Massive cross country trip completed in Rivian R1T! 8,878 miles, 100 charges, 2.1 mi/kWh

[emoore]

Nice writeup. It does, however, pain me to run the following calculations:

If every charge had been at an EA at the current price of $.48/kwh, then you would have spent $2,051.18 for "fuel" for the trip...or 23.10 cents per mile.

This does not compare favorably to any gas that costs under $4.60/gallon when dumped into a vehicle that gets 20 mpg. (Regular fuel nearby is $3.19...and I pay my electric utility a hair less than 10 cents/kwh.)

EA's markup is egregious

It’s $0.36 per kWh if you get the pass which is still $4 per month I think. Then you are down to $1538.39 plus $4 for the pass. That gets you to $0.17 per mile. That’s closer to $3.50 a gallon. Which today is lower than the average price in the US.

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[BrianNakata]

Yes, for this sort of trip, it only makes sense to have Pass+ to get the lower rate.

My total charging bill was $1036.83 because I have Pass+ and received some complimentary charges from EA and utilized RAN heavily as I got back to the Western US. Therefore, I consider the cost of the trip to be quite good.

 

[jasenadams]

Total distance driven: 8878 mi
Number of charges: 100
Total kWh consumed: 4273.3 (delivered to vehicle including accessories, etc.)
Efficiency: 2.1 mi/kWh

My partner Kathy and I recently completed a trip from our home in Portland, OR to the Florida Keys and back over the course of 3 weeks in my CY/BM 2022 R1T which I took delivery of on mid-Jan'23. I started the trip with just over 7400 miles on the odometer to give me the confidence in its reliability. A few weeks before the trip, I switched my as-delivered 20" AT wheels/tires for 22" bright wheels/tires to improve on-road efficiency for this trip. I intend to switch back and forth between these sets for the winter and summer weather.

The great news is that we made it back home in one piece and nothing on the truck broke except for a newly cracked windshield that happened on the 2nd to the last day of the trip in CA.

As far as DCFC, I mostly used EA and had my share of broken chargers, not all at EA. In all, I used: EA, RAN, EVconnect, EvGo, FPL, ChargePoint, 7Charge (7-11), Shell Recharge, Circle K, and hotel destination chargers when available. I was signed up with accounts on all these networks prior to the trip. The lowest SoC I ever rolled into a charger with was 30% so I was very conservative and made sure I had enough SoC to give me options, which I took advantage of on a few occasions when the station was full or in one case, none of the chargers worked. I would say that as far as charging goes, it went pretty well and I'm hopeful that it will only get better. We were never caught with super-low SoC and no working chargers, my worst fear on this trip.

As far as the truck goes, it was a dream to drive on this trip and the smooth and quiet ride were very much appreciated. The only issues I saw were software related. Late in the trip, the navigation screens (on both displays) became very choppy and often froze before jumping to the current position. I ended up doing a soft reset which cleared it up. I also saw the navigation display in the driver's screen render in "dark mode" while the rest of the driver's display was properly rendering in "light mode" as was the center display. That cleared up all by itself the next day (perhaps after the truck went to sleep?).

We relied heavily on the built-in navigation, and there were a lot of issues with it that I never encountered until this trip just driving around town at home. One was that the verbal instructions that it gave were inadequate. It would always say something like, "Turn left at Corbett Street" whereas Apple Maps (which we started running concurrently with the built-on navigation) would say something like, "Turn left at the light". The latter is FAR MORE useful IMO since giving me the street name requires me to look for the street sign with the name, which oftentimes is not readily visible. Also, the nav system focuses on just the next turn, which often set us up to be in the wrong lane for the turn ofter that which followed shortly thereafter. I lost count of the number of times that it should have told me something like, "Exit the freeway in the rightmost lane", followed by, "turn right at the light". In this situation, I exited in the "left" exit lane (where there are two lanes exiting) and quickly found myself relying on the charity of drivers around me in heavy traffic to let me into the right lane so that I could make the subsequent right turn. This system gets the job done, but is very unpolished and needs a lot of work to be on-par with what is available on our phones.

I made extensive use of Conserve mode on this trip, which I had only tried out once before. Due to the threads concerning front tire wear, I only used it on the highway once I got out of traffic and there was little acceleration or braking needed. When I'd exit the freeway, I'd switch back to All Purpose mode to enable regen on all four tires. This strategy seemed to work since there was only a 1/32" difference in tread depth between front and rear tires after the trip (whereupon I rotated the tires). The brand-new full-size spare measured at 10/32", the rears were 9/32" and 8/32" whereas the fronts were both 7/32". The calculated range goes up considerably when switching from All Purpose to Conserve, usually on the order of 20-30 miles.

So all in all, we were very happy with the truck's performance and feel it makes a very good long distance driving partner, even with the minor EV-related struggles with charging that we encountered. I'm still a very satisfied Rivian customer, but really need to see significant improvements in the software. One that's high on my list is the ability to change what wheels/tires I have on from the setup screen instead of having to schedule a service appointment which could be weeks out.

Brian

Update added 9/7/23:

Regarding pics, sorry, we didn't take many, which was a departure for me since I enjoy photography. We were more interested in seeing parts of the country we've never seen before, visiting relatives, eating BBQ, and just experiencing the trip and testing the EV waters for a long trip like this.

Regarding the different charging networks, we used EA mostly (58% of the charges) and I'm sure most of you are quite familiar with the challenges they sometimes give. We ran into our share of failures to connect, extreme derating (a 350kW charger putting out 30kW at <50% SoC), derating due to the high ambient temps in the South, etc. On the first day of the trip in Island City, OR, all four handles there would not connect. Luckily, there was a ChargePoint station a little ways down the street, but it was only a 62kW one.

The next most used network was RAN (12%), and these were always awesome and worked on the first try every time. They always put out 210-220kW initially as expected which makes me wonder why I usually never saw that much power from a 350kW EA station.

Next was EvGo (10%) and these were generally good except on two occasions, the right handle of the high power units would not connect but the left handle would - weird. Halfway through the trip, I was able to get autocharge+ working after reading about the successes here and thoroughly enjoyed using EvGo when I could because thy were as simple to use as RAN.

Next was ChargePoint (6%) and these worked perfectly but were always lower power units (62kW). Part of the trip involved traveling to Corpus Christi, TX, and there are 3 ChargePoint chargers in the whole city and no EA. Luckily, the one I picked at the Mercedes dealer worked fine.

The EV Connect chargers I used were both FreeWire hardware, and these worked fine except the first one in Cuero, TX which required me to use my credit card as I couldn't start the charge from the EV Connect app (app error connecting to the charger). This put out 75kW. The one in Fort Bragg, CA put out 153kW so these seem to work pretty well (providing the battery in the unit isn't dead, whereupon you go down to ~L2 power levels).

I only used an FPL (Florida Power and Light) charger once in Naples, FL, and the charger I parked at was unavailable so I moved to the one next over and it worked fine but only gave 67kW at 47% SoC. This was a 180kW unit.

I used 7 Charge (7-11 convenience stores) once in Deerfield Beach, FL and it was a bear to get started from the app. I would start the charge from the app, and it would bill my card $20, then something would go wrong but the charge on my card would remain. I stupidly tried this 4 times and got four $20 charges (yes, I am insane). I finally just used my card directly and that got it going. I complained about this in the app and about a week later, the four $20 charges disappeared and were replaced by a single $11 charge.

I used Shell Recharge once in Healdsburg, CA and it worked fine after an initial hiccup with the app and put out 149kW.

Finally, I used Circle K once in Palm Desert, CA and it was trouble free giving me 168kW.

The hotel destination chargers were a mixture of some unknown CCS chargers and Tesla. My TeslaTap adapter worked perfectly (I was never able to test it before the trip).

I put reviews of every charge in PlugShare.

All legs were planned using ABRP and every charging stop was reviewed in PlugShare before starting the trip in case any of them were questionable or always unavailable, etc., in which case I'd select a different charger and route in ABRP.

The problem areas we found (few chargers so it's critical that the ones that are there work) were in AR, GA north of Atlanta, TX, and NM. AR (EA has 5 chargers in the entire state) was really bad as I was depending on the one in Clarksville and found that of the four chargers, 2 were unavailable, one 350kW put out 37kW, but the 150kW one was working. An R1S had to wait for me due to this situation (we were the only two users so should have been able to charge simultaneously). I complained to EA about this in the app.

So yes, there were some hiccups, and this trip required a lot of planning, but it worked out pretty well in the end. If you're willing to do the planning, crossing the country in an EV (non-Tesla) is workable.

Brian

Hi Brian,

my order is confirmed for R1S and my delivery date is processing. I intend to do a lot of cross country trips. If you had the max pack (just 50 miles or so more range) do you think that would have made the trip “easier” - less stressful counts. And would it be worth the 10k to you?

Thanks for any thoughts!

 

[BrianNakata]

No, the actual shipping version of the Max Pack wouldn’t have made much of a difference to me and would not have been worth the price.

FYI, I originally had the Max Pack configured for my Jan’20 reservation but that was when it was supposed to be 180kWh. After a certain point, I gave up on the Max Pack as it was continually delayed and finally dropped for the quad motor powertrain.

Regarding long roadtrips in a non-Tesla, I hope you take my advise and plan your trips carefully using ABRP and check the reviews of the selected charging stations in PlugShare.

Brian

 

[jasenadams]

Thanks for the reply. I will stick with the large pack as planned.

 

[tate16t]

Total distance driven: 8878 mi
Number of charges: 100
Total kWh consumed: 4273.3 (delivered to vehicle including accessories, etc.)
Efficiency: 2.1 mi/kWh

My partner Kathy and I recently completed a trip from our home in Portland, OR to the Florida Keys and back over the course of 3 weeks in my CY/BM 2022 R1T which I took delivery of on mid-Jan'23. I started the trip with just over 7400 miles on the odometer to give me the confidence in its reliability. A few weeks before the trip, I switched my as-delivered 20" AT wheels/tires for 22" bright wheels/tires to improve on-road efficiency for this trip. I intend to switch back and forth between these sets for the winter and summer weather.

The great news is that we made it back home in one piece and nothing on the truck broke except for a newly cracked windshield that happened on the 2nd to the last day of the trip in CA.

As far as DCFC, I mostly used EA and had my share of broken chargers, not all at EA. In all, I used: EA, RAN, EVconnect, EvGo, FPL, ChargePoint, 7Charge (7-11), Shell Recharge, Circle K, and hotel destination chargers when available. I was signed up with accounts on all these networks prior to the trip. The lowest SoC I ever rolled into a charger with was 30% so I was very conservative and made sure I had enough SoC to give me options, which I took advantage of on a few occasions when the station was full or in one case, none of the chargers worked. I would say that as far as charging goes, it went pretty well and I'm hopeful that it will only get better. We were never caught with super-low SoC and no working chargers, my worst fear on this trip.

As far as the truck goes, it was a dream to drive on this trip and the smooth and quiet ride were very much appreciated. The only issues I saw were software related. Late in the trip, the navigation screens (on both displays) became very choppy and often froze before jumping to the current position. I ended up doing a soft reset which cleared it up. I also saw the navigation display in the driver's screen render in "dark mode" while the rest of the driver's display was properly rendering in "light mode" as was the center display. That cleared up all by itself the next day (perhaps after the truck went to sleep?).

We relied heavily on the built-in navigation, and there were a lot of issues with it that I never encountered until this trip just driving around town at home. One was that the verbal instructions that it gave were inadequate. It would always say something like, "Turn left at Corbett Street" whereas Apple Maps (which we started running concurrently with the built-on navigation) would say something like, "Turn left at the light". The latter is FAR MORE useful IMO since giving me the street name requires me to look for the street sign with the name, which oftentimes is not readily visible. Also, the nav system focuses on just the next turn, which often set us up to be in the wrong lane for the turn ofter that which followed shortly thereafter. I lost count of the number of times that it should have told me something like, "Exit the freeway in the rightmost lane", followed by, "turn right at the light". In this situation, I exited in the "left" exit lane (where there are two lanes exiting) and quickly found myself relying on the charity of drivers around me in heavy traffic to let me into the right lane so that I could make the subsequent right turn. This system gets the job done, but is very unpolished and needs a lot of work to be on-par with what is available on our phones.

I made extensive use of Conserve mode on this trip, which I had only tried out once before. Due to the threads concerning front tire wear, I only used it on the highway once I got out of traffic and there was little acceleration or braking needed. When I'd exit the freeway, I'd switch back to All Purpose mode to enable regen on all four tires. This strategy seemed to work since there was only a 1/32" difference in tread depth between front and rear tires after the trip (whereupon I rotated the tires). The brand-new full-size spare measured at 10/32", the rears were 9/32" and 8/32" whereas the fronts were both 7/32". The calculated range goes up considerably when switching from All Purpose to Conserve, usually on the order of 20-30 miles.

So all in all, we were very happy with the truck's performance and feel it makes a very good long distance driving partner, even with the minor EV-related struggles with charging that we encountered. I'm still a very satisfied Rivian customer, but really need to see significant improvements in the software. One that's high on my list is the ability to change what wheels/tires I have on from the setup screen instead of having to schedule a service appointment which could be weeks out.

Brian

Update added 9/7/23:

Regarding pics, sorry, we didn't take many, which was a departure for me since I enjoy photography. We were more interested in seeing parts of the country we've never seen before, visiting relatives, eating BBQ, and just experiencing the trip and testing the EV waters for a long trip like this.

Regarding the different charging networks, we used EA mostly (58% of the charges) and I'm sure most of you are quite familiar with the challenges they sometimes give. We ran into our share of failures to connect, extreme derating (a 350kW charger putting out 30kW at <50% SoC), derating due to the high ambient temps in the South, etc. On the first day of the trip in Island City, OR, all four handles there would not connect. Luckily, there was a ChargePoint station a little ways down the street, but it was only a 62kW one.

The next most used network was RAN (12%), and these were always awesome and worked on the first try every time. They always put out 210-220kW initially as expected which makes me wonder why I usually never saw that much power from a 350kW EA station.

Next was EvGo (10%) and these were generally good except on two occasions, the right handle of the high power units would not connect but the left handle would - weird. Halfway through the trip, I was able to get autocharge+ working after reading about the successes here and thoroughly enjoyed using EvGo when I could because thy were as simple to use as RAN.

Next was ChargePoint (6%) and these worked perfectly but were always lower power units (62kW). Part of the trip involved traveling to Corpus Christi, TX, and there are 3 ChargePoint chargers in the whole city and no EA. Luckily, the one I picked at the Mercedes dealer worked fine.

The EV Connect chargers I used were both FreeWire hardware, and these worked fine except the first one in Cuero, TX which required me to use my credit card as I couldn't start the charge from the EV Connect app (app error connecting to the charger). This put out 75kW. The one in Fort Bragg, CA put out 153kW so these seem to work pretty well (providing the battery in the unit isn't dead, whereupon you go down to ~L2 power levels).

I only used an FPL (Florida Power and Light) charger once in Naples, FL, and the charger I parked at was unavailable so I moved to the one next over and it worked fine but only gave 67kW at 47% SoC. This was a 180kW unit.

I used 7 Charge (7-11 convenience stores) once in Deerfield Beach, FL and it was a bear to get started from the app. I would start the charge from the app, and it would bill my card $20, then something would go wrong but the charge on my card would remain. I stupidly tried this 4 times and got four $20 charges (yes, I am insane). I finally just used my card directly and that got it going. I complained about this in the app and about a week later, the four $20 charges disappeared and were replaced by a single $11 charge.

I used Shell Recharge once in Healdsburg, CA and it worked fine after an initial hiccup with the app and put out 149kW.

Finally, I used Circle K once in Palm Desert, CA and it was trouble free giving me 168kW.

The hotel destination chargers were a mixture of some unknown CCS chargers and Tesla. My TeslaTap adapter worked perfectly (I was never able to test it before the trip).

I put reviews of every charge in PlugShare.

All legs were planned using ABRP and every charging stop was reviewed in PlugShare before starting the trip in case any of them were questionable or always unavailable, etc., in which case I'd select a different charger and route in ABRP.

The problem areas we found (few chargers so it's critical that the ones that are there work) were in AR, GA north of Atlanta, TX, and NM. AR (EA has 5 chargers in the entire state) was really bad as I was depending on the one in Clarksville and found that of the four chargers, 2 were unavailable, one 350kW put out 37kW, but the 150kW one was working. An R1S had to wait for me due to this situation (we were the only two users so should have been able to charge simultaneously). I complained to EA about this in the app.

So yes, there were some hiccups, and this trip required a lot of planning, but it worked out pretty well in the end. If you're willing to do the planning, crossing the country in an EV (non-Tesla) is workable.

Brian

I have not experienced Conserve mode yet. What is the experience like switching from All Purpose to Conserve? Is there a recommended time to do so, while at a standstill or moving? Does it matter? Is the throttle noticeably different? Is there a decrease in motor noise?

 

[Golfer04]

I have not experienced Conserve mode yet. What is the experience like switching from All Purpose to Conserve? Is there a recommended time to do so, while at a standstill or moving? Does it matter? Is the throttle noticeably different? Is there a decrease in motor noise?

In my truck there isn't a noise (others say there is a clunk), but I can feel it in the accelerator. You can change whenever you want as long as cruise control is not engaged. I used to go back and forth all the time, but now I just stick in AP unless I'm going over 100 miles each way.

 

[Biturbowned]

I have not experienced Conserve mode yet. What is the experience like switching from All Purpose to Conserve? Is there a recommended time to do so, while at a standstill or moving? Does it matter? Is the throttle noticeably different? Is there a decrease in motor noise?

I only engage/disengage at a stop (zero mph). I assume if it was really damaging to the clutches that Rivian would enable a software lockout above X mph.

 

[simoncellis]

Nice trip. I have done 3 long road trips (2000 -3000+. Wyoming/Utah/Arizona from CA ) and many 1000 miles in my R1T on 20" wheels stock tires while towing and can confirm that with planning this is a pleasure and fun. The rhythm of ~2 hour drive and 30 minute stops is far more relaxing than what I used to do on similar trips with my Raptor (3+ hour drives with 5 minute stops). It does take longer but that is a mindset problem ("Why am I doing this roadtrip?"). An ideal leg is about 110 miles. Charge state 70 -> 15%, 20 minutes to charge back to 70% for next leg. I get 1.5-1.6 mpKWh towing my teardrop at 65 mph and 1.8 if I slow down to 50. Fast charging infrastructure is good enough and getting better

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