- The Cannonball Run is a roughly 2,800-mile run from New York City to Redondo Beach in California.
- Most, if not all, gas cars that attempted to set a record on the route were heavily modified.
- So someone thought to do the same with a Rivian R1T.
The Rivian R1T is a fine electric pickup, but it’s far from the perfect long-distance cruiser. Its energy efficiency is not the greatest, and its charging curve is lackluster, to say the least. It’s fine for the daily commute and the odd trip to Moab, but a record-setting 2,800-mile run was probably not on the priority list for Rivian when it designed the four-door truck.
But that hasn’t stopped a group of well-intended friends from attempting to set a new EV Cannonball Run record in a first-generation Rivian R1T. Mind you, this is no ordinary R1T, as Robert Dunn from Aging Wheels revealed in a new video that documents the first part of the team’s efforts to make a working dual-battery truck that can be charged from two chargers simultaneously.
Someone called Ryan put the first pieces of the puzzle together in 2023, when he assembled a team of like-minded people, some of whom happen to be Rivian employees. That said, Rivian is in no way part of their effort–this is a science experiment with no official implications.
The car in question is a 2022 Rivian R1T Quad Motor with the Large battery pack, which has a capacity of 131 kilowatt-hours. That’s good for an EPA-rated 314 miles of range, but it’s not enough for a cross-continental speed run. So the guys got their hands on two extra battery packs from two Rivians that were crashed by the IIHS during their safety testing. Both packs were practically brand new, so theywere the perfect candidates for a home-made range-extender.
The team disassembled the two spare packs and managed to squeeze no fewer than 12 individual modules in the truck’s bed. By comparison, the pickup’s factory-installed battery has nine modules, so the addon more than doubled the working capacity–310 kWh, to be precise.
With an average efficiency of 2 miles/kWh, this would lead to a total driving range of 620 miles.
That’s mighty impressive, albeit a little janky, but how does the bed-mounted pack provide power to the truck and, more importantly, how can it be charged? Well, thankfully, a bi-directional high-power converter was found that enables everything. A junction box was then designed to tap into the high-voltage wiring between the main battery pack and the electric motors.
Photo by: Aging Wheels (YouTube)
But that’s not all. The addon batteries are also actively cooled with the help of a small radiator, a simple water pump and a lot of ice cubes. What’s more, the range extender can be charged from a DC fast charger independently of the car’s main battery, and it can send power to the main battery if needed.
It’s basically what Tesla promised would offer for the Cybertruck but never did. All made by a couple of dudes that knew what they were doing, even though at times it didn’t look like it.
All this effort was made in hopes of setting a new EV Cannonball Run record. According to Google Maps, the roughly 2,800-mile run would take 42 hours in a normal car that sticks to the speed limits. The outright record was set by a modified Audi S6 in 2020, when it clocked an impressive 25 hours and 39 minutes. The EV record, set last year by a stock Porsche Taycan, sits at 39 hours and 29 minutes.
Sadly, though, because of very poor weather conditions and the fact that the modified R1T’s extra battery pack was not weatherproof, the first Cannonball record was scrapped. One year later, though, the team made a lot of changes a tried again.
A new video is due soon, and it should add a lot more information, including the essential–if a Rivian R1T is the new Cannonball Run EV record holder.
