My Rivian completely dead from ~40% vampire drain after a month long vacation

[NY_Rob]

Is there an EV on the market that wouldn’t drain from 40% to 0 after sitting stationary for 4 weeks straight? Serious question.

Not that I am aware of other than the Rivian.

My i3 was at a body shop for almost 2 full months and only lost about 10%... and that was because they were moving it around their lot and in and out of the shop and the heat was on while they were working on it.

I have gone up to 10 day without using it and it lost maybe a mile or two range over the 10 day period.

My Bolt lost no range while sitting.

Our Model 3 loses maybe 1-2miles/day.

Rivian's vampire drain is something we all should be complaining to Rivian every single time we speak to them about anything.

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[mikehmb]

Is there an EV on the market that wouldn’t drain from 40% to 0 after sitting stationary for 4 weeks straight? Serious question.

My daughter studied overseas for a semester, and her eGolf lost pretty much zero over 2 months until I started driving it just to keep the bugs and vermin out of it.

Vehicles with more sophisticated systems are going to have vampiric losses, especially those with OTA updates and other proximity-based services.

There needs to be some sort of automated throttling of energy use while being stored. For example, the car should be able to determine its charge level in real-time, and when it drops below say 10% after sitting some period of time, and go into some “Deep Sleep” mode. My $0.02.

 

[Tahoe Man]

Our plugin hybrid barely had any vampire drain. But why the apologists post? This isn't on you OP, this is very bad battery management Rivian has. It's a problem when these companies do the "over the air update", basically releasing subpar software to hopefully get fixed on their timeline if ever. Then post popup with the "I should have known this". How is that?

 

[NY_Rob]

As I mentioned to the Rivian Service rep I spoke with Tuesday (for an unrelated issue), Rivian should enable a "Long Term Storage Mode" that literally turns everything off except the ability to unlock the doors and "start" the truck to put it back to "normal" mode again.

 

[Nsblifer]

That’s really unacceptable. Really hope this is fixed before it’s my time in line.

 

[NY_Rob]

That’s really unacceptable. Really hope this is fixed before it’s my time in line.

It's been like this since the first employee deliveries..... it's nothing new and Rivian doesn't seem particularly motivated (like all hands on deck) in fixing it even thought it is tremendously wasteful and is potentially costing owners thousands to get thier vehicles going again.

 

[ironpig]

That sucks.

I have gone through a lot of small 12 volt batteries on my partner's Prius because it doesn't get driven much anymore. All batteries are subject to some drain and those little guys seem to die all the time.

I use a trickle charger ln my older cars to preserve the 12 volt and I'd like to do that with my EVs as well if I ever have to let them sit for a month untethered to the main charger. But I'm not sure Rivian or the other manufacturers want you to do that....

 

[mini2nut]

Unacceptable vampire drain is my #1 R1T ownership complaint.

Rivian doesn’t appear motivated to address the issue or it’s a major technical challenge for its engineering team.

 

[Craigins]

That sucks.

I have gone through a lot of small 12 volt batteries on my partner's Prius because it doesn't get driven much anymore. All batteries are subject to some drain and those little guys seem to die all the time.

I use a trickle charger ln my older cars to preserve the 12 volt and I'd like to do that with my EVs as well if I ever have to let them sit for a month untethered to the main charger. But I'm not sure Rivian or the other manufacturers want you to do that....

I came to say this. I learned the hard way with my old prius.

I used to switch to my Ram during winter and the first winter my prius 12v died after one month being idle. I did it again the next winter lol.

Luckily with the prius i just had to use jumper cables to get it started to drive it to the dealership to replace the battery.

 

[sacramentoelectric]

As I mentioned to the Rivian Service rep I spoke with Tuesday (for an unrelated issue), Rivian should enable a "Long Term Storage Mode" that literally turns everything off except the ability to unlock the doors and "start" the truck to put it back to "normal" mode again.

"Should'" and "can" may not be compatible here. If Rivian has the ability to make meaningful improvements to the vampire drain, wouldn't they have already done so sometime in the last 15 months since the R1T came out? The longer this goes on, the odds of it ever getting fixed are going down. And before apologists jump in and say Telsa's vampire drain used to be bad and they fixed it, that doesn't mean Rivian can or that it won't require a hardware update.

I don't expect Rivian will ever get to where my i3 and Tesla are when it comes to vampire drain nor do I think they will fundamentally address the issue. I doubt it's something they can fix in software. I'm expecting delivery in two weeks and I can deal with the drain if I end up on the lower end of what people are reporting. Unfortunately, there seems to be a significant range of drain rates reported by the community. I suspect the variation is due to a combination of user error and imprecise measurements rather than significant differences between vehicles (baring outliers like people who have faulty sensors.) If I end up with something extreme like 4kWh a day, I doubt I'll keep my R1T. I just don't think I can be happy with something so unnecessarily wasteful.

 

[jebinc]

A word/noun that strata with “T” comes to mind.

 

[AWDrift0]

If it makes you feel better, my new Model X sat at the service center for an extended repair and went from ~60% to 0% in 15 days.

My 22 model S has way more vampire drain than my R1T.

 

[sacramentoelectric]

My 22 model S has way more vampire drain than my R1T.

Then it's broken and you need to get it serviced.

 

[rpo]

Then it's broken and you need to get it serviced.

I doubt it is broken. I have owned three Model S's and one Model X. All lost a few percent a day at minimum. The best was my 2016 Model S before they added all the cameras. That one lost ~3% a day. My 2019 S and 2023 X both will die in under a month from 80%.

 

[AWDrift0]

Then it's broken and you need to get it serviced.

Ive owned a 2014 S, 2020 3, 2021 Y and now my 2022 S.. They all had more drain than my R1T

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