San Diego to Las Vegas: 332 desert miles on an empty bed

Day one of the Utah Ducati Run starts the way most of ours do: later than planned, with the truck pointed at a charger. A 2025 Ducati Panigale V4 Tricolore came up on Bring a Trailer, the bid stuck, and now it is waiting in Alpine, Utah. The Airstream is still in the shop, so for once the bed is empty and the plan is simple: run the Rivian R1T up I-15 to get it, then tow it home on a U-Haul trailer and see what a light load does to the range.

The first stop is the San Bernardino Rivian Adventure Network site off Inland Center Drive. Trip B was still carrying 271.9 miles from a charge or two ago, so the honest number for San Diego to here is the GPS route, about 111 miles. We reset Trip B at the pedestal for a clean read on the leg into the desert. The charge itself was the easy kind: 72.9 kWh in 28 minutes, 214 kW at the peak, and $0.00 after the referral credit wiped the $35.71 list price. Then north into the dark.

The first clean leg, San Bernardino up over Cajon Pass and down into Barstow, ran 67.3 miles at 2.11 mi/kWh empty, 32 kWh, in an hour and twenty. That is the number to remember: the unladen R1T baseline we will hold the towed trip home against once the Ducati is on the trailer. A quick free top-up at the Barstow RAN, then back into the dark.

Barstow to Las Vegas is the long one, 153.8 miles of open desert, and the truck held the line: 2.06 mi/kWh, 74 kWh, empty. Two legs, both right around 2.1 mi/kWh, which is exactly the baseline this trip is for. We rolled into the Las Vegas Rivian Adventure Network just before midnight, took a fast 46.8 kWh (free again, 223 kW at the peak), and called it for the night at South Point. Trip A read 6,786.9, 332 miles on the day. We finish the charge in the morning and point it at Utah.