Regen braking Question...

[R1Sky Business]

Is there more strain on driving unit/ battery management system, etc., if one chooses standard vs high regen braking?

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[miasm]

Strain for power electronics is an interesting thing.

Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): I'd personally say "no".

Long Answer:

The power electronics are sized for the full regen load with likely significant margin to accommodate edge cases and reliability. As such, I imagine that if you looked at the load vs reliability chart on the devices they use, the difference in points on the curve would be so small as to have the system reliability be dominated by other factors. That's typically how it's done. No idea how Rivian does it, but I think it's safe to say that they probably didn't operate outside the component's goldilocks reliability window here; in fact being new, they were probably pretty conservative.

The only mitigating factor here would be heat. What kills power electronics is heat (for example, the power supply in your computer might typically last a thousand years at 60F, but only 10 years at 120F). The reliability ramps get exponential. But again, Rivian seems pretty aggressive on their cooling systems, so I can't imagine that they let it get super hot up there (and if it does get above a certain temperature, I bet that they limit the amount of regen available) to manage it.

So, unless Rivian made multiple fairly major mistakes, I can't see the difference in regen settings resulting in any meaningful difference in the life of the components.

 

[ajdelange]

Regen uses the same components as the inverters but at lower current so I wouldn’t worry about it.

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