Watch a 7k-LB Rivian R1T Destroy a Guardrail in Eyebrow-Raising Test | Hacker News Reader

Watch a 7k-LB Rivian R1T Destroy a Guardrail in Eyebrow-Raising Test

thedrive.com

32 pointsourmandave59 comments

I’m starting to think we need weight limits on standard passenger vehicles so that designers have a constraint to work within. Of course there should be exceptions granted for commercial and similar usage, but I fail to see the logic in allowing 7000 lb Suburbans or Escalades on the road as daily drivers.

I’m not even talking EVs here. Why is a Hummer legal to drive when it causes disproportionate wear on the streets, can’t fit adequately in a lot of parking, and will essentially obliterate any other vehicle it hits? It doesn’t even have a reasonable commercial purpose beyond wrapping it with advertising and using it as a parked billboard as far as I’ve seen.

And as far as EVs go, my Ioniq 5 is a little over two tons and has the wheelbase of a Palisade already. Do you really need a whole other ton and a half to add a third row? On my car I’m pretty sure you just have to square off the roof and allow some overhang in the back. It’ll need more battery, but a ton more? Empty pickup truck beds aren’t all that heavy either, for that matter.

I can’t imagine this type of mass inflation has been as rampant in Europe and other areas that value small cars. We Americans have always been in love with displacement, whether it’s coming from the engine or the chassis.

Because for historical and cultural reasons, many folks will object strenuously to an America where the default is not to beg forgiveness when you fuck up, but to ask permission before doing anything interesting.

Even non-EVs are crazy heavy. The old Ford Ranger truck (2011) weighed 3700 lbs in its heaviest configuration. There are many non-hybrid/EV sedans, even "small" sport sedans, that push well past 4000 lbs nowadays.

I'd recommend appropriate weight taxes rather than going for a ban, you never know people's specific situations that cause them to acquire/desire a particular car.

Calculate approximately how much a marginal 100lb costs in road wear, tire pollution and loss of life and limb (use EPAs $8 million per life figure) and increase road tax by that much for heavy vehicles. Then if people really need that big vehicle for whatever reason they can pay the $10k/year extra it's costing the rest of society.

Historically, gas tax and vehicle registration fees (particularly for commercial trucking) tried to account for the infrastructure cost in a somewhat variable manner. EVs complicate this approach some since electricity is used by more than EVs.

Ultimately though vehicle related deaths per mile and per person followed the opposite trend so there hasn't been a huge motivator for people to suddenly feel pressure to have safety regulations which require them to give up the vehicles they like. Climate related requirements needs (such as efficiency) seem to have an ever bigger role in reviewing what sizes make sense lately though. Rather than outright say weight is the thing that needs to be regulated I'd rather see it be directly about efficiency requirements or safety requirements and let manufacturers figure out the best balance to achieve the goals with.

Interestingly, Europe seems to have been adding mass at the same rate (higher in terms of percentage growth, actually) but they just started off smaller. https://thecorrespondent.com/310/your-car-has-a-weight-probl...

A per-pound tax is appropriate. After all, the impact on road wear is roughly proportional to weight.

The current design of the concrete dividers stemmed from problems with the guardrails of the day.

The issue wasn't cars shredding them like tissue paper, the issue was that they were bouncing off the guardrails, and back into traffic.

The current design of those concrete ones, with that angled base, is to basically let the car hit the barrier, and keep it there, so they grind to a stop rather than ricocheting across lanes of traffic.

There used to be these old, I dunno, public service videos or something that they'd play on TV at 5am that I'd watch, and they had all sorts of ones about traffic barriers and what not. This was back during the rise of breakaway obstacles, toll booth buffers, large cans filled with sand and water, etc. It was all quite fascinating.

They also had films on the local water projects and what not: huge tunnels, dirt moving explosions, monster earth movers. Right up the alley of a young man at the time. Whatever fills the air time I guess.

Yeah, in NZ they use a lot of wire based barriers to slow you / stop you while sacrificially dispersing your energy by propagating failure along the barrier. We like to use them to prevent (or minimise the impact of) the head-on collisions our two lane main highways often lead to.

They're far cheaper to install and repair than other forms, and easy and fast to fix after an impact, but have a significant caveat that they'll mince you up if you're a motorcyclist who hits them, other types of barriers aren't exactly great for riders either but they offer more chance of survival than the wire barriers, to the extent that riders know the wired ones as cheese graters.

> Yeah, in NZ they use a lot of wire based barriers to slow you / stop you while sacrificially dispersing your energy by propagating failure along the barrier. We like to use them to prevent (or minimise the impact of) the head-on collisions our two lane main highways often lead to.

The barrier type you see in the video are backed by steels cables that attach to the sheet metal and anchored at the ends so same idea. You can kinda see them in the video in the side view.

I just want to point out that my brain tripped over trying to parse "7k-LB" part of the submission subject. The unit symbol for pound is lb/lbs, so why isn't it 7k lbs? Or just "7k pounds"?

7k-LB is just wrong on so many levels.

Edit: I just realized that the original title of the article has the same mistake, so I guess it's their fault primarily, not the submitter.

Is it common in the US to weigh vehicles in kilo-pounds, or is that just because it sounds more impressive in this instance? I would have expected people to describe it as a 3.5 ton vehicle.

It would be common to say 7000 pounds. It’s less common in everyday usage to say 7k pounds.

I wouldn't say so. In speech people just say "seven thousand ponds" or "seventy one hundred pounds".

Using "k" as a substitute for "thousand" is more of an internet written communication artifact that is rarely used offline.

Much better article from AP directly: https://apnews.com/article/electric-vehicles-crash-test-guar...

and archived: https://archive.is/44P6q

Good grief! Back in the 90's I was in a Dodge Viper that crashed into a guardrail (probably at about 45°), and all it did was push the guardrail out of position a bit.

That Rivian must pack a lot of kinetic energy.

As a pickup truck, a Rivian also holds that mass/energy much higher off the ground than a Viper, resulting in greater deflection upwards.

This whole news wave seems like propoganda to me.

This is all about the weight of the vehicle, it has nothing to do with the fuel.

This will be the same for a premium escalade:

Premium Luxury 4x4 2022 Cadillac Escalade Gross weight, 7,600 lbs

It's worth noting that EVs aren't the only vehicles that crest the 5,000-pound mark. Any full-sized, heavy-duty pickup on the market will easily surpass 6,000 pounds, with some like the Ford F-350 and Silverado HD 2500 even exceeding 7,000 pounds. Even the Chevy Suburban, a fairly common vehicle for families, can tip the scales at over 6,000 pounds depending on its powertrain. But EVs are universally heavier than gas cars of equal dimensions thanks to their batteries, and many of them are already beyond the limit.

> But EVs are universally heavier than gas cars of equal dimensions thanks to their batteries, and many of them are already beyond the limit.

And this definitely matters. The energy required to stop a vehicle is a linear correlation to the mass, and our ability to stop vehicles quickly still relies on creating heat using friction; it has not progressed nearly as quickly as our ability to accelerate vehicles.

Even a junker can lock its wheels under hard braking, right?

AFAIK the limiting factors are tire grip, ABS control and of course mass.

I wouldn't assume that. I've definitely been in a few junkers that couldn't do it on warm, clean, and dry pavement. Although you've already got pretty good braking performance in those conditions anyways.

Even then though, the travel of the brake pedal may be such that the time to full braking power is significant. Fortunately brakes are fairly straightforward and getting them back to good performance usually isn't a complex or expensive process.

Hybrids and EVs can also stop (to some extent) with regenerative braking.

That's not true, even in hard braking a large fraction of the kinetic energy is converted back via regen braking.

"and our ability to stop vehicles quickly still relies on creating heat using friction; it has not progressed nearly as quickly as our ability to accelerate vehicles."

We've had a lot of innovation in braking - including better tire compounds, disc brakes, anti lock, better brake compounds and design, etc. Most people just don't talk about them or compare braking stats.

There have been some advances (fewer in recent years, most of the technologies you've listed are decades old), but braking distances for consumer vehicles is still in the 130' range at 60 mph. This is better than the 200' from a decade ago, but still significant.

Consumer vehicles now able to accelerate to 60 mph in 2 seconds, but it can still take them up to 3 seconds to get back to 0.

Note: These are based on a safety article from Edmonds, 'Keep your Distance', who uses a distance of 132' with a braking time of 3.1 seconds. They appear to be measuring a car at the lighter end of the spectrum, as other articles I found still refer to 200'+ at the heavy end of the spectrum.

Many of the technologies I've listed are continually improved. They're not just a once and done, especially for things like compounds.

Average braking distances for any passenger vehicle class isn't even close to 200 feet, not even for pickup trucks.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-safety/best-and-wor...

Many of the fastest cars also have the best brakes. There are a number of them that can even get under 100'.

https://www.motortrend.com/features/20-best-60-to-0-distance...

If we want to talk trends in poor braking, we can look at Tesla and EVs in general. In many cases EVs select low rolling resistance tires with poor performance. The top quality low rolling resistance tires can be good, but many EVs have tight margins and lower end tires with less grip. It's not just weight. You can compare similar weight vehicles like a Tesla and a Silverado, and the conventional vehicle generally brakes better.

It does seem a bit propaganda but I think it highlights a larger issue and doesn’t go far enough! So many cars are so much bigger now. The entire guard rail system probably needs to be reexamined in the face of new vehicle sizes.

Or maybe cars for commuting shouldn't be 7,500 lb?

In Europe car over 3500kg requires another driver's license class. It is not a car, it is a lorry!

3500kg translates to ~7716lbs, so their comment (and the Rivian covered by this topic) still applies within your confines.

It's 3500kg including payload, so the car in question would be essentially unusable under the rule.

Or more simply just taxed like commercial vehicles. Make the tabs cost $1000 per year for anything with weight or height exceeding some limit.

Yeah, this is what I meant.

Slap taxes above a certain weight, and you will see manufacturers drop the weight to right below the threshold faster than you can blink.

Most states do their for pickup trucks regarding registration fees. It's about double the registration cost, but doesn't really factor in to most people's decision.

That's funny because when car manufacturers decided to do universal cars (versus the old California-edition/49-state cars), the whole country went up in arms about how CARB was costing them so much and how "Commiefornia" was dictating their lives. Despite the additional cost being 300-600usd (depending on the vehicle) or so.

Most of the car people were concerned about quality and not cost. Same reason people still opt for the non-CA brake cleaner and other solvents.

When quality comes at the expense of pollutants, people measure their own priorities.

The point is, you're welcome to shop for non-CA items, if they're legal in your region.

Alternatively we could fix the massive regulatory issues that lead to this.

1. Smaller vehicles have tighter emissions requirements and those requirements increase every year. So manufacturers of ICE vehicles have tended towards larger and larger vehicles year after year.

2. In the wake of Japanese auto manufacturers eating US manufacturer's lunch in the US we banned entire swaths of vehicles (minitrucks, microvans, kei cars). Because of this, in practice vehicles below a certain size that are produced by some of our main non-domestic (and maybe also domestic but I'm not sure) auto manufacturers (toyota, honda, mazda, nissan, subaru, etc) are illegal in the US unless they are a model that is 25 years old.

So we've made it impractical or even in some cases impossible to even build, sell, and market smaller but just as practical vehicles. If we fix that issue first, I imagine the market will eventually trend back towards smaller, cheaper, practical, and more efficient vehicles.

I suspect there's going to be a lot of cultural resistance to any attempt to introduce smaller vehicles to US marker right now. Starting from inclusivity arguments centered around smaller cars not being able to fit "people of all sizes" and ending with safety concerns where key cars would just feel unsafe on any kind of american highway sitting in a 6000+lbs lifted F-250's blindspot.

I think this ship has sailed and there's no coming down in vehicle sizes in US any time soon.

I think there's an argument to be made that large vehicles should face tolls when entering the city. Small vehicles as well but not nearly as substantial. I think some cities already do this to be fair. It's a good way to incentivise that local traffic be kept in as small vehicles as is practical.

> Starting from inclusivity arguments centered around smaller cars not being able to fit "people of all sizes"

Idk. I don't think there's substantially different cabin sizes past a certain point. The space any given seat has in an escalade or F-150 really isn't that different to the space a significantly smaller RAV4 has. And even between say a RAV4 and a camry the amount of space isn't massively different (however the rav does have more space).

This isn't to say that you should be banning normal sized vehicles but there really should be some type of disincentive for 4000+ lb vehicles and maybe an incentive for ultralight vehicles as well.

"In the wake of Japanese auto manufacturers eating US manufacturer's lunch in the US we banned entire swaths of vehicles"

Those are safety requirement issues. That's why classics get an exemption. You can't domestically manufacturer simular vehicles because they wouldn't meet the standards either.

But that's the issue. Those cars are legal in basically every jurisdiction except the US (they have equivalent classes in the EU as well).

We basically set the laws such that their niche wasn't viable despite being perfectly safe.

"despite being perfectly safe"

I think there's some background missing here on a definition and the restrictions of those classes.

> This is all about the weight of the vehicle, it has nothing to do with the fuel.

It does in the sense that an EV weighs 50% more than its ICE comparable. (For example, the Volvo XC40 ICE is 1,690 p̶o̶u̶n̶d̶s̶ kg, while the XC40 Recharge is 2,520 kb with battery modules.)

You should double check those numbers. The XC40 combustion car is 3800-3950 lbs. The EV version is 4600-4800 lbs. 20% more, which is certainly something but not nearly 50%.

Comparable cars in the sedan category are only typically 10-20% more than their combustion counterparts, unless they’re just designed poorly.

Thanks, I corrected the units in the post above. Source: https://www.volvocars.com/images/v/-/media/applications/pdps..., page 12.

Page 12 says 2170kg for the EV version. Not 25xx.

I added the weight of the battery modules (listed on the same line) because https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/models/xc40-rec... lists Total Weight as 2480 kg (so within 40 kg).

That total weight is the GVWR number, which is intended to be the maximum design weight, beyond which the manufacturer will tell you you’ve overloaded the vehicle. It’s not the actual weight of the car.

The Rivian's _curb_ weight is 7k. Not that the Escalade is light, but in its diesel, long wheel-base version it's 6.2k.

"This is all about the weight of the vehicle, it has nothing to do with the fuel."

It's not all weight, but also energy and density. It's slightly related to fuel, at least until batteries get significantly lighter.

Gross weights are misleading in this conversation because most passenger vehicles are not driving nor tested at their gross, but only slightly above curb weight.

I couldn't find any information about this specific test, but it seems likely that it would be based on NCHRP recommended procedures: https://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_rpt_350-a.... .

Of interest is the table on page 16 (pdf page 26) - if they used the test designed for the 2000P vehicle (2000 kg pickup, see page 10/20) that would probably mean an impact angle of 25 degrees.

My beef isn't with EVs, but ballooning car mass in general.

Modern cars are just so huge, and have so much junk in them. I get a large fraction of the mass is for safety, but (for the same money) I'd much rather have a tighter, lighter, stripped down car than a clunky infotainment system, seat coolers, fragile wood trim, motorized ac vents and handles. I'll even sacrifice some sound deadening and rear AC.

And EVs, of course, just make this issue worse. Their "fuel" is such a large fraction of their mass that they more-or-less suffer from the tyranny of the rocket equation, where they need more battery to haul more stuff around, which in turn requires more battery, and now the chassis and suspension needs to be reinforced to handle the weight, and now that needs more battery and so on.

If de-contented "race edition" cars are any indication some of those extras being stripped amounts to a 100lbs at most. Only cheap way to reel in the mass while keeping the safety is to make them smaller.

I dunno. If you look at modern supercars, they are loaded with luxury stuff, and their mass is noticeably higher than supercars of old when that shouldn't be the case.

I suspect the "race edition" stripped version of many cars are still hauling around the fundamental design features they need to accommodate luxury features.

Smaller, or slower. So many cars are out there running engines that are far too big, capacity that they never actually use. North American drivers seem to want cars that glide away from a stop or pass another vehicle without making a fuss, resulting in overcapacity engines. If we allow engines to actually rev to their potential, we can all do with much smaller overall designs.

> a large fraction of the mass is for safety

To protect against other high-mass vehicles?

Kind of goes to show that the entire "I bought an SUV so that I feel safe" is a manufactured problem.

I always like to quantify things so people get real context.

https://www.admiral.com/magazine/guides/motor/electric-car-m...

> On average, an EV weighs 200-300kg more than a petrol car because of the weight of the battery and electric motors.

Edit: apparently giving factual information related to the discussion warrants downvotes in HN these days

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