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Rivian Smart Charging Arrives with Next OTA Update
Back in May, I shared that Rivian was preparing to roll out a new smart charging program with WeaveGrid. The goal was simple: make home charging cheaper and cleaner by automatically syncing your charging schedule with utility rates and grid demand. Early simulations suggested Rivian owners could save about 30% on home charging costs and cut emissions by 28%.
Today, Wassym from Rivian confirmed that Smart Charging is officially here and rolling out with the next OTA update. He also pointed out that more than 80% of EV charging happens at home, yet over 70% of those sessions don’t take advantage of the lowest utility rates. Rivian’s new feature directly solves that.
Your mobile app will do the heavy lifting. It will detect your local utility, analyze available plans, and create an optimized schedule so your charging happens at the best times automatically. You just configure it once in the app, and from there it works behind the scenes with Rivian’s vehicle software. And because this is all done via the mobile app, it does not matter what type of level 2 charging station you have at home as they’ll all work.
This is a huge win for owners who want to save money and reduce their environmental impact without having to think about it. Another step forward in Rivian’s mission to make EV ownership easier and smarter.
Will this only work if you have the Rivian specific L2 charger?
It’ll work with any L2 charger since the work is done by the mobile app.
I don think you need a Rivian charger since the article says “… it does not matter what type of level 2 charging station you have at home as they’ll all work.”
Do we know if this will expand the manual capabilities of charge scheduling at all? I’ve been really wanting the ability to set a “finish charging by” time, so my car can be at 100% right when I need to leave for a long trip or to warm up the battery before work in the winter.
I bought a ChargePoint charge through an Southern California Edison / Weavegrid program. Weavegrid and ChargePoint do an excellent job of allowing you to schedule your start and end or finish by time. On the plan I’m on low rates are 2100 to 1600 the next day. Weavegrid alerts you with a 5 minute warning about starting, but you can text charge now. The default finish by time is 0800, but you can change to what you want. I don’t know if there will be a clash of dueling programs, tho….
I just set my start time to midnight. That won’t do anything for me.
Same here. I’m already scheduling according to my utility’s (PG&E) off peak rates. What would this give me beyond what I’m already doing?
Not everyone has PGE. My provide has Summer rates where off-peak is 12am-6am, which is June 1 – Sept 30. Rest of the year off-peak is 8pm-5pm. Though they do have EV charging rate from 12-6 which is 1.5¢ cheaper than standard rate. So based on how it’s pulling down rate plans, you would have the option to choose the plan that works best for you. That and you don’t have to worry about keeping up with the plan changes and when they start.
What if I have Solar Panels? This doesn’t sound like it will help me that much because I want to charge mostly during the day.
What happened to messaging??
This will be good for folks who just haven’t been setting it up, but I assumed that most people know when the cheap hours are for electricity and set that up already. That would leave people who just want to make sure their vehicle is always ready to go, or people who have time shifted to batteries and the like so they can charge with off peak rates during on peak hours.
Really curious to see the data for how this helps.
When will we get vehicle to home
I signed up for Weavegrid when my utility (Orange and Rockland) offered it, strictly for the incentive. It has potential in certain circumstances, but mine is certainly not one of them and after multiple issues this summer I was about to unenroll, although at this point I will wait for the latest update to see if that solves my biggest gripe.
We have two EVs – the Rivian and a Honda Prologue, neither of which currently has support for Weavegrid. However, my charger, Emporia, does. Rates are lower from midnight to 8AM (via the SmartCharge program), so my Rivian is set to only charge during those hours. The Honda doesn’t have the same type of scheduling available, rather you set a time to be ready and it chooses when to charge. That alone caused a lot of problems when I first signed up for Weavegrid, as the systems seemed to often be in conflict. I disabled the charge by on the Honda and got some better results. The bigger issue is that with no native support for Weavegrid in the cars, it’s based on the Emporia, and can’t distinguish between which car is plugged in. The charging requirements for my R1S and my daughter’s Prologue are vastly different, but charging times are determined by the program based on previous sessions and therefore inconsistent. The other big problem is that if I want to override the suggested schedule and begin charging immediately, I can do so, but it often will still pause charging at some point during the night leaving me with a lower than expected charge level in the morning when I need a high level before a long journey.
If native Rivian support will allow separate scheduling for the Rivian and the Emporia (and therefore the Honda) I would consider staying aboard, but I’m not optimistic
It’s mostly a waste of time for the developers. Owners already know if/when they have off-peak charging available and can manually (or via scheduling) set their charging times. For those that don’t have off peak rates available (or have solar), it makes no difference. It would benefit way more o owners if they focused on continuing to minimize vampire drain, simple PIN to drive and a legit valet mode.
Yeah I think most of us – certainly those that peruse this site or Rivian Forums – know how to do such things. But I don’t mind the flexibility being provided within the app. As R2 releases and – hopefully – sells like hotcakes, a lot of later adopters that can’t or won’t dive into the guts as much as we would, could find this feature convenient. Still, point taken. I could think of a few things higher on my priority list than this right now.
Agree Vampire drain is consuming major KWH over time. My Chevy Bolt sits over 3 months every winter unplugged and after that period state of change is 100%. I understand a R1T has much more tech, but the current rate of discharge when sleeping is unacceptable.
Worthless update.
But will they allow us to buy the battery upgrades from large to max? 🙂
Any idea when V2H ability will be introduces for my Rivian ? I see that as a big saving option for me.
Very pleased that Rivian partnered with Weave Grid. Glad to know that I will have the option to automatically charge when rates are low but also to pick options for when it is best for the grid and when there is high availability of renewables.
Another weak update.
Your electric company tells you when peak times and off peak times are. So then you set your schedule.
What happened to all the other promises?
This text app they working better be amazing. lol
Text app
Pandora
Can we get a better reverse sensors. The fact these lines don’t shrink as you get close to objects is wild.