Cold Battery Charging Experience: Helpful Tip From a Rivian Owner

Vincent · 2025-01-10T19:33:15+00:00

A friend needed to support his son who would be running a 'very cold' marathon on Sunday while rucking a 30 pound pack. The outside temps will be around 15F-20F the whole time. The location of the race is nowhere close to any L2 chargers, but he's not worried about driving distance to or from the race - it is 50 miles away from his house. He says he will be sitting in his ruck with his laptop and watching his live track+Garmin inReach data for the duration of the race (about 4 hours). He thought about taking his Honda EB2800i gasoline powered generator, if he can use the level 1 EVSE attached to the generator and keep the truck running with full heat + power - without really consuming much of the truck's main battery? He feels it's super dorky to have a gas generator running while attached to a Rivian in the woods, just so he can stay warm, but don't know if it would work ok this way and 'preserve' the main battery so he doesn't need to worry about driving range when we wants to head home. He talked to me about it and I told him the simple answer is NO. I tested this theory the other night when I was plugged into a 5.9kW charger. To maintain the interior amenities (interior and exterior lights, radio, heater, seat heaters), it took almost all of the charge. I charged for 15 minutes, it delivered 1.6kW, and the truck consumed 1.4kW, delivering only 0.2kW to the truck battery. Told him he would be using a laptop at another 200ish watts. The little trickle charger charges at 1.4kW on a good day, 1.2kW is normal for me. You can slow the bleed, but you cant stop it. My advise to him was for him to charge it up to 100% at home, and roll the dice is what I would do.

Rivian Mom

Active Wheeler

Jan 5, 2025

A group member has been using her Lectron DC adapter for over a year and found it working well. About 3 months ago, Kelly received her Rivian supplied NACs adapter but hadn't used it yet until last Saturday. She found the Lectron easier to use. It was about 28°F and with a cold battery, she drove 15 miles to the nearest Tesla SC to try out the Rivian NACs adapter. Could only get the Riv to draw 28kw after about 19 minutes. Which was a bit of a surprise.

Fortunately, there was the new RAN about 100' away, so she plugged in and again after 10 minutes was only drawing 29kw. She didn't say anything about what she thought might be the cause but I was wondering if the latest update was causing this. She later called Rivian support, and within 5 minutes, she got help from Owen. He asked her to stop charging and unplug and then plug in again. Almost immediately, she was drawing over 100kw (starting at 70% SOC). Owen asked her if she pre-conditioned the battery and she said no. That was the problem, he said.

I intellectually knew that charging would be slow with a cold battery but didn't realize how slow after about 30 minutes of DC charging. When Kelly went back to theTesla SC, she tried the adapter again and was drawing over 100kw. From her experience, I've been able to learn two things today:

1. It takes about 30 minutes of DC charging on a cold battery to get up to normal charging speeds.

2. Seems like Lectron adapter is easier to use.

So for anyone experiencing such an issues, hope this tip helps you out. Happy Rivian Adventures!

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