So Much for Rivian's Heated Radar

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

Dec 30, 2024

A while back there was a video where a Rivian engineer was talking about safety and repairability changes made to Gen 2. In that video he mentioned a heater grid for the radar to prevent ice/snow buildup. Unfortunately I am having a hard time finding that thread again.

It's been an unusually dry winter thus far, but this morning there was snow for the first time in about a month. I took my R1S out in the snow for the first time this morning on the way to the gym. It did wonderfully for the first 20 minutes or so (highway assist, lane changes, everything great). But then I got the "sensors blocked" message. When I got to my destination there was, indeed a layer of slushy ice covering the entire front of the vehicle. A relatively thin layer, but it was there.

So... What gives?
I'm thinking there are 3 options

1. mine is broken
2. The engineer misspoke and there's no heater over the radar
3. I don't know how to activate it

As a sanity check I RFTMed and there's 0 mention of a radar heater that I can find. If it does exist, is it activated alongside the window and side mirror defroster? Has anyone else played with this? Can't recall if there was a mention of the headlights getting a heater? That was a real safety hazard for me driving with ice building up and not being able to see. Hopefully, Rivian can get this sorted out as it'd be of huge help during this winter season.

For anyone interested, here's a link to the YouTube video