Phantom / Vampire Drain Solution Works! Using 12v Battery Tender

[risingphoenix]

Can we please stop conflating plugging the car into a L2 charger with putting the 12V battery on a maintainer??

Battery maintainers (at least the good ones) are also conditioning, which means they are reversing sulfation. Removing hardened lead sulfate from the battery plates eliminates the most common cause of battery failure.

TL/DR; Using a maintainer/conditioner on your 12V battery is doing something extra to improve the health of your battery that the built in charger does not.

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[KMWNAZ]

I’ve had 2 Teslas that I don’t remember ever having this problem. I have left them both sitting for extended periods of time but don’t recollect them losing power or getting notified they were charging to make up the difference. Maybe they it did charge to make up loss and I just didn’t get noticed via the app. Is this an issue with all EV’s or is this something Rivian could fix.

 

[DayTripping]

This is another area where Rivian massively lags Tesla. I think Teslas also had a bigger 12v battery. Honestly, for being such an eco-focused company, this is a huge miss on their part. I am also probably wasting $100/yr just due to vampire drain.

They undersized the 12v, so it has to be topped off more often from the traction battery, which itself isn't very efficient to do with a lot of overhead. Even a bigger 12v would have helped this out.

 

[good2go]

Can we please stop conflating plugging the car into a L2 charger with putting the 12V battery on a maintainer??

Battery maintainers (at least the good ones) are also conditioning, which means they are reversing sulfation. Removing hardened lead sulfate from the battery plates eliminates the most common cause of battery failure.

TL/DR; Using a maintainer/conditioner on your 12V battery is doing something extra to improve the health of your battery that the built in charger does not.

But the thread is about vampire drain, not conditioning the battery.

 

[risingphoenix]

But the thread is about vampire drain, not conditioning the battery.

You forgot the /s

 

[Tim-in-CA]

I can attest as well, my VD is very low using the battery tender/ OBD2 charging method.

 

[Frisbee]

For this purpose is there a difference between an OBD2 adapter and an OBD3 adapter? I have seen references to both on postings.

 

[risingphoenix]

For this purpose is there a difference between an OBD2 adapter and an OBD3 adapter? I have seen references to both on postings.

Don't think there's such a thing as an OBD3 adapter - certainly not relevant to this thread. If you plan on trying the OBD2 adapter, be sure that you have a 3A or LESS battery maintainer.

 

[Surferdude]

This is another area where Rivian massively lags Tesla. I think Teslas also had a bigger 12v battery. Honestly, for being such an eco-focused company, this is a huge miss on their part. I am also probably wasting $100/yr just due to vampire drain.

They undersized the 12v, so it has to be topped off more often from the traction battery, which itself isn't very efficient to do with a lot of overhead. Even a bigger 12v would have helped this out.

Lucky you. I'm losing $400/year in electricity to phantom drain. It's incredible this phantom drain problem still exists. It should be high on Rivian's list to address.

 

[@Andoo117]

Sorry for the dumb question, but I’m not understanding when you use this. Is it for people that don’t plug the Rivian in nightly?

if it’s plugged in nightly the main battery is always topped off. And it can wake up and charge the 12v.

Agree anyone explain if your charging every night is there a need for this VD solution?

 

[Rade]

While this looks like it works very well to reduce vampire drain, I worry about unintended consequences. Rivian monitors how often the 12V needs to be recharged and uses that to flag 12V batteries that need proactive replacement.

I am still a newbie to Rivian; my R1T almost has 2,000 miles on it. I have been watching various threads about the 12v batteries going dead and was wondering how they could put such vehicles on the road with this obvious a problem. Glad there is some monitoring going on.

 

[beyond]

makes me wonder, has anyone done a study on the older dual battery setups vs the newer single battery setups ?

 

[mudito]

Agree anyone explain if your charging every night is there a need for this VD solution?

In theory, no.

Your 12Vs get charged and fully topped up while you're L2 Charging, so if you charge daily you won't need this.

Avoiding VD by trickle charging should only (Mostly?) for people who park their Rivian for extended periods and would like to avoid coming back to a discharged High-voltage battery.


BUT, Daily L2 charging would not do anything other than recharge, while trickle charging will help with 12V Battery overall Health by reversing sulfate buildup on lead-acid batteries. Hence why I run my "re-conditioning" cycles every several weeks (haven't found a set cadence yet) in order to keep my batteries in top-shape, same as I do with my ICE weekend warrior

 

[mudito]

makes me wonder, has anyone done a study on the older dual battery setups vs the newer single battery setups ?

What type of study?

My personal observation from people in this forum is that both Dual and Single setups have equally high failure rates around here.

 

[Drzdbd]

The battery tender I bought from Costco says “not for electric vehicles”. I wonder why?

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