Why Rivian Tires Sometimes Last as Little as 6k Miles | Hacker News Reader

Why Rivian Tires Sometimes Last as Little as 6k Miles

jalopnik.com

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> a truck that weighs more than 7,000 lbs

That's why.

Spoiler alert next time, please..

More like /r/savedyouaclick

Except

> But there’s more going on here than the fact that the R1T is heavy.

> As it turns out, this excessive front tire wear can likely be tied back to Rivian’s “Conserve” drive mode.

But the conclusion of the article is pretty unambiguous nonetheless:

> Rotating tires regularly can also help. But ultimately, there’s no getting around the fact that you’re driving something that weighs as much as three Miatas.

I know you didn’t write this but what an idiotic take. How many Miatas exist? It’s a very uncommon car. At best it carries two people. Who cares about the weight difference between a Camry and a Diablo? Micro weight isn’t the problem macro environmental externalities are.

I don't even know what a Miatas is, but in fairness this monster weights as much as three Dacia Sandero which is the most common car in Europe and is a five-seater your can go on vacations with, so very much not a micro car.

In fact I'm in the street in France right now, in vacation, and now that I checked at least half of the cars of the other tourists around me are around three times lighter than the “car” we're talking about…

In Europe it's called an MX5.

Over a million Miatas have been sold throughout its lifetime. It's definitely the most popular two-seat sports car and probably the most popular convertible in history.

It’s still a niche vehicle. A million units over 34 years isn’t much by automotive standards.

A million over 34 years means 30k a year, which is approximately the number Rivian RT1 being sold right now[1], so the comparison is in fact very apt.

[1]:16,452 units have been sold over the first two quarters of this year https://www.tesla-mag.com/tesla-model-y-leads-us-ev-market-i...

If that was the only see you'd see a lot of work trucks changing tyres as often as they change oil, which does not happen.

The typical F-150 is about 2000 lbs lighter. After a quick glance, it looks like the standard tires for the Rivian aren't as heavy duty as most truck tires. (I suspect Rivian wants a more comfortable ride vis-a-vis a standard work truck)

Modern Dodge Ram with the Cummins is 7000 lbs. But a one ton truck is also going to have a much higher payload rating. Therefore, it's going to have tires with a higher load rating, not to mention more sidewall that will cushion road imperfections.

Cars are just getting worse and worse. What a fucking nightmare.

Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

Imagine the tonnes of plastic pollution generated yearly by these high levels of tire wear. If they don't pollute the air, they pollute the soil.

…and the rivers!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/21/chemical...

They should probably start progressively tax the weight of an EV in a few years to encourage manufacturers to build lighter vehicles.

Why EVs specifically, and not simply all vehicles? We have an EV that weighs 1200kg, and a normal ICE car that weighs 2200kg - if anything the latter should be paying more tax due to its weight.

That's nuts, that's almost 50% heavier than a 7-seater van!

“Your mama's so fat see needs a 7000 pounds truck to carry her” but for real…

And can tow 11,000 lbs.

And has over 1,231 N⋅m of torque.

I just replaced the second tire on my wife's ID.4 in the 9 months (10k miles) she's had it. The first was from hitting debris on the freeway; the second turning a corner and curb-checking. The last one was a bit odd - it sliced the sidewall and actually cracked the rim, which had to be replaced. I'm guessing the load being carried has a lot to do with why this car seems so much more fragile than previous (I probably replaced 2-3 tires in the previous 10 years combined, mostly RAV4s)

By the time you crack a rim it would be a good idea to check what the state of the other rims and tires is, just in case. That doesn't sound good at all, you should be able to drive up a kerb and down the other side on tires with the right pressure without damage unless you scrape the wheel along a very high kerb.

That really depends on your tire and rim.

Having low profile tires with light rims like those used on performance variants of Teslas and ID.3s/ID.4s/eTrons I would avoid curbs for sure.

You should avoid that kind of thing regardless of the construction of your rims but to have one crack through such an interaction isn't normal. Rims are supposed to abrade or deform in such a situation, not crack and if they do crack that's a sign that the tire wasn't properly pressurized or that there was some kind of material defect. Hence my advice to check out the others because there may be more to this than 'just' an unfortunate interaction between the wheel and the corner kerb stones. Unless it was a particularly violent impact, of course. I've never had a rim crack under any circumstance in many, many kilometers over a lifetime of driving and if it happened on a relatively new design of a car I would immediately take it to the manufacturer, they may have overlooked something.

Honda had a similar thing happen in the 80's when they sold a new model and it turned out the tires didn't quite fit the rims as well as they should have leading to way too many blow outs (because the tires ended up being able to sit still while the rims rotated inside them, which ate up the inner ring of the sidewall).

We took it to the dealership, and they found the rim was cracked when the new tire was leaking air. None of the other tires have been losing air, so I assume the other rims are fine.

However to your bigger point, that the wheels are poorly engineered for their use, tracks. This is the first rim I've ever had crack, and I've even had some nasty accidents. This is however our first set of EVs (I have a Kia EV6), and I really feel like VW made a lot of compromises. (The UI/UX is the worst I've ever experienced in a car)

I've seen a lot of cars after accidents (bad ones) in various junk yards when hunting for parts, including ones where it was hard to figure out what brand the car was. In most of the cases, even with the wheel pushed all the way into the well they still held pressure so that's - in my view - very poor engineering. VW had a perfect storm of its own creation (the dieselgate, asleep at the switch when the energy transition started happening) that caused it to push their e-cars out on an accelerated schedule to avoid even further loss of market share, I expect that to eventually lead to some recalls. But to see it extend to something as basic as the wheels is very far out for their normal level of performance, that should have never ever happened. Would it be ok if I alerted someone in the org to your case?

Sure, I have no problem with that.

Ok, thank you. This could easily save lives so it matters.

Ok, done. I have no idea what if anything they will do with it but it has been passed on as well as enough details that they can contact you or the dealer if it should come to that. You didn't have an email in your profile so I gave them your linkedin link.

Best regards, Jacques

She didn't drive up and over the curb; she hit the side of it. It was the rear passenger wheel, so it's pretty much as you'd expect if you didn't turn wide enough on a right turn. The scratch on the rim was relatively small, less than a couple of inches, so the fact that it actually cracked the rim was surprising.

Yes, indeed. She also got lucky, depending on the speed that that happened at, a blowout in a turn can be really nasty.

It’s interesting that many vehicles are damaged or destroyed by being driven too gently, rather than too aggressively.

Some Porsche cars have this problem where if you don’t drive the car hard enough, engine oil isn’t splashed over an internal rubber seal. Over time and without lubrication, the seal grows brittle and eventually fails, causing catastrophic engine failure.

Similarly, cruising around at too low an RPM applies more force on the piston with each explosion, which also damages the engine over time.

Driving in conserve mode on this truck is a new one for me.

>Some Porsche cars have this problem where if you don’t drive the car hard enough, engine oil isn’t splashed over an internal rubber seal. Over time and without lubrication, the seal grows brittle and eventually fails, causing catastrophic engine failure.

That's called "poor engineering".

Porsche engineering

I think that's a reductive take.

The cars I'm referring to are designed to be driven hard — they're performance vehicles.

It's also bad for just about any car to sit for long periods of time without being run. That's not what it's built for, and unless you design cars professionally and have some authority on the topic, it's lazy to call this poor engineering.

This is a good point, but I wonder how many Porsches are actually used as performance vehicles? How many have ever been taken to a track day?

I feel like many cars in that category, Porches in particular maybe, are status symbols only and other than driving a bit over the speed limit on a long road every now and again, they're not used in this way.

Which then begs the question, should Porsche be designing for the car people envision, or the car people use? Probably the former because that's what sells the cars, but it's a weird state to be in.

Porsche be designing for the car people envision, or the car people use?

Porsche is smart enough to do both. They have their top end performance cars that people aspire to, and their normal "daily driver" cars that people actually buy and use.

That being said, of all 'high end' sports cars the 911 is by far the one I see most often being used as a daily driver. I never see Ferraris driving down a dirt road to a hiking trail, but I do see 911s.

Oh no I'm thinking specifically of these being the same car. Many people buy something like a 911 without ever taking it racing. That car needs to be designed for the racing for people to buy it, but at the cost of it being less suitable for driving to golf courses.

Making two cars is the easy answer and all brands do it to some extent, but it's a solution for a different group of customers.

> Which then begs the question, should Porsche be designing for the car people envision, or the car people use?

Presumably none of the above. They are designing the car that people are willing to pay for.

PS. "begs the question" does not mean the same thing as "raises the question". Anal? Pedantic? I'm not usually, but it is a minor fault of mine that I get bothered when I see people use "beg the question" wrong :-)

Porsche is a German company and German highways have no speed limit, so you can see an old lady going back home from a shopping mall at 130mph. Speeds that would be considered super irresponsible or track-only in the US.

Of the Porches I see on the road, 80% are cayenne SUVs being used to take the kids to school, and the other 20% are stationary in rush hour traffic, ferrying some middle-aged financial analyst to work in London or New York.

I'm pretty sure Porsche knows this. I'd say any car that doesn't account for this fact is poorly engineered.

Ok. But before we stray too far into straw man territory, the cars I'm referring to which are susceptible to intermediate shaft bearing failure are Boxster, Cayman, and 911 (except Turbo, GT2, and GT3) models from 1997 to 2008.

So, not Cayennes.

(Not that Cayennes don't have their own problems, but then again, all cars do).

Also, there may be some confirmation bias at play here. The cars you see on the road are the cars being used to ferry people around on the school run or daily commute. You aren't seeing the cars being taken for a spirited drive.

German cars are famous for being overly engineered, with tiny failure tolerances. Older BMWs for instance are complete shitheaps compared with lower end brands of similar age and use. Their systems are all very interdependent and any small failure, or even degredation of any part leads to a cascade if failure. Too much precision engineering and not enough robust engineering.

It's actually as poor as using a key-value storage as a relational database: both systems were well engineered for their use-cases, but one can use each in a different not optimal way. It's up to the users to use the best tool for what they need: if one plans to drive to work every day in a congested city-center area, one shouldn't get a Porsche. Same for the Rivian of the post: if you plan to use it in a rural area and transport heavy stuff, maybe it's well suited, but if you plan to drive across country or in a city, then it's not the right tool. But the tool by itself seems well made, for its use-case.

Indeed, it was poor engineering. To be fair though, that was on their first and second models of watercooled engine, which was a complete redesign and once identified as a problem it was fixed. There are also aftermarket fixes for this issue, but unfortunately this is not something you just slap on. The engines to watch are 996 and 997 engines before 2007 iirc, the turbo/GT2/GT3 is excepted because it was based on another block (the 'Metzger' engine). So if you buy an older Porsche make sure that that problem is fixed when - inevitably - the engine was rebuilt or you could be looking at a very pricey repair, if that bearing (on something called the IMS) goes it will take the engine with it.

There's optimal operating parameters for all kinds of machinery. All sorts of aircraft are sub-optimal when flown in low altitudes and vice versa for other kinds of aircraft. If you buy a Ferrari to just slow cruise around a European city, then you're just driving a very loud float.

Source: experience.

Car engines are a marvel of engineering, they're designed to operate at practically arbitrary workloads under practically arbitrary conditions in varying states of disrepair and perform reasonably well in all of them.

This is in stark contrast to something like the engines on an airplane, which are designed to operate optimally at cruising speed and altitude and just be "eh, good enough" everywhere else.

Modern diesel engines are often equipped with a particulate filter to catch particles of soot in the exhaust gases. These filters have a self-cleaning regeneration cycle, using the late injection of fuel to pyrolyse the captured soot. This works fine for typical driving patterns with a mix of highway and city use, but if the vehicle is only used for short low-speed journeys, the engine will never get hot enough for long enough to run a regeneration cycle and the filter will clog.

It's a myth, or rather - this only really happend with early DPF implementations that the manufacturer didn't account for this(looking at you Peugeot/Citroen group). In pretty much every vehicle equipped with a DPF nowadays the cleaning cycle can be completed even with the vehicle switched off, so it doesn't matter if you do short or long journeys.

I find this story to be more highlighting / reminding of the phenomenon of clawback, and how do you slow people from consuming more and more.

As soon as you achieve some gain in energy efficiency of anything, people find new ways to use even more energy. Make lights more energy efficient and LED-powered, and they put up more lights. Lower the cost of fuel or electricity, and they use even more. Make a car less polluting and powered by batteries, they make it even heavier and more energy consuming.

It's worse than that. EVs attract nails like nobody's business. It's a combination of the weight, torque, and rolling resistance optimizations, I think. This holds true for most EVs. I lost a tire completely at less than 250 miles. I've had ten flats in EVs in ten years of driving them, most non-repairable.

As a counterpoint, I've got 58,000 KM on my Model 3, which is AWD. I went to rotate the tires a few weeks ago and the tire technician found that the tires were worn very evenly across the tires and did not necessitate rotation. Checking with the tire gauge, the tire still has about half the _usable_ tread depth left. I've owned the vehicle for a year and a half, so I expect the tires to last 90,000 to 100,000 KM. These are the Michelins.

I’ve noticed Rivian trucks in NC often have a “Weighted” license tag as the truck is near the weight limits for a standard license tag. I suspect it only matters when towing, but plenty of people seem to pay extra for it with their Rivian truck.

Ha. I saw one of these yesterday and was wondering what the “weighted” meant. Thanks!

Since the R1T can tow 11,000 pounds and weighs about 7000 lbs with a GVWR of about 8500 lbs, and you need that tag in NC if you plus your toad (towed vehicle) is over 9000 lbs, then it's easiest to get it right up front.

This is an interesting topic to me, because electric vehicles are heavier than vehicles of similar sizes, but as of right now aren't paying gas tax which helps to keep the road maintained. Heavier vehicles wear on the road more than lower weight vehicles, so it's a bit regressive at the moment.

Tangentially, there was a 60 Minutes or similar report recently on how the extra weight of the vehicles also makes them more dangerous to vehicles of similar sizes that are much less weight. Instead of being hit by a Ford Taurus with a lighter weight, you're basically being hit with an F-150 in the size of a Taurus.

>>Heavier vehicles wear on the road more than lower weight vehicles, so it's a bit regressive at the moment.

The thing is - even if everyone in the world replaced their cars with Rivians, they won't do a fraction of a damage that trucks are doing to our roads. It doesn't matter in the slightest to your roads if you drive a 1 or 2 tonne vehicle - but that 40-tonne truck going over it absolutely does.

>>Tangentially, there was a 60 Minutes or similar report recently on how the extra weight of the vehicles also makes them more dangerous to vehicles of similar sizes that are much less weight.

That is very true.

> there was a 60 Minutes or similar report recently on how the extra weight of the vehicles also makes them more dangerous to vehicles of similar sizes that are much less weight

IIRC, this is also a problem for multistorey car parks because they aren't engineered to sustain that amount of weight.

This depends on what state you're in. Some states have already have a tax on EVs that helps cover roadwork expenses - see https://mastodon.social/@vivekgani/110845726672888762

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