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

[SANZC02]

"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.

I’m in SoCal and I am just not seeing the high numbers people are reporting. I have not enabled Gear Guard, I do not plug in unless I am charging, the R1S is parked in a garage.

I am seeing usually 0 to 1 mile lost overnight (10-12 hours). The most I saw was 2 the night I took an OTA.

I will admit I do not check it every night and have not looked at battery percent but the numbers above are the many nights that I have made a conscious effort to check lost miles.

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[Tahoe Man]

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

Does that mean this is okay?

 

[SANZC02]

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

My 2016 Model S seems comparable to my R1S without gear guard on.

 

[lefkonj]

Interesting issue and it would be great to understand how it can be resolved without a tow.

I have left my R1S in the garage for a few days and maybe lost 1-2% over 3-4 days.

 

[R1Tmcg]

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.

Is this not what the existing Shipping Mode is?

 

[fbitz777]

My 2016 Model S seems comparable to my R1S without gear guard on.

Same with my '17 Model X
Tesla never had to resolve that issue in general because most owners keep the car plugged in and never really feel the Phantom Drain.

My Ioniq5 sat in a yard at the body shop for 4 months with no noticeable drain on the HV battery. However they had to jump the 12V a few times.. but that was because they disconnected the HV due to accident.

 

[echerod]

Is this not what the existing Shipping Mode is?

Exactly, if you leavve in Shipping Mode the drain should be substantially less.

 

[AWDrift0]

Does that mean this is okay?

It means that it is a common challenge for EVs, especially those that are continually checking in online. Long term storage on my gas vehicles require a battery minder to keep the 12volt safe so we will need a similar solution for EVs.

 

[gonefishing]

The estimate for the service given as $1270

Don't pay it man! Fight like hell. Tell them there is no warning as to the maintenance of the vehicle's battery and word of mouth does not count. It should not become the norm to dump software problems onto the consumer

 

[IPTV65]

Surprised they don’t have a super deep sleep protocol that gets initiated at some critical threshold. Eventually nothing else matters beyond staying alive long enough to have the ability to charge. Vampire drain is bad. Vampire drain to oblivion is just next level stupid. It probably did LTE and sent log info all the way to the grave. Really bad design.

 

[seanocono]

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.

Something is wrong. I have a new X, and that level of drain is not normal at all.

I'm also surprised that it was in service for 15 days.

EDIT: I suppose if you had Sentry Mode on the entire time and there are people walking around your vehicle a lot you could lose 60% in 15 days...

 

[popoga]

I've heard that you can charge into the 12v system by removing the towing backplate and accessing the wires there (at least, on the T -- I assume the S has a similar to hookup). If I were you, I'd verify this (lol, seriously, due diligence, when messing with electronics, especially ones that cost 80k+) and then grab a motorcycle battery trickle charger or something and hook it up to those contacts to push some current into the system. Once you've got a few hrs of low charge into that 12v system you should in theory be able to start charging the main electronics.

Either way, gl.

 

[dleewla]

ive never owned an EV so not sure how bad the vampire drain is on other vehicles. from video tests and reviews ive read Rivian seems to be especially bad. this is yet another item in a list of things that requires an R1 to be baby'd more than any other vehicle i've heard of.

i know its a new manufacturer but they can't seem to fix big ticket things like this. and yes its a big ticket thing because over the lifetime of the vehicle how much Kwh are we wasting? this vehicle is supposed to help us become more sustainable, but this waste isn't gonna help that.

 

[SASSquatch]

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 BMW i3s sat in a parking spot on the street (i.e. not plugged in) for the full month of January and lost 2 percent charge.

 

[RivianDeac]

Has anyone tried “ship (transport) mode”, turning off proximity locking, turning off wifi, and/or pausing gear guard videos?

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