Cruncher2504
Active Member
- Thread starter
- #1
So I just did a 400 miles trip from Disneyland to Zion and I wanted to share some of the range data that I have gathered in the trip as well as how I feel about the R2 in general.
Background: Owned LE 2023 R1S, and currently have a Dune Tri Motor R1S and R2 LE picked up last week. So most of my experiences will be comparing between the Dune and the R2.
1/ Driving experiences: the R2 feels much more planted than the R1S. This is probably because of the standard coil suspensions vs. Air springs. This creates a more pleasant driving experience than the gen 2 R1 imo.
2/ Comfort experience: I can't say how much I enjoy driving the R2. The cabin is super quiet and there are virtually no squeaks, rattles, or wind noise. Despite how many times I have brought my R1S to service, there are still squeaks and rattles popping up randomly.
3/ Build quality: when you already have the R1 as a point of reference, you can see where Rivian cut corners. The glove boxes do feel really cheap and flimsy. There are more hard touch plastics. Less metal trim pieces. But they did well in hiding those. And the design ends up feeling premium still.
4/ Charging: this thing charges fast!!! I only had to spend around 15 minutes at 2 charging stops to make it to Utah. The recommended charging time was around 12 mins each but I like to have some safety buffers. Due to the smaller battery, and longer sustained charging curve, this makes road trip more convenient.
5/ UHF: I used it 95% on this drive to keep constant speed. And I also read on reddit about some of the issues and I have to agree with them. The system seems to be a regression from the one I used on the R1 up until last month. The algorithm seems to be really reluctant on making lane changes especially right lane. I would say more than half of the time it would not make the change despite having complete opening to do so. And it made weird decisions such as slowing down abruptly when the turn signal was made. The road ahead had no car. There were cars behind us and to the right. But it just suddenly slow down instead of keeping constant speed to move ahead and find an opening. I think I pissed a few people off when it did that. I didn't observe that behavior on left lane change. And then on the first leg of the trip, I got camera error message and UHF just shut down. Had to pull over and did a reset for it to go back on.
Now to the range issue. I experienced widely different range estimates based on driving conditions. On the first leg of the trip, around 150 miles or so from SoCal to Baker, the elevation gain was around 4.2k feet. And in that stretch, I observed efficiency of 2.5 ish mi/kWh. When thing started to flatten out the remainder of that leg to Baker, the average efficiency was around 3 mi/kWh. I also did some napkin maths using the distance travel (135mi) and the used battery percentage when I reached Baker (around 48%) so that is equivalent of around 282 mi from 100 to 0%. My data from Rivian Roamer seems to agree with that analysis at around 3 mi/kWh. Then things started to go down hill when we hit the 200 or so mile trip on the 15 from NV to UT. That leg of the freeway has a speed limit of 75. And the temp was 117. So AC was working hard. I maintained much of the trip hovering around that speed limit and my efficiency got pummeled to around 2.0 ish.
But other things to note that my car was having a full load with 1 driver, 3 passengers, several luggages, 1 probable fridge plugged and running the whole time. AC was at medium, 68 most of the trip.
Overall, I enjoyed the trip. The R2 is an awesome vehicle. It's fast, comfortable and charges fast. Comparing with my Tri motor, I think it is more beneficial to road trip with the R2 because efficiency wise, I believe I would have to make the same stops between the R1 and R2 to go the same distance. But R2 just charges faster and battery capacity is less which translates to cheaper cost.
Background: Owned LE 2023 R1S, and currently have a Dune Tri Motor R1S and R2 LE picked up last week. So most of my experiences will be comparing between the Dune and the R2.
1/ Driving experiences: the R2 feels much more planted than the R1S. This is probably because of the standard coil suspensions vs. Air springs. This creates a more pleasant driving experience than the gen 2 R1 imo.
2/ Comfort experience: I can't say how much I enjoy driving the R2. The cabin is super quiet and there are virtually no squeaks, rattles, or wind noise. Despite how many times I have brought my R1S to service, there are still squeaks and rattles popping up randomly.
3/ Build quality: when you already have the R1 as a point of reference, you can see where Rivian cut corners. The glove boxes do feel really cheap and flimsy. There are more hard touch plastics. Less metal trim pieces. But they did well in hiding those. And the design ends up feeling premium still.
4/ Charging: this thing charges fast!!! I only had to spend around 15 minutes at 2 charging stops to make it to Utah. The recommended charging time was around 12 mins each but I like to have some safety buffers. Due to the smaller battery, and longer sustained charging curve, this makes road trip more convenient.
5/ UHF: I used it 95% on this drive to keep constant speed. And I also read on reddit about some of the issues and I have to agree with them. The system seems to be a regression from the one I used on the R1 up until last month. The algorithm seems to be really reluctant on making lane changes especially right lane. I would say more than half of the time it would not make the change despite having complete opening to do so. And it made weird decisions such as slowing down abruptly when the turn signal was made. The road ahead had no car. There were cars behind us and to the right. But it just suddenly slow down instead of keeping constant speed to move ahead and find an opening. I think I pissed a few people off when it did that. I didn't observe that behavior on left lane change. And then on the first leg of the trip, I got camera error message and UHF just shut down. Had to pull over and did a reset for it to go back on.
Now to the range issue. I experienced widely different range estimates based on driving conditions. On the first leg of the trip, around 150 miles or so from SoCal to Baker, the elevation gain was around 4.2k feet. And in that stretch, I observed efficiency of 2.5 ish mi/kWh. When thing started to flatten out the remainder of that leg to Baker, the average efficiency was around 3 mi/kWh. I also did some napkin maths using the distance travel (135mi) and the used battery percentage when I reached Baker (around 48%) so that is equivalent of around 282 mi from 100 to 0%. My data from Rivian Roamer seems to agree with that analysis at around 3 mi/kWh. Then things started to go down hill when we hit the 200 or so mile trip on the 15 from NV to UT. That leg of the freeway has a speed limit of 75. And the temp was 117. So AC was working hard. I maintained much of the trip hovering around that speed limit and my efficiency got pummeled to around 2.0 ish.
But other things to note that my car was having a full load with 1 driver, 3 passengers, several luggages, 1 probable fridge plugged and running the whole time. AC was at medium, 68 most of the trip.
Overall, I enjoyed the trip. The R2 is an awesome vehicle. It's fast, comfortable and charges fast. Comparing with my Tri motor, I think it is more beneficial to road trip with the R2 because efficiency wise, I believe I would have to make the same stops between the R1 and R2 to go the same distance. But R2 just charges faster and battery capacity is less which translates to cheaper cost.
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