Glembi2
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Quad Motor Better Than Lockers...?
- Thread starter Blakejakely
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zefram47
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This is more or less what several us have asked for, but rather than tie it to accelerator input it could just be an off-road cruise control like the Toyota Crawl Control where you could select 1-5 mph and the truck would just figure it out and apply enough torque to each wheel to match the desired wheel speed. It's unclear from that patent whether or not Gen1 would be capable of this implementation (I see no reason they couldn't) or if it would require Gen2.
R1Thor
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I'll just leave this here:
Factually there have been zero bits of evidence of anyone actually putting 1:1 comparatives together. Zero. There are a ton of ANECDOTES (NOT data), but this is easily Hitchens Razor "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be just as easily dismissed without evidence."
On paper, Quad is superior.
In practice, we don't know.
I admittedly have VERY limited experience off-road, but I have had ZERO situations where the truck didn't figure things out VERY easily and eagerly. People claiming it cannot handle slow obstacles haven't shown us any videos of them actually getting stuck.
Honestly, I'd be willing to say this: Dual or Quad, these trucks are absolutely capable and verily incredible off-road. And 99.999% of us WILL NEVER find the limits of these vehicles.
Factually there have been zero bits of evidence of anyone actually putting 1:1 comparatives together. Zero. There are a ton of ANECDOTES (NOT data), but this is easily Hitchens Razor "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be just as easily dismissed without evidence."
On paper, Quad is superior.
In practice, we don't know.
I admittedly have VERY limited experience off-road, but I have had ZERO situations where the truck didn't figure things out VERY easily and eagerly. People claiming it cannot handle slow obstacles haven't shown us any videos of them actually getting stuck.
Honestly, I'd be willing to say this: Dual or Quad, these trucks are absolutely capable and verily incredible off-road. And 99.999% of us WILL NEVER find the limits of these vehicles.
SwampNut
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I have owned a lot of off road rigs over a few decades. I've had:
Limited slip rear only
Limited slip both ends
Limited slip front with Detroit locker rear
Detroit front and back
Electric lockers front and back
And I drove an e-locker rear with an LS front, didn't own it.
NOT ONE SINGLE OPTION ABOVE WAS A CLEAR WIN!
If you need that typed slower to read it slower, let me know. There's no clear winner. Full open would be the worst, and LS rear only was terrible obviously. But aside from that I found places where every one of them had an issue or was better/worse than another.
Example: There's a trail near me that I've been on dozens of times. There's an obstacle that has a long slow climb, then a hard part at the top followed by a sharp break-over and hard left turn. It's absolutely terrible with less than lockers. But the lockers interfere with the hard left turn. LS isn't grabby enough and you have to launch it over, kinda hard. Etc.
Limited slip rear only
Limited slip both ends
Limited slip front with Detroit locker rear
Detroit front and back
Electric lockers front and back
And I drove an e-locker rear with an LS front, didn't own it.
NOT ONE SINGLE OPTION ABOVE WAS A CLEAR WIN!
If you need that typed slower to read it slower, let me know. There's no clear winner. Full open would be the worst, and LS rear only was terrible obviously. But aside from that I found places where every one of them had an issue or was better/worse than another.
Example: There's a trail near me that I've been on dozens of times. There's an obstacle that has a long slow climb, then a hard part at the top followed by a sharp break-over and hard left turn. It's absolutely terrible with less than lockers. But the lockers interfere with the hard left turn. LS isn't grabby enough and you have to launch it over, kinda hard. Etc.
Davethadog
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If you spend a bit of time on the tube you can find videos of the r1t quad struggling to make it over low speed obstacles that traditional ICE vehicles don’t seem to have an issue.
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R1Thor
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Love it.
I tell you to bring the evidence and you tell me to go search for it.
I have.
I haven't seen anything personally convincing to me. Maybe I'm terrible at searching for R1T fails..
I however brought evidence...did you watch the video? Did you see the Engineering breakdown?
In fact, I found mostly surprise and praise for Rivian in negotiating tough obstacles that most people used purpose-built off-road rigs for. Sure, there are probably one or two showing a Rivian not negotiating an obstacle, but compared to what exactly?
In my experience (limited, admittedly), people are being too hasty. I've been off-roading enough to have felt like I was 'stuck' for a moment or two, but by maintaining constant, yet minimal throttle position, the truck figures it out and creeps right over the obstacle. I've never had to reverse, except for when I couldn't negotiate a corner that was too tight. I believe too many people are trying to use speed to overcome obstacles, where I was taught VERY differently. 'As slow as possible, as fast as you need to.'
I've seen a few Rivian fails where the drivers seemingly had zero real clue how to offroad. They didn't air down their tires, they didn't maintain throttle or tried to use inappropriate speed.
Have I tried all of the obstacles? Nope. Have I been in every situation? Also nope.
I'm also confused that you're also comparing a Quad to an ICE vehicle. When the posited query was regarding the DM vs QM.
End of the day, the BOTTOM LINE IS:
1- Whether you're racing, stunt driving, Gymkhana, drifting, drag racing, off-roading, auto-crossing, whatever. The BIGGEST upgrade you make is to the driver. The second is the tires. I'm POSITIVE we can find a scenario where a GREAT driver in an under-equipped vehicle will outperform a bad driver in a well-equipped vehicle.
2- It's all about isolation of variables, including what I just presented in #1. Get the same driver, on the same course with the same setup in the same environmental conditions where the ONLY difference is QM vs DM (in this debate/case--change up the ONLY variables you need for alternative scenarios), and show me, side by side the breakdown of approach and what happened differently.
This is the ONLY way you find objective truth. It's literally the foundation of science. Create hypothesis, isolate variables, implement a control, build a repeatable experiment, have others conduct the same experiment. Log the data.
"I saw it" is NOT data. And not something that passes scientific rigor.
zefram47
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Go ahead and ignore all the threads and posts where folks have shown that the QM falls apart off-road. I'm one of the folks who's seen it IRL and have plenty of off-road experience on the same and similar obstacles where a traditional 4x4 with and without lockers had no problem at all.
Hell, this video spells it out plain as day and the same problem exists on the trail (I've literally experienced it).
In a totally ideal world, yes, the EE video is right...but in practice Rivian did *not* implement the QM off-road calibration well and it falls flat in any circumstance with split-mu and/or lifting wheels off the ground. Or you can bury your head in the sand and ignore the past 1-2 years of real-world experience folks on this forum have had with the Gen1 QM.
Dark-Fx
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I've had my Bosch quad motor go into turtle mode to protect the inverter when trying to reverse up a ~15" drop with just the driver's front tire needing to climb. It wasn't an issue with the obstacle, it was my methodology that was wrong. Can't just ease into the throttle when you have stalled motors, you have to blip the throttle enough to generate the necessary torque quickly, before it starts to pull power out for protection reasons.
I got out, letting the vehicle reset itself to clear the turtle mode. Got back in, blipped the throttle, had no issues climbing straight up with the right pedal application that time around.
If the Rivian motors/inverters are better designed around the motor stall problems, it should fix that particular issue, which is the only issue I've ever experienced. As it stands though, you can't drive a Gen1 quad motor like you would an ICE vehicle, and that's where a lot of people's difficulty with it lies, because Rivian isn't redirecting the requested power to wheels that still have traction.
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R1Thor
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You must have accidentally posted a different video from what you're claiming, because the video I just watched showed the Rivian performing EXACTLY how I'd anticipate. And it did exactly what I've experienced (maintain throttle, and it eventually figures it out and moves).
Where is the failure here, exactly?
You want to argue that lockers are the de-facto best all around for every situation? Or just this one? Because the Toyota seemed to 'struggle' less?
Even my off-road instructors were VERY clear. There's no BEST setup for all things. There's the best setup for what you want to do.
This truck will do more than what 99% of owners will ever ask it to do.
The fact that you think it should do better mean you're one of the 1% who has some sort of need that differs--so go get the truck YOU need!
I appreciate the effort, dude, but I just don't see a failure here.
I'm also willing to bet we can find a test that the quad would perform better in. Maybe not. Who knows. Until we run it through those tests, we don't know for sure one way or another.
Does it matter though? You tell me. I don't need to split hairs. Fact is: these trucks are damned capable.
As you sort of alluded to as well, there may be a software limitation here, so could this also get better in the future? Also sure. Could get worse, too!
Blakejakely
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I don't think anyone is saying the quad motor is a bad offroader. Far from it. Just that it was a bit over promised in the torque vectoring aspect. If you were to do low speed crawls beside a triple locker land cruiser, the land cruiser would give little fuss, while the Rivian would make the same obstacle likely, but with a lot more fuss, wheel spin and with the need for pushing the throttle more, given the Bosch's throttle response
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White Shadow
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Exactly. My Jeep has the same exact functionality, but they just don't call it crawl control. It's basically the same thing though where you can set the speed (uphill, downhill, or level ground) and let the vehicle figure it out. It works amazingly well and the speed is easily and quickly adjustable using the vehicle's shift paddles behind the steering wheel. Something like that on a Rivian would be fantastic.
White Shadow
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Kyle posted a video of an R1T and an R1S getting stuck on a fairly mild uphill trail. He basically floor the accelerator and nothing was happening at the wheels. These were both quad motor vehicles and I'm pretty sure this was before the dual motor vehicles were even out. It was pretty disappointed to watch his video.
Edit: Here you go. Start at 10:00 in the video to see where the QM obviously falls short:
Rivian R1T vs R1S - Out of Spec Hill Climb Challenge (youtube.com)
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R1Thor
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R1Thor
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The experts teaching me how to off road told me this is the opposite of the right approach. For what it's worth. (And these guys are running purpose built Jeeps--there's no Rivian bias in their approach)
Flooring it to get through an obstacle is the wrong option.
Finding the right path, steering into the problem and placing the tires appropriately, and only applying what you need (throttle wise) is the way to go. Did those vehicles have the right tires and were they aired appropriately?
Bear in mind the Rivians ARE definitely hindered by their total weight. And there are limits (in the case of max angle, break over angle). Do you have a link to that video?
Blakejakely
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This is right in most vehicles especially with low gears and crawl control type systems and comes to the crux of the gen1 quad. "Flooring it" is the only option to add more torque when you're stuck on "slow" obstacles due to the torque vectoring in these. It feels unnatural but it's the only option.
Check out this video, he explains it well and even compares similar EV trucks with and without lockers.
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