New Rivian Snow Mode Review! An OTA Software Update Enhances Slippery Road Safety

foreign [Music] hello and welcome to another out of spec reviews video this is one of our colder ones it's currently minus 20 degrees Celsius on its way down to minus 30 degrees Celsius by the end of tonight so that puts us at What minus four degrees Fahrenheit getting down to minus 20 Fahrenheit plus or minus going to get really freaking cold I've got my rivian out for some testing because rivian actually just sent a software update that includes their new snow mode so I want to go out and test their snow mode I've sort of got this my truck in the ultimate winter configuration and I want to walk you through what I've done and I want to try out some of the snow modes I want to try acceleration in all purpose versus Snow I want to try regen braking in all-purpose high with their new low regen setting for snow I'll talk about why that's really important here in just a second but it's freezing so let's make this a pretty quick intro and get in the truck and do some testing well welcome to a very cold Fort Collins Colorado we have a whole bunch of testing over the next two days where it's just going to be deep deep freezing here and we're actually kicking off our testing with the r1t so I knew winter was coming so the first thing I did was I called up Nokian and I said hey we need some aggressive winter tires so I actually have the Nokian hakapalita SUV studded tires I'll leave a link to this product below it's pretty similar to the EV specific studded Tire doesn't have the foam on the inside for noise but they're actually not loud at all you can barely hear them the studs are relatively quiet and the reason I went for studded tires is well nokians are sponsored I wanted the most aggressive Tire I could get also where we plan to take this is actually ice racing up at Georgetown Lake a few times this winter so I like to have studs because here in the Front Range it's probably not totally necessary but we do get some Icy patches we get a couple days full of ice probably three days from now is going to be a super icy day as all this starts to melt and then freeze and I have to say I've already gotten I think our monies out of them our money out of these things just like an awesome Tire in Crazy uh conditions so can't say enough good things about this this makes the truck pretty much Unstoppable if you live in a cold climate don't skimp out on tires get winter specific tires and we're going to be testing a whole bunch of different ones for you over the coming months um what else because my ears are about to freeze off here rivian sent an update to the truck the truck's gotten so much better since the first day I got it they've made the suspension softer in Comfort mode they claim that they backed off the stiffness a little bit in sport mode I believe as well to make it handle better I always notice the truck was really bouncy in sport mode so I have to try that when the roads clear off we also have they fix some bugs in the system they made tune some of the battery settings so it doesn't regen as hard when it's really freaking cold outside which I think it was a bit too aggressive so they did some things for battery longevity they also made it so that it can regen longer on downhills one thing we've noticed when towing with this truck is we keep hitting regen limits and all of our regen goes away on you know going down I-70 and some of the mountains so that seems to be fixed or at least improved but the big one is snow mode so first of all you can now put your heated seats and heated steering wheel on uh when you precondition the truck from your app a huge welcome addition there's still no way to leave climate running when you leave the truck like in Tesla you can just say leave climate on here what you have to do is actually put it into dog mode in pet comfort and that's the way to leave climate on or in show and tell but then the lights you know the truck's just on um but let's talk snow mode really quick the main problem that we've noticed with rivians in the snow has nothing to do with its handling or acceleration in my opinion it was all about the regen and when we initially tested the review truck if you watch that really long in-depth nerdy driving review I'd actually maybe I made a whole snow video about it it would actually lock the wheels up at about seven miles an hour and skid to a stop and it really needed better tuning so now they have Blended that brake uh friction what am I trying to say that regen friction bike brake blending point to be smoother and not lock up as much and we're going to be doing some testing in normal mode all purpose and high which they've also improved since we tested it and this now so okay I think we're all about to get frostbite out here it's really cold so let's jump in the truck and do some testing a couple things more I just wanted to mention now that we're inside the truck this is the large battery four motor quad motor system here I know rivian's working on their dual motor trucks that will launch soon everything we're talking about here is for the quad motor with the medium-sized battery pack the large one we're going to be touching on the dual motor stuff as soon as we have the option to drive I've also noticed a few rivian owners comment about their efficiency in cold weather just plummeting especially with short trips running the heater pushing snow out of the way take a look at this I'm getting 0.88 miles per kilowatt hour and it's minus four degrees Fahrenheit right now so nothing to be alarmed at if you go on a trip the battery will come up to temperature in your consumption will level off actually the shorter the trips the worse efficiency you'll have because it tries to spike heat into everything but in cold temperatures electric cars use more energy of course to keep the cabin warm and uh with that let's uh go up into the hills here in beautiful Northern Colorado and uh see what this thing is like in some acceleration or I should say undulations and some Corners in snow mode versus the other modes so you joined me in the rivian now and um yeah let's do some testing we have some awesome roads right here totally untouched uh roads that are just being uh plowed here let's go a little bit more heat up on the windshield I would say um and what I sh what I think we should do is we'll start an all-purpose which is this is how I typically Drive the vehicle we're in some fresh powder right here first of all these snow tires are just beasts they're totally insane so I'm gonna cut the lights off in the interior here and uh let's just drive this thing a little bit let me see if I can clear this uh oh it looks like the washer fluid is a little bit Frozen should be heated but it's fairly barely heated so what I want to do is get us up on this constant radius grade Hill and we're in pretty much fresh snow again great snow tires but let's get an idea from an interior view and then we'll have some exterior shots of a fully stopped wide open acceleration in uh all-purpose mode and then we're going to do the same thing in snow moats let's see if we feel any major differences here so stopped Full Throttle so I can feel the back tires are pushing quite a bit amazing traction control and there's 40 miles an hour so we'll do a zero to 40 on each and then huge regen of course in uh in uh you know High region when I come over here to snow mode nothing changes the ride height stays the same I don't hear any mechanical actuators going like what sometimes when I go into sport mode it changes the suspension a little bit it all is staying pretty consistent the visibility is not so great here but that is because our washer jets are just not built for minus four degrees Fahrenheit so let's uh let's juice it here in snow mode right now and see if we notice anything different from a traction control perspective full power three two one very similar maybe a little bit less aggressive and there's 40 miles an hour much less region I'm noticing in low we'll do the regen test on the downhill [Music] so from a wide open throttle perspective I'm not seeing much difference between the two and honestly there's not much more you can do than just keep the tires spinning a little bit faster than you're going it's not like a slip start in the Tesla where it allows a lot more wheel spin in the snow I'm not really getting that Vibe but this is low visibility I mean good thing we know this road there's huge Cliffs off of here so we really don't want to go off um but low visibility and you know pretty gnarly up here at the top you can see the wind's been so crazy that there's no snow cover there we come down in the divot now we're right back into it and so now we're just cruising fresh powder this is awesome um couple things snowmo does here which is really nice first of all uh what's what's a little bit odd let's see if it's a speed thing yeah it was a speed thing but it gives you high standard and low suspension which is the same so the idea of this mode like I mentioned is not really to be used in an off-road setting but on-road so what am I noticing different on-road from all purpose and we'll go back and play around with you uh with both but instantly I'm noticing much different throttle pedal tuning and it just really elongates the throttle tip in the wide open throttle uh seems to give you the same amount of power or at least enough to spin all four which is what we're doing here but from a throttle application standpoint really smooth really Progressive it also seems to in my impression use a little bit more front motor than rear motor interesting there's someone up here in front of us so I would say as I give it more and more throttle there's wide open throttle yeah I mean just incredible traction from the Nokian tires of course it is truly insane how much traction these tires have uh but yeah just feels like it's pulling more than pushing that's great the second thing that that rivian has introduced here which I think makes the biggest difference is actually the regen setting now I never had an issue with the rivian in snow I've had the rivian and snow multiple times on multiple occasions on-road and off-road all on YouTube you can take a look at one of our out-of-spec motoring road trips and arivian early on I took one over the LA Sals and I was in some real deep mud snow slush gnarly conditions and it handled it wonderfully the big biggest problem that I had with this car this truck was with the regenerative braking and what it would actually do is it didn't have really good wheel speed control when it was transitioning from regenerative braking to friction breaking and this Handover period it happened at about seven miles an hour or so would actually lock the wheels and we would end up skidding and so what they've now just introduced as part of this snow mode update is a low break regen situation and it defaults in this mode now if I go to all purpose I believe I can not select low you only get high or standard interesting so in snow mode it unlocks the low regen setting which changes the entire throttle panel tuning like I mentioned and really just gives you a lot less region but not as little as you would think if I lift off here 30 miles an hour take a look we're still slowing down pretty quick now I don't know if this car in front of us is getting stuck but I just stopped and they're going up the hill great so we're going to find the next spot to turn around because what I want to do is use that really steep hill and demonstrate the different regen modes in terms of confidence coming into a corner here I can come into Corner stab the throttle wide open be a complete idiot behind the wheels start grabbing at the wheel making the car do some really stupid things and yeah it's not uh it's not scary at all I mean it's so easy to control a we have you know great tires but B we have really good traction control really really good stability control we're you know you're right up there on some of the best um you know software aids to get you down the road that you could ever imagine here in the rivian so very pleased look this is not no joke here this is some pretty deep deep powdery stuff I'm gonna make a U-turn here we're right up there yeah up here yeah we can do it up here um and it honestly you would have no idea we're in this much snow I mean it's just uh you would have no idea that that's literally a reservoir right there right you definitely don't want to go off uh in that direction at all or really the other direction because the other directions are actually the runway so here we are making a Austin Powers type maneuver operating away nothing to see here so let's send it in snow mode through the corner so steering input consistent input I can feel it changing the drivetrain where the power is going to help reduce understeer and but not increase oversteer there's full power constant input you can see it just is going turning really nice tuning now with four Motors you can actually do some really interesting things so just to give you I guess an extreme example I can go here to off-road and then I can go into the turn off stability into the drift setting here and just to show you you know I was Full Throttle there watch what happens when I go hard throttle here now we start over steering the truck and I of course I'm not going to do anything crazy on public roads um you know of course we want to be respectful to um you know not being on a track or anything like that but it is really neat that I can basically come into a corner like this stab the throttle and look get major major oversteer and of course have still have wonderful control over the vehicle so really love this multiple character that you can get out of this truck especially when you can do skids like that really fun I wouldn't say it's as magical as Tesla's track mode if you will I still think there's quite a bit more to unlock here but I can definitely come in here get some lock on the wheel and kind of full rally mode this thing or if I want to do amazing what a 7 000 pound truck can do if you get some good winter tires on it coming in a little bit of sideways and absolutely having uh you know a blast time just absolutely full rally mode sending this thing now there is actually a rally mode which is one of my favorite modes to drive the truck in as well and this gives it a really kind of Rowdy over steering kind of character you can turn stability half on so it's still working for you in the background but I think the biggest thing this snow mode does is it doesn't increase the fun of the vehicle in the snow it increases the stability and the sureness I mean there's pretty much nothing I can do here I'm Full Throttle right off of a cliff driving like a complete idiot right just and and the truck gives me the confidence to know okay so many Safety Systems coming in that I can be totally ham-fisted drive like an idiot and we're safe uh now of course you know you can't overcome the laws of physics but just you know if you are a new driver in snow if you have your family in the vehicle and you're going for the safest drive if you're in traffic I would use this mode in the snow or the Ice uh really as much as you need I'm definitely going to be planning to because most of the time I'm not trying to drive like an idiot when I drive around YouTube might say different but um you know sometimes I just want to get to my destination safely throw it in snow mode put Regen to low and you're good to go so now we're coming up to the downhill where we're going to try some of the regenerative braking uh functions here so what do we say we start an all-purpose with regen on high which is how I believe I was using it in the off-road setting when I first discovered this problem so we have the the wind blown Hilltop here just coming up cresting and this is where we're gonna do I say 30 mile per hour deceleration something like that so now we're back into deep snow I mean this is legit fresh powder right here and what I'm going to do is 30 miles an hour we're just coming over the crest to the steepest part I'm going to lift off of the throttle completely in three two one and complete lift here we go full lift and High region so I can feel and I can watch the regen gauge slightly moving there coming to a slower stop for transitioning to friction brakes and full wheel lock up we're completely sliding there at the end so the last I don't know four feet five feet something like that and again on ice it would be even more aggressive we have complete wheel lock up and no control over vehicle movement here we are three miles an hour complete lock up and we're just skidding there let's see if we notice the same in snow mode with regen in low because they specifically mentioned they worked on this tuning to reduce wheel lock up um and especially on a slippery surface you might not notice even more um more speed increase if it's really grippy not grippy so here we are 30 miles an hour full lift less regen super controlled at the moment of course I can hit the brake pedal and blend in friction brakes if needed with full abs here we are seven miles an hour coming to a complete stop no wheel lock up at all what do you think Alyssa yeah that was a lot smoother and it just felt more secure Totally Secure there let's go 10 miles an hour full lift off I can actually feel it lock a little bit look full full wheel movement control [Music] [Applause] cool all the way down to zero so very nice job for the downhills in snow or ice if you have a steep driveway 100 recommend uh this setting right here I mean even in situations like this downhill sharp left and then a right hand corner with giant Cliffs on either side of us right I'm off the throttle completely and I'm still maintaining really good steering control here e pretty big steering angles so that's one hell of an improvement and I actually thought that that was a little bit of an oversight from their engineering team and I'm glad they fixed it sad it took him almost a year to fix it but glad that they got that fixed so big props to the ravian team for introducing snow mode here we're going to get some shots on the exterior to give to sort of intermix with the clips that you probably have already seen we're getting 0.7 miles per kilowatt hour so just chugging the juice right here probably a lot just to keeping us warm yeah we got the heater blasting the heater in this thing is so powerful yeah um and here I'll just give you one last example let's go snow mode stability off and see how the handling balances oh very neutral I'm actually having to continue to steer no hint of over steering here it's utilizing the traction of all four wheels and tires coming in progressively adding throttle very very smooth very neutral balance I like how each mode changes the character of the truck I think most people are going to end up driving with stability on but let's actually go up this super Steep Hill if you look over here to the right you'll see this and here I am coming in under full regen with turning on the wheel wow snow mode is the jam all you need on your rivian are a set of Nokian winter tires and um snowboat you go anywhere you want so here we are full stop on ice I mean this is a legit hard surface to start on let's give it a full power great traction control tuning still floored 35 miles an hour still floor picking up pace now and 60 miles an hour still floored 70. just freaking rips it's so cool contraction control really fun to feel all four Motors working sort of to figure out how to get you down the road and what's what I really like about this snow boat and just to kind of leave you with the last impression this is not to increase fun this is to increase your feeling of safety assurance on the road and like I said you can drive it like a complete idiot and you're totally fine so there you go snow mode is now in rivian and um couldn't be happier uh glad it's here just before the Big Snowy season big props to the rivian engineers for constantly improving this truck this truck has gotten so much better than the day I bought it uh honestly it's needed to it's needed some of these updates but now that you can do so many things like turning on your heated seats from your phone just wonderful little updates here and there and um there you have it thanks for watching another out of spec reviews video keep an eye for more cold weather reviews coming your way soon and we'll see you on another reviews video soon guys just one last thing before we totally end I just found kind of a weird bug with the snow mode and I want to try it in uh all purpose so I'm just going to come full ABS braking to eat 2K so come full stop floor it and it's going to spin up but then we're going to hit this like Plateau so like right now there's more the truck can do it's just limiting power and limiting power I'm floored it's cutting everything back and then we get the next wall up of power so the one thing I'm picturing is like merging onto the highway giving it more and more throttle and it was definitely holding us way back on acceleration I just did it three times in a row before it Unleashed full power so it almost feels like um they just need to like uh get be a little bit less aggressive on traction control uh and do it maybe the functions in motor like Tesla does because it's constantly checking it just feels like it hits this very weird wall and you have to like keep your foot down to blow through it now my foot was welded to the floor there so what I want to try is going into all-purpose let's put stability on full and we'll try it in this mode as soon as the light goes green let's see if it does the same thing and let me just tell you while we're at the red light a little bit of what I'm talking about with the traction control it feels like a lot of the traction control is being done off in a different module than the motors themselves there's feels like there's a slight delay unlike Tesla I believe Lucid ticon eqs BMW that do the traction control in motor so let's try it now 25 miles an hour for it on getting that same thing 50 miles on a 54th floor and then boom full power so it does it in all purpose and snow mode regardless of mode it happens differently but if you keep your foot in it long enough it's just like whoa let me get this whole situation under control figure out what's going on get you back normally and then I'll put more power I don't I don't think it's an ESC a yaw stability command that that's kicking in because we didn't really have that much movement I mean the truck was moving around a little bit but yeah I really think they need to just open up the power more frequently let the wheel spin let's you know get be a little bit more aggressive on the traction control and then pull it back quicker if it's starting to spin up from there so it's really hard to tune for these things but let me just come down again we'll do one last just to see if I'm really losing my mind Floyd Floyd traction controls flashing giving more and more power did not do it there so that felt really good but we have replicated it five times so that's one bug that I found in this whole thing really actually good ABS tuning there I was able to keep it pretty much on threshold braking just out of abs for that that whole time and it felt felt pretty aggressive I was getting some wheel lock up that was nice so there's the end of the video

Channel: Out of Spec Reviews

Views: 52,893

Keywords: Car, Review, Acceleration, Braking, POV, Handling, Test, VS, Comparison, Interior, Exterior, Supercar, Hypercar, Sedan, SUV, CUV, TFL, Redline Reviews, Motor1, sports car

Id: b9pKD2rr2NQ

Length: 25min 9sec (1509 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 23 2022