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Rivian’s Journey Community is a public DC quick charging community with places strategically positioned to allow Rivian house owners to go on extra adventures in additional locations.
The Rivian Journey Community
They’re standing up new charging stations close to outside meccas like Sedona, Arizona, Bozeman, Montana, Flagstaff, Arizona, and an thrilling new Charging Outpost mannequin in Joshua Tree Nationwide Park. “We’re building out our charging network to support adventure-oriented locations,” Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said (YouTube).
Sustainability can also be a key pillar of Rivian’s enterprise, and the Rivian Journey Community isn’t any exception. “Every kilowatt-hour our chargers deliver is matched with renewable resources like solar and wind, on an annual basis,” Rivian said. It’s nice to see Rivian setting a excessive bar for itself and holding itself to that top commonplace at the same time as it really works to scale and open its public quick charging community.
Rivian has been constructing out its charging community for various years now, however has stepped up the tempo of installations within the final two years. Nearly all of the Rivian Journey Community is devoted to Rivian house owners solely and won’t enable every other EV drivers to cost there, whether or not they be Teslas utilizing an adapter or a Hummer EV with a local CCS port.
Over the past 12 months, Rivian has began introducing a handful of Rivian Journey Community places the place all EVs are welcome and are in a position to cost. Rivian’s Joshua Tree Outpost (view on PlugShare) as they name it, was the primary of those places and options 12 x 300 kW CCS1 chargers in addition to a lounge the place drivers can relaxation their ft, seize a snack, and use the restroom whereas they cost.
I used to be excited to check out the Rivian Journey Community after I took a Rivian R1S loaner I used to be reviewing on a highway journey. The navigation within the Rivian has a built-in score system that provides stations a “Charging Score” primarily based on knowledge pulled from previous charging session experiences from precise Rivian drivers. Components embrace issues like common high charging velocity, fee success, and general charging session success.
The car then makes use of these scores as a key issue when mapping out the route and chargers on your journey. It’s an ideal try and combine real-world charging reliability into the navigation in a significant method. In our testing, the navigation did an ideal job of choosing chargers for our journey. Although, congestion within the higher Los Angeles space brought about some surprising delays.
Utilizing The Rivian Journey Community
I didn’t know what to anticipate after I pulled as much as the primary station. Would I want a bank card? Did I have to configure one thing within the Rivian app? Or was there one other quirk that I wasn’t conscious of? Rivian makes use of the Plug&Cost protocol, so so long as the fee technique is ready up within the automotive, the expertise is seamless.
There are such a lot of different charging stations run by the handfuls or a whole bunch of charging community operators sprinkled round the USA. Every appears to require a unique app, some are faucet to pay, whereas others appear to require a particular dance to unlock the magic juice inside.
I pulled as much as the primary Rivian Journey Community quick charger and grabbed the CCS adapter. Good thus far. I opened the charging port on on the R1S and plugged it in. A lot to my delight, it merely began charging the Rivian, making good on the convenience promised with Plug&Cost.
It was an exquisite expertise and very like the one Tesla drivers have come to get pleasure from at Tesla Supercharger Community websites all over the world. Actually, the Rivian was even in a position to merely Plug&Cost at Tesla’s NACS-compatible chargers, just like the one we charged the Rivian R1S on in Williams, Arizona.
The 2 chargers I used on the best way out to Flagstaff, Arizona, had been rated at 300 kW and I used to be pumped to see what they may push out. On the second station, I arrived with round an 8% state of cost and was a little bit dissatisfied that it solely ramped as much as 195 kilowatts.
I used to be the one car charging at that location’s eight stalls, and with the state of cost of the R1S on the low aspect, I used to be anticipating a bit extra velocity. That is according to what different customers skilled, according to Rivian Roamerwhich exhibits the everyday peak charging velocity is 192 kW.
When it comes to constructing out and optimizing their charging community, it’s early days for Rivian. Extra importantly, they’ve already began delivering on a very powerful items of what it takes to function a dependable charging community.
They’re putting in smooth, compact chargers with cables which have good attain and theoretically function at speeds aggressive with the opposite large gamers. Most significantly, Rivian is placing a excessive precedence on uptime and excessive reliability throughout its charging community. We don’t have any particular uptime or reliability numbers from Rivian, however quite a few figures peg it at over 95%.
Open to All
Rivian launched its charging community solely for Rivian house owners and has slowly been opening up stations separately to non-Rivian drivers. As of this writing, 42% (47 out of 112) of Rivian’s Journey Community places are open to all NACS-compatible EVs with the suitable adapter, according to Rivian Roamer.
Rivian has made constant progress to open up its community to non-Rivian NACS-compatible EVs. This straight helps EV adoption extra broadly in addition to for Rivian, as these different EVs improve utilization of current websites, producing extra income from current property.
Future Plans
Wanting additional into the longer term, Rivian plans to proceed to increase its Journey Community. “We’re expanding our Rivian Adventure Network, with more than 600 sites expected in the next few years,” Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe mentioned in a recent interview with CNBC.
That is excellent news for all EV drivers, as excessive reliability and easy-to-use chargers profit everybody. All of the chargers Rivian has put in thus far make the most of the CCS1 charging commonplace. Sooner or later, it will change, as Rivian has dedicated to putting in native NACS charging ports on future automobiles, together with the extremely anticipated R2 and R3.
Head over to Rivian’s website for extra details about its Adventure Network. For a ton of nice element on charging, NACS-compatible websites, and charging scores, take a look at Rivian Roamer.
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