Rivian wants to make EV charging faster, smarter, and easier

Rivian is overhauling the charging expertise for its EV clients, providing them extra details about how their battery-powered automobiles absorb and use vitality.

The automaker is rolling out a software program replace to its automobiles and smartphone app that goals to offer its clients a extra thorough and holistic view of their automobile’s charging capabilities, whereas additionally providing sooner charging speeds to all of its EVs. The adjustments come as Rivian navigates a harder charging atmosphere, with public EV charging nonetheless experiencing notable gaps and federal spending on charging installations drying up.

The brand new replace permits Rivian house owners to see “the place their vitality goes” in actual time, says Wassym Bensaid, chief software program officer on the firm. The up to date Power app will show detailed graphs explaining how vitality is used when the automobile is idle and can present tips about the best way to finest preserve vitality and vary, he says.

“The thought is [to] democratize the entry when it comes to ‘vitality in’ with charging after which ‘vitality out’ with the way you’re spending your vary” Bensaid says.

The Power app will even now embody two tabs: “Charging” for vitality consumption and “Power Monitor” for vitality output. The Charging tab reveals EV house owners how a lot vitality is flowing instantly into their battery pack throughout a cost session, as in comparison with the vitality being utilized by different automobile techniques.

After they’re actively charging, the app supplies an in depth breakdown of the place the vitality goes, together with battery, total system consumption, HVAC utilization, and any related equipment. And within the Power Monitor tab, there’s a brand new chart that reveals clients how local weather, shops, and drive techniques are consuming vitality once they’re driving or parked.

A brand new “Journey Goal” characteristic supplies charging suggestions when utilizing navigation for a visit that features a charging cease. As soon as the charging session has began, the app will calculate and notify the client the second they attain the best cost stage for the remainder of the journey. No extra ready till it will get to 100% (or 80 p.c when you’re involved about battery well being).

Underneath Power Monitor, there’s a brand new interactive graph that reveals projected vary affect over time whereas driving or parked, primarily based on insights from the proprietor’s latest driving historical past. An animated Yeti character (Rivian’s mascot) will use facial expressions to indicate whether or not the proprietor’s effectivity is excessive, low, or regular for present circumstances, and there can be useful ideas for maximizing a automobile’s effectivity.

Along with the app enhancements, Rivian can be making it simpler — and sooner — to cost its automobiles. The corporate is including a “extremely requested” characteristic to precondition the battery on demand. House owners can heat or cool their battery pack when they need, even earlier than navigating to a charger, which might help optimize charging speeds. A transparent banner will point out when the battery is warming or cooling and when preconditioning is full.

Each Rivian’s first-generation and second-generation EVs are getting sooner DC charging because of a software program replace. The Gen 2 Massive Pack will get an additional enhance, charging even sooner at a velocity of as much as 215kW, which might add 15 p.c of vary in simply quarter-hour of charging, the corporate says. Rivian achieved this by optimizing battery temperatures in simulation by way of particular person cell enhancements after which just about testing and refining the options in a simulated atmosphere with real-world circumstances. The corporate’s engineers then validated the brand new optimized temperatures with precise automobiles.

However this replace is just the start of Rivian’s deliberate enhancements to the charging expertise. Bensaid says that within the coming month, the corporate will roll out a brand new “Good Charging” characteristic that enables clients to time their home-charging classes to economize on their vitality invoice, scale back greenhouse gasoline emissions, and scale back their carbon footprint. Subsequent 12 months, Rivian will launch a new bidirectional charging feature that enables folks to make use of their automobiles as cell energy turbines to ship energy to digital units, different EVs, and even their very own residence.

“Utilities and the grid is so fragmented, like I’m personally even not aware of promotional charges in my space,” Bensaid says. “Having an answer the place we make that tremendous simple for patrons — you simply configure issues as soon as after which software program does it for you robotically behind the scenes — I imply, that can be a sport changer.”