The Rivian R1T pickup truck should be capable of fast charging at up to a 210 kW peak, according to EPA documents, but what is the real result in the case of early units?
TFLEV recently had an opportunity to test out the R1T's fast charging capabilities at a 350 kW Electrify America station.
It required two tries to start charging. The session from 20% to 80% battery state-of-charge (SOC) took about 41 minutes. No special pre-conditioning was applied (as advised by Rivian).
According to the video, charging started at under 140 kW, and gradually was increasing towards a peak of about 151 kW at 50% SOC. It was mostly flat.
Then, charging power started to decrease gradually with a few bigger steps - one at around 60% SOC and the second one at 80% (move from roughly 70 to roughly 50 kW).
We listed some of the key points below, while the video includes data points (recorded every 2 minutes) and a simple curve.
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Start
20% SOC (1 minute): 139 kW; 77 minutes expected to reach 80% SOC
21% SOC (2 minute): 141 kW -
Peak
46% SOC: 150 kW
50% SOC (20 minutes): 151 kW -
Slowdown
54% SOC: 145 kW
57% SOC: 136 kW
61% SOC: 117 kW
65% SOC: 117 kW
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End
78% SOC (40 minutes): 71 kW
80% SOC (41 minutes): 51 kW
Electrify America: 86 kWh delivered for $26.66 at $0.31/kWh
(Rivian R1T: about 73 kWh "added" at 79% SOC vs. over 84 kWh reported by EA at that point)
Overall, the charging curve is not bad, although we guess that at launch, the charging capabilities of the Rivian vehicles are tuned down (as has happened in the past with many other newly launched EVs). We would not surprised if the company unlocks more power in the future.
Also, the battery capacity of roughly 135 kWh indicates that there is room for improvement - 151 kW peak is just over 1.1C rate, while 210 kW peak would be 1.5C rate (still nothing special).
Interesting is a comparison of the amount of energy dispensed by the Electrify America charger - 84 kWh at 79% SOC to about 73 kWh added reported by the car's computer. That's an 11 kWh difference. Are those losses?
If the 73 kWh is net energy replenished, it would indicate that the car's battery is about 125 kWh usable, out of 135 kWh total. We don't know for sure, but it's something worth checking out.
We don't have our own data for a full analysis yet, so we will hold off from drawing any conclusions for now.
Gallery: Rivian R1T
Rivian R1T specs:
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Range:
EPA: 314 miles (505 km)
400+ miles (644+ km) version (2023)
250+ mile (402+ km) affordable version to follow - battery capacity of about 135 kWh
9 modules, 2170-type cylindrical cells (7,776), supplied by Samsung SDI
voltage: 216-459 V; capacity: 360 Ah - 0-60 mph (96.5 km/h) in 3.0 seconds
- quad motor, all-wheel drive
four asynchronous motors (one per wheel for full torque vectoring) - system output of up to about 562 kW
(four motors - 162-163 kW each for a raw total of 650 kW) - on-board charger: 11.5 kW (AC Level 2); up to 25 miles of range per hour of charge
- DC fast charging: up to 140 miles of range in 20 minutes (up to 210 kW)
- wading depth: 3+ ft (more than 0.91 m)
- curb weight: 6,949 lbs (3,152 kg)
- towing capacity: up to 11,000 lbs (4,990 kg)
