• Jack-it Night: April 2024 RS Meeting Hey Guest: Wed. April 3rd is the next Rising Sun meeting, and you won't want to miss it. We're doing our annual offroad recovery equipment demonstration and trail skills training aka "Jack It Night." Meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. (early) Click here for all the details.

so who's ordering a Rivian?

J1000

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In the first video they are blasting around in a 50mph drift. You definitely don't want low tire pressure for that.

I saw this video of the Rivian towing 10,000lbs for 100 miles which was pretty impressive. It was a big dirty Humvee so no aerodynamic benefits at all. It was 26F also which makes it all the more impressive. He did stick to 65mph which is key. If you try to go 75 it'll never work.

 

mcgaskins

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I care a lot about safety, and one of the things I've enjoyed with the Model 3 and Model Y we had was the fact they're some of the safest vehicles ever made. It's actually the first point I make when I do product demonstrations and walk arounds at work and when showing people around the Rivian or the Tesla. This video shows the structure without body panels and walks through how it performs in a collision which I found to be very interesting. I love how "overbuilt" the Land Cruiser is, and there is a lot here that reminds me of that ethos.


View: https://youtu.be/JFy4NvcBxpU
 

mcgaskins

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Our R1S finally arrived! We are super happy we waited for the forest edge aka green interior which makes the interior feel very cozy. I’ll bring it to the next meeting if I’m in town.

1673905912554.jpeg
 

Heckraiser

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You're in charge of figuring out a "small brake kit" for us!
 

mcgaskins

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You're in charge of figuring out a "small brake kit" for us!

I used to think that way until I drove these on the track and found at the limit it's very, very nice to have the ability to stop the 7k+ pound rocket :ROFLMAO: I already have a set of Nitto Ridge Grapplers in the stock size of 34"x11", so I'm going to see how differently it behaves on and off road with those tires. I'd love to have more sidewall for sure, but I ran this exact size (in a KO2) on our LX570 and loved the overall performance.
 

Romer

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Matt- I hope to check out your Rivian one day. I may have to sell one or two (not the 200) of my vehicles to get one. I want to see what the new GX is in 2024 as well, but that expects to be a plugin Hybrid. Maybe a full EV SUV and my 200 so I can still be a member here (snif snif) :)
 

mcgaskins

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Matt- I hope to check out your Rivian one day. I may have to sell one or two (not the 200) of my vehicles to get one. I want to see what the new GX is in 2024 as well, but that expects to be a plugin Hybrid. Maybe a full EV SUV and my 200 so I can still be a member here (snif snif) :)

You're welcome to take the Rivian for a spin any time Ken!
 

HDavis

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This past Sunday afternoon we were driving to Buena Vista and as you can imagine there was quite a bit of traffic coming back towards Denver.
On our drive we saw a grandpa gold lx470 about a block from our house and an 80 near bailey. In this same amount of time, we saw five R1-T's and one R1-S. On the way back we saw one R1-T and one 100 series.
 

Jack Bo

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Our R1S finally arrived! We are super happy we waited for the forest edge aka green interior which makes the interior feel very cozy. I’ll bring it to the next meeting if I’m in town.

View attachment 110853
Congrats on the purchase! Looking forward to your post about driving experience in case you decide to write one. Rivian makes really great EV and it is a pity that they don't sell them im my area :(
 

rushthezeppelin

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Hope everything works out for y'all that have Rivians. They just had a huge round of layoffs recently.
 

DouglasVB

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J1000

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I saw this post on the Rivian forum that explains the problem with EVs offroading without low range. No low speed control. I've seen this myself in youtube videos of the Rivian and Hummer EV but this really describes it well. People like to say that electric motors make maximum torque at 0 RPM but it's just not true. EV 4x4s need low range for exactly the same reasons ICE 4x4s do.


I've read about--and have seen the videos--Rivian's lack of slow speed crawl control. Today was the first time that I've encountered off-roading situations wherein the Rivian four motor strategy had me experiencing real challenge.

For those in the Puget Sound region, this trip was at the Reiter Pit ORV area. The trail photo below was one of many obstacles that were rough. That Jeep Rubicon handled everything with ease, being able to lock front and rear axles and, importantly, tackle obstacles with precise control.

To clear these obstacles, I had apply rapid and aggressive accelerator pedal input. Then, once the R1T made it up obstacles, the moments that followed were with an out-of-control 7000 lb. truck sorting itself out/me trying to brake and steer to regain control. The result was damage to the truck.

I wish, wish, wish that Rivian would program the Off-Road Rock Crawl setting to make the Rivian R1T and R1S perform like a Jeep. Then again, maybe that's not possible with our Quad Motor drivetrain.
 
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Inukshuk

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I have seen firsthand on trail (from the seat and from outside) plenty of low-speed well controlled rock crawling by an R1T, even with an inexperienced driver.
In most all instances the R1T crawled better than a 4Runner and Land Rover, which were both in low-range, center diff locked, axle diffs open.
 

Corbet

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To a certain degree is that just bad programming on the EV’s part? A crawl throttle setting could include programming that offered a power delivery more like an ICE truck. Based on my RC car experience electric motors hate power applied to them with resistance levels that prevent them from turning. I’ve burned up a couple motors like that I’d assume an EV is no different and I’m not sure how you overcome that problem for an EV really crawling in the rocks. Our torque converters take that abuse.
 

J1000

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To a certain degree is that just bad programming on the EV’s part? A crawl throttle setting could include programming that offered a power delivery more like an ICE truck. Based on my RC car experience electric motors hate power applied to them with resistance levels that prevent them from turning. I’ve burned up a couple motors like that I’d assume an EV is no different and I’m not sure how you overcome that problem for an EV really crawling in the rocks. Our torque converters take that abuse.
You pretty much nailed it. If the motors are stopped up hard against an obstacle it really is a dangerous game to feed them more and more power. They can get hot and burn up in a split second. So the software tuning on the Rivian is probably dialed in to protect the motors in this situation. It's probably keeping track of the acceleration of the motor and providing power based on that. So if you roll into the throttle hard then the tires spin and all is good but if you roll into it slowly and the motor loads up and slows down, the computer probably reduces the power being delivered. It's a dangerous game to play, more low speed torque just increases the risk of burning out the motor.

I have seen firsthand on trail (from the seat and from outside) plenty of low-speed well controlled rock crawling by an R1T, even with an inexperienced driver.
In most all instances the R1T crawled better than a 4Runner and Land Rover, which were both in low-range, center diff locked, axle diffs open.
I've seen it both ways, but when climbing ledges or large boulders the Rivian usually needs a "run up" to get up an over. Whereas, in our traditional 4x4s we can come up to a ledge and feed in the power and climb it from a dead stop.
 

DouglasVB

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Here are my thoughts on EV low range:

7qg3uv.jpg
 
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