HP systems that multi zones can have heating or cooling at same time but they aren't common yet unless on the larger commercial side. What does Tesla do? Capture the heat waste?
GM's system will take heat out of the battery for the cabin. Even a cold battery if you aren't charging.
