Here is a video of a trail repair of a broken tie rod and recovery of a Rivian on the Fins and Things trail:
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Rivian: Trail repair and recovery video
- Thread starter MP3Mike
- Start date
With a motor at each wheel, it's completely up to the software programming how much torque each wheel gets, there won't be any slipping diff issues.
From review videos the R1T has quite a few drive modes including multiple off-road modes. It also gets OTA updates. That video didn't share what mode they were in or which software release they were on, so we don't know if the repeated spinning of a back wheel or two (not sure about the far side wheel) was caused by poor choice of mode for the slippery-rock-climbing situation, or poor software programming in a mode that's supposedly meant for that situation.
Another possibility is the motors were giving equal/similar torque but the rear wheel(s) actually had less traction. Intuitively I'd expect the rear to have more traction there from having more weight on it (facing uphill), but it's possible that spot where the rear wheel was slipping was just super slippery, such that equal torque for all wheels resulted in slip at the rear without being enough torque yet to pull the vehicle up from the front.
From review videos the R1T has quite a few drive modes including multiple off-road modes. It also gets OTA updates. That video didn't share what mode they were in or which software release they were on, so we don't know if the repeated spinning of a back wheel or two (not sure about the far side wheel) was caused by poor choice of mode for the slippery-rock-climbing situation, or poor software programming in a mode that's supposedly meant for that situation.
Another possibility is the motors were giving equal/similar torque but the rear wheel(s) actually had less traction. Intuitively I'd expect the rear to have more traction there from having more weight on it (facing uphill), but it's possible that spot where the rear wheel was slipping was just super slippery, such that equal torque for all wheels resulted in slip at the rear without being enough torque yet to pull the vehicle up from the front.
It is also possible that because a winch was hooked to it and pulling, that it was pulling the front down allowing more traction in the front and actually lifting weight off of the rear wheels. (And Rivian may not account for that situation well in their rock crawl driving mode.)
I'm pretty sure @ThomasD was referring to later in the video, when the R1T was climbing up a steep rock on its own and slipped the back wheel(s) some before it actually moved further upwards.
That's the part I was writing about.
I'm wondering if the driver was all that familiar with driving the Rivian in those situations.
In a normal off-road vehicle you don't jam the throttle unless you're like Jeremy Clarkson. You'll likely break things.
In a Rivian you do because it will automatically use the motor(s) with traction.
It's both a very capable off-roader, but also a really bad one. It's a bad one because its so expensive, and massively heavy (like 7000 pounds heavy). Plus it's hard enough to get one let alone parts.
Brando
Active Member
They're not even shipping most options and instead they're batching them.
The R1T and R1S share so many components that I don't think its preventing high volumes. They also waited a bit to ship the R1S to give the R1T more time to ramp up.
The R1T and R1S are also high margin vehicles. The biggest issue is they were mispriced to begin with, and should have always been much higher than the reservation cost.
The Cargo van is different, but the commercial space is vital.
As an owner I think the over stresses service centers is the biggest immediate problem they need to solve.
Always wondered if as Ford is a Major share holder of Rivian and likely crippling many of their thousands of Ford service centers shifting to EV if they wouldn’t be wise to offset both by utilizing Ford service centers for Rivian. Had to be some kind of play for them to dig so deep into Rivian.
