I had the opportunity to use multiple gen4 EA chargers over a couple R1T road trips the past few weeks, during which I noticed an odd behavior. If the R1T pulled 500amps for ~10 minutes, the charge would derate to ~40kW. The first time this happened I didn't give it much thought, but it happened at 4 more locations. I was able to grab the plug next to me at each location and it would resume 500amp charging. Funnily enough, there was another R1T at the first location having the same issue, but I hadn't put 2 + 2 together yet. It was the consistent 10.5-11 minutes into the charging session that clued me into the idea that this isn't a thermal limit, but a time limit.
In between my trips I noticed a couple vague mentions of a similar issue by other Rivian drivers and a quick mention in an Out of Spec video. Digging more, there's more and more reports of this issue.
It sounds like there's a software bug on the chargers that needs to be addressed. We haven't seen a lot of this for a few reasons: Rivian upped the charging curve to 500a in Apr 2024, the session needs to run at 500a for 10 minutes to trigger (any drop in charging power requested let's the session continue without issue), this big is seemingly limited to gen4 chargers (I experienced it on both Signet and BTC units).
Temperatures varied from 70-100f and full sun to cloudy.
Overall, this was mostly just annoying. Plugging into the stall next to me (luckily available) allowed normal charging to resume. I'm going to see if I can recreate the issue and try restarting the session on the same cable in the next day or two.
In between my trips I noticed a couple vague mentions of a similar issue by other Rivian drivers and a quick mention in an Out of Spec video. Digging more, there's more and more reports of this issue.
It sounds like there's a software bug on the chargers that needs to be addressed. We haven't seen a lot of this for a few reasons: Rivian upped the charging curve to 500a in Apr 2024, the session needs to run at 500a for 10 minutes to trigger (any drop in charging power requested let's the session continue without issue), this big is seemingly limited to gen4 chargers (I experienced it on both Signet and BTC units).
Temperatures varied from 70-100f and full sun to cloudy.
Overall, this was mostly just annoying. Plugging into the stall next to me (luckily available) allowed normal charging to resume. I'm going to see if I can recreate the issue and try restarting the session on the same cable in the next day or two.