Rivian Will Offer the Industries Largest EV Battery Pack
I don’t know what to make of this large battery pack because while there’s a part of me that thinks that Rivian can pull it off, there’s another part that has seen what happens when a start-up automaker calls its shot with its ambitious plans. We’ve already seen one too many stories of start-up brands make bombastic claims, only to fizzle out in the end. Faraday Future is one of the most recent cautionary tales of this, but it’s not just them, either. Countless of start-up automakers have walked down this road before, and while there are some success stories, by and large, a lot of these same start-ups are no longer around to tell their stories.
But, there’s something different about Rivian. Peel away all the skepticism and doubts about its future, and you’ll see a company that appears to be well-run, properly funded, and ambitious within reason. Automotive News painted a glowing picture of the company that makes you think that its plans are within reach if executed properly. Money, for example, looks like it’s flowing smoothly, thanks in large part to a $500 million investment from Ford and similar cash flows coming from other tech companies, including the biggest of them all, Amazon. If you’re a start-up automaker that’s looking to make a name for yourself in an industry of long-standing giants, you’re going to want to have companies like Ford and Amazon on your side.
Executive leadership is also on stable ground as the company employs industry veterans with years of experience working for automakers like Ford, Jeep, General Motors, Lotus, and even McLaren. Most importantly, Rivian’s business approach of not overextending itself when it doesn’t need to is prudent and smart. At the very least, it’s the complete opposite of Faraday Future’s leadership, which made all sorts of promises without having the right infrastructure — and money — in place to see those promises through.
Still, as bullish as I am of Rivian, a 180-kWh battery pack is a huge promise, literally and figuratively. Consider this: Tesla’s 85 kWh battery pack contains 7,104 lithium-ion battery cells and weighs 1,200 pounds. Now, there are ways for Rivian’s engineers to address the weight of the battery pack, but we’re still talking about a battery pack that contains 7,776 cells, all of which are linked together. Suppose that Rivian can keep the weight of the battery pack to somewhere in the vicinity of 1,500 to 1,800 pounds, that’s almost a ton on the battery pack alone. The automaker’s engineers would have to find a way to make weight-saving compromises somewhere else. It’d be easier to do in a sedan, but the R1T is a pickup, and the R1S is an SUV. There’s only so much you can do to keep weight manageable without making the actual vehicle look cartoonish.
It would take an impressive amount of engineering know-how to keep the vehicle’s weight low, knowing that almost a third of the weight comes from the all-electric powertrain.
Weight issues aside, Rivian also has to ensure that the battery pack runs as intended without something going wrong. Remember, it took General Motors three years to test the batteries — there were only 288 of them — and battery pack’s thermal management system for the Chevrolet Volt before the electric car went on sale. Granted, knowledge of battery packs have grown exponentially since the start of the decade, but have they grown to the point that Rivian can develop, test, and stake its reputation on a 180-kWh battery pack — the biggest of its kind in the auto industry — in the timeframe — 17 months — it has set before production of the R1T commences.
Perhaps Rivian has something up its sleeve to address these concerns. It’s not just about the sheer size of the battery pack; Rivian’s claim that the R1T could also come with a 410-mile single charge range opens up a lot of questions on how the company plans to achieve that high mark.
The patent specifically detailed an auxiliary battery that can be added to the truck’s bed after it’s manufactured. According to Rivian, multiple connections, including integrated cooling circuits, will be placed in the front of the R1T’s truck bed. The auxiliary battery pack could then be connected to increase the energy capacity of the truck, at least on a temporary basis. Is this auxiliary battery included in Rivian’s promised 410-mile range? At the very least, there should be a connection — no pun intended — between the two.
While I’d love to see Rivian carry out all of its goals and promises, it’s still too early to dump all of our eggs on this basket. It all sounds great on paper, and to Rivian’s credit, it has shown that it’s taking all of this seriously. But there remains a lot of unrealized ambition behind the company’s plans for its R1T and RS1 SUVs so it’s only natural to remain skeptical and adopt a wait-and-see approach before we can buy what the company is selling, or at least plans to sell in the next few years.
Further reading
Read our full review on the 2020 Rivian R1T Pickup.
Source: Auto News