Rivian is rolling out a new software update that will give customers a better understanding of which electric vehicle chargers they should visit and which ones they should avoid.
EV charging reliability remains a serious sore point for many plug-in car owners, leaving companies that sell the cars scrambling to boost their confidence. Rivian’s solution is to use their fleet to collect data on broken chargers and then rank that data down in the company’s software algorithm.
“Our Polestar is charging and EV trip planning should work fine,” said Wassym Bensaid, head of software at Rivian. edge. “You shouldn’t think about this.”
“Our Polaris is charging and EV trip planning should work fine.”
During a recent road trip in the R1S SUV, I had the opportunity to test out Rivian’s new software update. Once you enter your destination, dozens of chargers appear on the vehicle navigation, each displaying a letter grade. An “A” rating indicates that the charger is in good working order, while an “F” rating speaks for itself.
“Surprisingly, there are actually multiple Class F chargers,” Bensaid said. “This was one of the awe-inspiring moments when we looked at the data.”
Bensaid said the new ranking system is based on extensive data collected by Rivian customers. Each vehicle is connected to each other and continuously sends data back to company headquarters, which is then processed to eliminate “noise” that is not important to the decision-making algorithm.
“Every time our vehicle interacts with the charger, we upload a lot of data to the cloud, which gives us a very accurate picture of what the vehicle is currently doing,” he said. “So the data we get is not only relevant to a successful session What about the number of trials you’re doing? What’s your overall peak performance in a session?”
This data is combined with multiple weighting mechanisms to provide Rivian engineers with an accurate reading of the overall health of each charger. The company is looking for data related to successfully completed charging sessions and high-performance charging to recommend chargers to customers.
Every electric vehicle exchanges data protocols with a third-party charger when plugged in, but most EV charging operators don’t voluntarily provide real-time information on reliability and uptime, leaving EV owners to navigate every Roll the dice when charging. In surveys, EV owners often cite charging reliability as the biggest pain point in their ownership experience.
Therefore, EV companies must develop solutions. Some people use crowdsourcing to determine whether a charging station is worth visiting. Rivian’s solution is to gather as much information as possible about the charging of its own vehicles, hoping to present some kind of coherent picture of electric vehicle charging in the United States. Benside said the company had been collecting data on EV charging performance for more than a year before rolling out the latest software update.
He said the company needs a certain number of “statistically relevant” charging sessions to accurately recommend (or not recommend) a charger. As a result, Rivian is limited to data collected from its own vehicles. The company’s customer base isn’t monolithic; it has produced just under 100,000 electric trucks, SUVs, and vans since October 2021. But Bensaid acknowledged that its algorithm can’t paint a complete picture of charging in the U.S. — at least not yet.
Rivian is also developing a parallel customer-based feedback system that it plans to eventually roll out in another software update. That way, Rivian owners can also submit their own scores, which can be included alongside the company’s algorithmic scoring process.
Rivian is also developing a parallel customer-based feedback system
Electric vehicle charging in the United States is getting better, but it’s still a long way from being an adequate system. Today’s charging networks are plagued by software bugs, frayed cables, payment system confusion and are often prone to extreme cold or heat.
But charging keeps getting better! Like every other company making electric cars, Rivian recently began offering its customers access to Tesla’s incredibly superior Supercharging network. Before Rivian’s own vehicles can start assembling built-in Tesla ports, adapters will be needed. But when that happens, you can imagine a world where charging doesn’t feel so Sisyphean. Rivian said it also plans to install hundreds of its own DC fast chargers — 600 locations — across the country in the coming years.
But charging remains a risky prospect. Given the current situation, Rivian is doing all it can to help its customers navigate treacherous waters. “Charging should be fine,” Ben repeated. “The more satisfied customers we get, the more we can remove charging anxiety as a barrier to adoption.”