Look at that three electric cars sitting in my driveway. How crazy is that this one is the oldest it's like 10 years old, well, 67 years old, but 10 years old, it's electric! That one is four years old, five years old and this one is brand new. Since the uh tent the rivian tent didn't ship with the vehicle, i ordered a third-party tent, but i think we need the rails uh and those are, i think, they're accustomed to rivian. So i couldn't use any third party, so i ordered them after the truck and luckily they were in stock and they shipped and they came in like a matter of two days, so i got pretty lucky there.

I think this right here is a 500 accessory. Is that overpriced uh, i don't know, depends how you look at it. It's just two pieces of aluminum right for 500 bucks, but it's a custom piece of aluminum engineer, probably by the people at rivian. It's supposed to be really easy to install, let's test it out.

Uh, so if you look at it that way, no, this is probably not 250 each for a highly engineer, piece of metal and stuff yeah - probably not overpriced, all right. So the way you mount them, you just put them in there and then you lift this guy. Wait a minute: that's it that's kind of weird! Oh! No! When you push this it locks. Oh i see so when you do this.

Okay, that's it! You have to push the little button there and then it uh, okay. So there they're easy to install should be pretty sturdy, and just like that now you have racks accessory racks, so you could put stuff in here a bike. Uh, tent uh, all kinds of things: uh skis all kinds of stuff right, and it has this little thing here that i'm gon na have to figure out how what to put in there to attach. I don't know if this is standard uh, it's like a dovetail thing here, where you stick it on there yeah all right.

So i'm testing to see if the ecoflow pro will charge the rivian and see how many miles it will add on a single charge. It's three and a half kilowatts, so it's 100 charge right so it'll charge for like an hour. Let's see how many miles we can put back in there. So the question here is: if only rivien's, 11 kilowatt charger.

It's supported right uh. I have a a charger. That's capable of 50 amps plugged into the truck right now, but it's not the rivian one. So it doesn't.

Let me go above 40 amps right, like you, can't do it in here. So it's the question is: will third party 48 or 50 amp chargers be able to use it, or only reviews now for size? I'd say, is between a tacoma and an f-150 right in between there. Here's a size comparison to a toyota, a mini small size toyota. Here it's next to an f-250, so it's much much smaller than a full-size truck.

Here's how it compares to a toyota tacoma with the lift kit right. You have a lift kit yeah! So that's it's. I would say it's about the same size, but there's some dimensions that are a little bit smaller, but overall it's they have about the same stance: the charging port, it's open by pressing this little button here. One of the things that i want to test out is to see if you could use the tesla charging the mobile tesla charger uh to charge that using an adapter sort of like this tesla tap mini right, which converts the tesla plug into a regular nema.

J1772. Right so, let's test that right now: okay, so we just connected it and it seems to be charging because the green light is turning on. So, let's see how much we can set this up, seven kilowatts: it tops out at seven uh kilowatts, 34 amps. You cannot go higher than 34 amps, you can only go lower than 34 and that's a feature that lets you just not trip the breaker.

Just in case you don't know where you're plugging in right. So there we go all right, so nine a.m and the tent is here, which means that we're gon na attempt to put this tent up there. Let's see how big of a mess, how hard that's gon na be all right. So here we go whoa, that's! So that's long dude, it's gon na stick out a lot from the back of the truck so yeah.

This tent is uh. The wrong shape is too long, and you can't put it this way, because it's too it's too long either way unless we put it on the roof but on the roof is like way up. There it'll eat a lot of range, so unfortunately the tent did not work this size that i got does not fit in that truck, and i ordered this because this is the only one that would arrive in time for this trip right. So i could have gotten the one that mimics the same size as the one that rivien uh includes or is going to include as an accessory, but that would have arrived sometime next week so for this trip this weekend.

It wouldn't have been here on time. So yeah don't get this one. This one does not fit right time to weight this vehicle. Let's uh verify see how much the weight, how much your weight's uh empty all right.

So it's sitting now on our scales here, our four scales: let's see what the numbers come in, so this car is pretty even 25 on each axle there. Oh this one turned out for some reason there. It is twenty four point: eight percent, 25, 24.9, 25 yeah. So uh, i would lift this all the way up and take a look at the underside of it, but i don't trust that cheap chinese uh lift right.

I think it's got nine thousand pound limit and this is like seven thousand pounds yeah. No, i i just i'm not yeah. I installed that so i you know a weissman will second guess himself. So uh there's nothing interesting over there i'll cover anyways with a bunch of panels, and i don't want to take them off so yeah.

For now. That's that's about it. I just lift it up, so we can weigh it and then uh yeah. Let's take a look at the rest of this truck.

This is 46 kilowatt hours of scooter batteries they're all connected in parallel, so it's 36 uh volts and that's going to charge a rivien and i shrink wrap it, so it doesn't move around. I think it's just uh high enough to clear cover on the ribbon. So i think we'll be fine. Four thousand cells right there 18650s all right we're trying to load this battery into the truck there, but it's uh it's hard because of the forklift there.

It's cold hungry all right here, so it's our first stop. So here we go! This is our first charge with the electrify america network, ccs combo supposed to be a 350 kilowatt charging station, but we shall see where uh, how fast it goes, but these stations here shows us being um close, but they are not close, even though the store here Is closed you know, what's close is the store not the chargers? 140? Now i'm thinking that there has already been a rivien and this uh charging point, because that is clearly the rivien logo and it's already there. Someone made it and it's right here right next to the stations that you can use to charge your rivien here's our review. We just got it and we're charging here for the very first time on a public charge station.

So this being our first time charging. I didn't realize that those are 150 kilowatts, but the 350 kilowatts are over here. So, let's plug it into 100 351.. All right so never mind.

Uh, the 150 kilowatt stations serve 150 and the 350 kilowatt station serve 150. So they're kind of the same thing. Oh wait a minute: there's some tesla power walls over there, but there it's not tesla chargers here so they're, just using that they're using tesla power packs, basically tesla batteries and an inverter to service a buffer, because these can serve quite a bit of energy. So i guess electrify america is using tesla equipment.

No, the solvency was man-made. We're going to make some miles here. Coast 103.5. I saw a small desert, yeah yeah.

Oh, that's why it's called rainbow something: okay, okay, so we came through the 190 and then we are staying here. So we went up this mountain and now we're over there, and then we can go as far as over here then we have to come up. This mountain - hopefully we make it air condition electric car yeah, so here what you're seeing is that a rivien that is charging itself so there's a battery in the back charging it while we're exploring that? What is this there's a road up here, two electric cars in the middle of nowhere. What are these guys doing here? Crazy people? These are crazy people all right.

So, at the end of the first day, this half-baked idea and some kind of a failure but kind of success because we were able to find some charging that will do full. You know seven kilowatt uh, so this will be charged tomorrow morning when we get up um, but our our own battery onboard battery charging thing failed because i didn't account for one thing, which is this place is as hot as hell and so as a result. After about 45 minutes of running these inverters in there they cooked and they fried yeah over 100 uh 100 degree temperature here in death valley, and you know the the coolant the this have with those little fans that was no match for today's heat, and so after We came back uh yeah. These things were frying, they were like, you know, smoke starting to come out of it or whatever.

So then i turn it on. It didn't completely melt the down, but those things are are done, they're toast, and so i kind of disconnected the whole thing. I don't want to even connect it because i don't want to risk them, but there we go. We were only able to get about 40 minutes of charge um.

How do we set this up tonight like during the night? It would have been fine. I think because the temperature goes down here, and so it would have been enough cooling, but no, we have to rethink this 720 for gas about no. Thank you. Just take your thing all right, so this is the second fast station that we got here and uh.

The 350 one doesn't work. The 150 75 one only serves 35, the one in the the other 150 didn't work and the 50 it's actually delivering 50 kilowatt. We didn't try the other two to see if they would actually serve or that one or some other 150 or something, but that's the problem with these non-tesla. You know just public stations that are owned by all kinds of other people right uh.

Sometimes they don't work and that's what we're finding out here. Uh there's a lot of communication issues, the last one we've only been to two of these and we found non-working stations. That's that's bad! That's too! You know that's two out of two that have bad equipment and in fact, the one that we were there this morning uh or yesterday there was a guy there, trying fixing the one that wasn't working right. So there we go, but at least this one has solar panels so that at least it helps somewhat the charging and uh there.

We go okay, so we're all gon na be here for about an hour, and then that should be enough to take us. Get us home so here's another thing: uh we're inside the car charging and then we look down and it says, stop by the station so for some reason, when it got at 75 of the battery. This thing stops it quits. So if we were to walk away and then come back, then you realize that you are not fully charged, so this these things are so problematic.

These things got a long way to go to even meet where tesla is at and tesla's charges are not perfect, but these things are just so far behind, unfortunately, and that means that all rivian owners are well they're going to have to struggle with this growing pains Of this charging infrastructure that sucks all right, we found the fork on the road. Now, that's the tip of the road right, all right, we're going off-roading high on soft. I want the soft one to doesn't rattle our brains, so you we really want to kill this car right like the dave won right. He wants to record it.

Why wait to kill it? You know if i've done this in a nissan altima? Oh, we did it on mexican roads too. This road is way better than those roads. Oh yeah, the mexican road. We got this guy in the middle of the night.

Okay, lava tubes, we survived our first off road to the lava tube lava lava tube. It's kind of small i'm taking a picture of this sticker right here, lava tube trail, okay, so it's blinking uh, but it's not to the lowest setting. So i guess we could take this road, but that brake light is still on. So we don't know if it's um the air compressor one turned off, but the brake light's still on yeah, oh look and it stopped uh blinking.

So yeah i don't know, maybe all that rattle, but is this a but isn't it intended to go off? Yes, this is not rooting truck supposedly, so it's not supposed to break on the first little and by the way this is not even off-road like well, it is off-road, but it's it's light off-road. So, within the first two days of owning a ccs combo, uh car uh and charging in different stations right um, you come to realize that electrifying america is the one that has the best ones now, the fastest ones, 350 kilowatt. Now we haven't gone 350 kilowatt yet, but at least we've uh they make them uh and they have like, in this case, there's a bunch of them right. So there's uh one two, three four five six here and then two more over there uh evgo.

They have 150 175, but they didn't work. Uh charge point has a bunch of 50 kilowatts. So there we go before today. I, like it evgo chargepoint, electrify america.

All these networks meant nothing to me. I couldn't tell them apart. I didn't know what the difference was, but very quickly now that we're using them, it seems like electrified america. Here's a crazy thing.

I'm a bw fan right. I drive a bw um on a daily basis and volkswagen has is putting the money to put these because that's their you know, that's uh, that's what they had to do after the dieselgate thing right. So this is money that uh the infrastructure is getting put, and i guess because this is about two billion, i think from the last time i remember i could be wrong, but from what i can recall, they're investing in all this, and this is cool. This is a lot of money.

This this these stations cost a lot of money, all the work that goes on here or whatever, but and then uh, usually those are a bunch of chargers and then tesla batteries over there and all this other stuff. So yeah a lot of money. This is big bucks here, yes, after 10 minutes of trying to set up a charging thing and get into the yeah. This is this is like complicated.

These people have not gotten it yet i've not gotten it yet why? Why is it that you have to know which station like? Why can't it just read the station that you're inputting the thing and the charge but like you're using that station right to communicate with it and like so, your account is in your phone yeah like shouldn't. It tell like oh this account is on this station time down once again, so let's unplug we're plugin and unplugging until it works out here. Okay, so let it reset okay! So now it's ready! Let's try it again. There we go uh, then it's gon na.

Do the thing there? Oh, it works it like until it only took three four tries, but there it is yeah, it's a it's it's more complicated than it needs to be. Definitely this is after using tesla's network you're like you, don't realize how good it is. It's not perfect, but it's so much easier than this whole setup here, all right! So 20 minutes in this uh electrify america charger 350 kilowatt. It only did about a hundred miles, which is about 40 miles short of what rivien has said, that you can get uh on a typical 20 minute charge.

So i don't know i it's got to be the the car, the rivian and not those stations, but i don't know both of these are so new uh. It seems like that's what it's happening, so that's it. We have enough to stop this. You just press there.

78 78. It starts tapering down anyways, let's get out of here. Let's get home, let's go home, let's see, do it do it again again. This sounds like air like, although inside it sounds like a thump like something is hitting right, let's see, apply the break like hard like move it like make it move and then apply it hard.

So it does break. What do you mean? So? Where does your foot go? I got ta, go all the way to the floor. Oh it won't. Let me do it, i won't let you move the car.

Let me see the brake. Oh yeah, that's super low yeah, there's something up with the break right. So the thing still there says, there's a break issue because it's got a red, uh thing that says break. Let me apply the break.

Do it again so yeah it sounds louder, but then, when you're moving, let's see oh yeah, it sounds like it's loose or something. Let me go outside and then record it from the outside. What it seems to be happening is the actual there. It is it's a planet, it's the hole.

So it's the mechanical hold once you come to a complete stop, so regen brakes seem to be working. Fine, but it's just the actual mechanical brakes when they get applied and what's happening, is that the pedal is really low either because it's like missing fluid or it's got air in the lines or something. So that's why it's making that noise. But it is a problem because now it looks like our mechanical brakes are failing and the only reason we can keep driving this car is because this thing doesn't need the mechanical brakes that much like here.

This is a planet and there's a noise. You.