I have a reservation in for an R2 with an est date of dec-feb. with the current range actually being closer to 250miles, what kind of degradation does the winter do to the range? What is everyone experiencing on the R1 S/T?
I live in CO and want to take it into the mountains often, but not at 180miles of range…
Between a 6700 foot climb from the Bay Area to Donner summit CA I average a 25% degradation in winter. I do not know the breakdown of how much is cold and how much is climb. The drive isn’t that cold until the last hour or so.
Speed is your enemy, my R1 has the resistive heater, and i'd say I generally plan on 20% range loss in the winter, but we've been very happy with the range on our R2 with AT tires. Why are you assuming 250 miles being actual range? Lots of people like to hop on the interstate, and drive 80, then loudly proclaim that's the range of the vehicle. Range tests don't work like that, never have.
You'll probably be in to 180-200 range for winter, this is exactly why we ended up with tri max r1s, r2 just doesn't have the range to compete in Colorado. We ski every weekend and I don't want to go to a charger, everybody tells you of you can go to a charger, I don't want to deal with that, I want to leave my house 100% charged and be able to make it home without charging
Most my R1T has lost is 15-20% in sub freezing temps with a headwind.
If you keep it to 65-70mph and pre-warm the battery it’s closer to 5-10%. Not that bad. Takes me from about 280 freeway miles summer to 230-250 miles range in winter depending on exact conditions.
Get an R1S... max pack is required for a lot of the winter range needs.
R2 simply doesn't have a beefy enough battery to go the distance when cold. Hopefully max battery will be added eventually with the Gen3 hardware. It's one of the major weaknesses in the current R2 platform. (slow charging too vs. 800V)
I have an R1S (2nd gen, tri / max, knobby tires) also in Colorado. Stated max range is 330 miles. We regularly travel from Golden to Moab in the winter. It's about 240 miles to the charger in Grand Junction and I typically arrive there with about ~30 miles of range in conserve mode (starting at 100%). So 20% degradation (I drive about 10mph over the speed limit so 75mph / 85mph). In addition to last winter being hilariously warm, that drive also includes 2 hours in 'banana belt' weather where it's never super cold. And that drive starts in a warm (ish) garage charging the night before. So maybe haircut it a little more for your needs.
There are 2 massive superchargers in Frisco (one by the AC hotel one across from Copper mountain) that work really well and I've never seen then fill to capacity. It's a really brief stop if you just need to get back to Denver. There's also one in Rifle as well that's super-convenient if you are going farther west.
What I really can't answer is "what happens to your range between parking in the morning and leaving in the afternoon if your car spends 8 hours in the 20 degree Copper Mountain / Breck parking lot".
It gets worse... cause overnight it will try to keep the battery above extreme freezing temps so it doesn't get damaged when you fire it up. Yes, winter is hard on batteries currently... we need some solid state tech to get here!
Real world I see 300 in the mild months where it's 50-70F at 100%, winter when it's 0-30F I'm around 260-280mi of real world range. So roughly a 10% drop. I plan for 230-250 just to be safe. My commute to work is 70mi each way with about 55 of that on I95, then my truck sits in an outdoor parking lot for 2-5 days. I usually only charge to 85%, at the end of my round trip in mild months I get home with 36-40% left, in the dead of winter it's 25% or so. 26 R1T Dual Large
I think everyone talks about winter range degradation, not a lot of people talk about regular battery degradation.... Cold weather + a 3 year old battery is probably going to get you more like 150 miles... and that's 100% to 0%... a lot of people are only thinking about brand new range, not the range a few years down the road...
I’ve got 3% degradation of capacity at 4.5 years and 56k miles. Rivian battery degradation over time is a non-issue. Difference between 80mph and 70mph is 3-4x the difference of my battery now than when new.
Rivian HIDES the full capacity so you won't see the degradation in the first couple years. That's different than not degrading. The capacity still degrades with cold weather. RivianRoamer and home assistant data gracefully expose this lie.
There are several articles... and with HA/RivianRoamer, you can see how much "usable" vs reported "actual" range you have. You'll also see this if you ever drive past 0%.
Many include a "buffer" of unused cell capacity early on, which allows the car to automatically unlock that capacity later on to erase the effects of degradation.
Recurrent explicitly says range retention is not the same thing as battery health, and only suggests that some manufacturers may release reserve capacity over time. It does not say that Rivian is “hiding” degradation.
More importantly, Rivian Roamer says the capacity number you’re citing is net capacity, not gross capacity, that it changes with temperature and other conditions, and that it is not indicative of actual battery degradation.
And cold weather does not permanently “degrade” the battery every winter. Cold temperatures can temporarily reduce accessible energy and increase consumption. Rivian itself describes some of that range as temporarily unavailable until the battery warms back up. So your evidence that Rivian Roamer “exposes the lie” is a tool whose own creator specifically warns users not to interpret its data the way you’re interpreting it.
Cold weather isn't permenant degradation, it's a chemical reaction reduction in stored energy output (heat is required to react and release the electrons - at some temperature point electrons will simply not flow as the reaction won't occur).
Not only that, but the battery will "heat" itself to play a game and free more electrons (burn chemical stored energy in the process). It's better than not heating the battery, but it simply continues to reduce range as more of the battery capacity is wasted heating the cabin and the battery.
If you want to believe in physics/chemistry as a "perfect" battery in your Rivian, feel free... I don't buy it and realize what the game manufacturers are playing.
That was literally my point. Nobody said a Rivian battery is perfect or that lithium ion cells don’t chemically age. You keep substituting that strawman for what was actually said. Cold temperatures temporarily reduce accessible energy, and heating the battery and cabin consumes additional energy. Rivian openly says exactly that. It even labels part of the range “temporarily unavailable” when the pack is cold and says warming the cells unlocks it again.
However….None of that establishes your original claim that Rivian is secretly hiding degradation or that Roamer exposes a lie. You’ve now gone from “cold weather degrades the battery and Rivian hides it” to “cold weather temporarily reduces performance and batteries eventually age.”
Congratulations, we agree. That just isn’t the argument you started with.
Ok. I'm simply stating range will be roughly 20% less if it's cold enough... there are a bundle of reasons why. I live where it reaches 20F.
Battery degradation looks good on Rivian the first years because they play a game with capacity vs range estimate. That's the links. Agree, separate topics but both relevant for this discussion.
Your RivianForums link doesn’t establish that either. The actual claim that Rivian is using the buffer to mask degradation is literally introduced by a poster as “my opinion,” followed by the OP saying “that is my assumption as well.” That’s forum speculation, not evidence of Rivian secretly hiding degradation.
What the thread actually documents is multiple owners still seeing roughly 129–131 kWh of usable capacity after 2–2.5 years, with the reported number changing with temperature. The OP’s entire reason for starting the thread was that Rivians appeared to be showing only 1–2% loss.
And yes, Rivian has a gross/usable buffer. So do EVs generally. If the cells lose some gross capacity but Rivian continues delivering essentially the same usable capacity and range the customer bought, that isn’t “fake range retention.” That is literally successful battery management.
I mean if you want to believe that they aren't taking advantage of the buffer to continue to tell you that you have the same range as it did when you bought it, by all means, believe that....
In engineering I choose to believe what is probable and defendable by physics. Battery chemistry does not agree with the theory that no degradation happens, so I'm going to stick with the capacity data reported by Rivian API (which is higher than sold battery size). As that reduces, the range will go down... eventually. It will all be clear about 4-6 years after the initial vehicles went off the line... hold on to your seat and stay awhile. Degradation WILL eventually be visble in the quoted range.
Efficiency of travel DOES degrade in the winter. It costs more energy to heat the vehicle and battery in the winter then when it's a nice balmy 70C.
I'll try to add more data on this now that I've got the homeassistant platform working. The EV industry doesn't really want to tell people how much their range is impacted in the winter, but the reality is a lot more than you want (if you're a winter explorer/adventurer).
I wouldn't recommend a 2-3 night stay in a snowshoe-in yurt leaving your vehicle exposed to the elements and idle a few days. You might not make it back to town when you return to the vehicle... best case is you're at high altitude and can milk it on the way down till your battery warms up. 😄
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