[RivRunsThroughIt]

Hi All!
This is my first post here and I wanted to share a story with you all and see if anyone has experienced anything like this. Our family owns a piece of property that has a little off-grid cabin on it. I had the Rivian there over the weekend and tried to charge it. Since the cabin has a small 2200 watt solar setup, it only has 110v available. I was only planning to be there for the day but I thought I'd give it a shot since it was free energy. The inverter in the cabin confirmed it was pulling about 1500watts of power after I plugged the Rivian in, but the Rivian app said it was only charging .6 miles per hour. Boo! Assuming 2 miles per kW-hr, that means it was only charging at about 300 watts, but using 1500watts? Now, I didn't expect 100% efficiency, but I also didn't expect 20%. I've gotta assume the 1300 watts was being wasted running a circulating pump and the fan.

Is that really necessary? Why bother adding the 110V plug if it basically doesn't work at all? Well, unless you just like wasting energy, that is. My bet is they just haven't gotten around to this yet. As a point of reference, my wife drives a Pacifica hybrid that takes 13 hours or so to charge 16kW-hr battery on 110V and gets about 33miles on a charge. About the same energy per mile as the Rivian. So hers is charging at 2.5 miles per hour. Slow, but much better!

So, what am I saying here? I think I'm saying, "Come on, RJ! You can do better than this!" I know this is a truck not an Aptera, but I really don't like wasting hard-earned energy. You can see the cabin and 2 of the 6 the solar panels on left (the panel on the roof is no longer functional).

 

[lethargic_wombat]

Hey RivRunsThroughIt, I experienced almost the same thing. My Rivian Home Charger was not installed until today. Prior to that I was using a 110v plug in the garage (no 240v outlet available). When I plug in, I get the .6 miles per hour you are experiencing. After the truck locks and "goes to sleep" I was able to get a max 1.2 miles per hour of charging. I limped through on 110v until today.

 

[sciencegeek]

110V charging also loses the most energy compared to L2 and DCFC: between 20 and 25%.
To your main point though, the power draw of the R1 when it's booted up does seem excessive, and it appears from various first hand reports that it's still quite significant when locked.

 

[watchhand]

I charged at a hotel once overnight and got about 10 miles added on 110v in about 12 hours. The 110v charging is basically useless in my opinion.

 

[racekarl]

I think part of the issue may stem from using miles per hour as a unit of charge power. That "miles per hour" estimate of charge takes into account the estimated efficiency of consuming the power as opposed to adding it. It's possible that number has some predictive guessing built into it (e.g. the truck just climbed a mountain to get to the cabin so it's guessing that future consumption will be high based on recent history). Unless you know for sure what the miles/kWh multiplier while charging is and it never changes, I think there is too much uncertainty baked in to "miles per hour" as a unit of charge to draw too many conclusions from it.

 

[RITVT]

1.2 MPH when I tried plugging into a 110 also, FWIW.
Just got back from a EvGo DC FC and it was ripping.

 

[Livinginkaos]

110v charging just seems like more of a maintainer than a charger.

 

[Riviano]

The Rivian website says this:

When using the included Level 1 adapter, the Portable charger provides a slower charge, around 3 miles of range per hour. It’s useful in a pinch, but likely won’t be your everyday charging solution.

So at 0.6 miles of range per hour the truck is definitely not performing as advertised. Rivian needs to fix this.

 

[Jim]

I'm running 33 amps on my NEMA 14-50 and getting 14-15 MPH on my R1T until the electrician shows up to hook up my charger. Basically, I wouldn't expect much more than a trickle at 1500 Watts, less is actually getting through. My daughter hooked up her Model 3 at a friend's house on a 20 amp connection 110v and was able to charge her car in about 3 days from 100 mile range to 192 mile range. So, I expect that with enough time the Rivian would also charge up, but don't expect to suck a watermelon through a straw here. There's a lot of juice required to run these.

 

[ColeAK]

I charge the model 3 on 110 at our cabin and when we bring it along camping. Get ~1.5-2miles per hour no matter where I plug into a 110 outlet. Given the Wh/mi difference 0.6-1.2 miles per with the Rivian is the same. Don’t blame RJ for the limits of 110v.

 

[empickle]

Hey RivRunsThroughIt, I experienced almost the same thing. My Rivian Home Charger was not installed until today. Prior to that I was using a 110v plug in the garage (no 240v outlet available). When I plug in, I get the .6 miles per hour you are experiencing. After the truck locks and "goes to sleep" I was able to get a max 1.2 miles per hour of charging. I limped through on 110v until today.

Sounds about right. Our M3 used to get about 3-4 miles per hour at 110V. It gets 15 miles per hour with 16A/220V. I suspect the Rivian would get about half that.

 

[BridgeTwnSmith]

Well that sucks, my Honda Clarity would fill the 17KWH battery in about 12-13 hours off the 110v giving us from 33 to 48 miles of range and I was hoping to do that with my Rivian then supplement off the nearby Free Lvl 2 Chargers when I was not too lazy to leave the truck there and walk back home (like 4 blocks away)

 

[RivRunsThroughIt]

Thanks for all the comments here! Here's my objection to this: My wife's plug-in hybrid Pacifica gets about 2 miles per kW-hr just like the Rivian. It's also a big vehicle. It charges 33 miles in about 12-13 hours. We aren't saying Chrysler is better at electric vehicles than Rivian, are we? Can't be so. Here's my guess. To be safe, the engineers turn on the fan and cooling pumps whenever charging (and maybe some other stuff). But in this case we are charging at .01C for those solar nerds out there like me. C is the battery capacity, 135kw-hr, and we are charging at 1.5 kW-hr which is nothing. It's a trickle to this battery. I understand wanting to be safe, but this couldn't possibly cause issues. I hope the engineers take another look at this and make some tweaks. It really bums me out to not be able to charge on 110V. It seems silly, but to me its a big deal. I want to charge from the sun!

 

[BridgeTwnSmith]

Thanks for all the comments here! Here's my objection to this: My wife's plug-in hybrid Pacifica gets about 2 miles per kW-hr just like the Rivian. It's also a big vehicle. It charges 33 miles in about 12-13 hours. We aren't saying Chrysler is better at electric vehicles than Rivian, are we? Can't be so. Here's my guess. To be safe, the engineers turn on the fan and cooling pumps whenever charging (and maybe some other stuff). But in this case we are charging at .01C for those solar nerds out there like me. C is the battery capacity, 135kw-hr, and we are charging at 1.5 kW-hr which is nothing. It's a trickle to this battery. I understand wanting to be safe, but this couldn't possibly cause issues. I hope the engineers take another look at this and make some tweaks. It really bums me out to not be able to charge on 110V. It seems silly, but to me its a big deal. I want to charge from the sun!

agree and have my fingers crossed... I can get all the charging I need off that 110v at home and the occasional day over at the free chargers down the block.

 

[sciencegeek]

I don't like saying this, and I don't mean to be dissing the utility of 110V charging for the folks for whom that works well, but nothing could be less important to Rivian as a company right now than to optimize the charging experience for 110V. They have sooooo many bigger fish to fry.

 

[EaglesPDX]

To your main point though, the power draw of the R1 when it's booted up does seem excessive

It's probably not the bootup as such but the charging electronics that have an overhead. At 110V/20A it's significant. At 204/30A, insignificant. If the battery has cooled off, the battery heating can make it even slower.

If you wanted to use the solar at the cabin. The thing to do would be buy a portable RV battery pack that the solar could charge for days, weeks, when you are not there. When you get there, you have 10, 20, 30 kWh of power to put into the truck. Depends on how much you want to put into the storage batteries and how much sun the site gets per day.

 

[sciencegeek]

It's probably not the bootup as such but the charging electronics that have an overhead. At 110V/20A it's significant. At 204/30A, insignificant.

I disagree here given that people have reported significant parasitic drain, on the order of 1kW when the truck is on.

Charging my I-Pace at 110V loses 20-25%, at 240V it's 13%. So yes, 110V loses more energy (due to lower voltage) but it can't explain the huge loss that's observed here; the parasitic drain (or whatever you want to call it when the truck is 'on') can.

 

[Livinginkaos]

I've noticed a static discharge rate of 2% over 12 hours. If that's standard throughout the range of the battery, it would explain why 110v is not charging much if any for most. I always assumed 110v to be more of a maintainer than a charger anyway given the size of the battery.

 

[EaglesPDX]

So yes, 110V loses more energy

Not so much loses more energy just that losing 1000W out of 1500W is significant and noticeable while 1000W out of 50,000W is not.

 

[sciencegeek]

Oh yeah I agree with that!