A Better Routeplanner

[WannabeOwner]

Performance models typically have higher kWh consumption?

I think that either way you need to put in your "Consumption at 65 mph / 110 km/h" to reflect how you drive Then the model becomes "battery size"

 

[berkeley_ecar]

I am deeply impressed by this project, Bo! Thanks so much for sharing all this work with other Tesla owners. I have only one suggestion. A nice addition would be to make the terms that appear in the list of setting link to definitions and explanations, sort of a rudimentary user
guide to the app. Terms like "Battery Capacity Degradation" are somewhat baffling to the newbie, so knowing how you are defining such terms, and what impact the setting have on route planning and good vehicle care would be very helpful. Keep up the great work -- I hope Tesla draws inspiration from the project, and that your good work will somehow carry on beyond the point at which you may lose interest or time to work on it.

 

[evp]

I was road tripping the last two weeks. I tried ABRP in the car's browser. It worked once, but the next time I entered a destination it had an auto-complete list pop down containing the previous destination. No matter what I tried, I could not get it to accept what I typed for the new destination - it kept using the one in the list once I pressed return. I think this might be a failure of the browser itself. Might need to add an explicit "accept" button to get around it.

 

[blincoln]

I am deeply impressed by this project, Bo! Thanks so much for sharing all this work with other Tesla owners. I have only one suggestion. A nice addition would be to make the terms that appear in the list of setting link to definitions and explanations, sort of a rudimentary user
guide to the app. Terms like "Battery Capacity Degradation" are somewhat baffling to the newbie, so knowing how you are defining such terms, and what impact the setting have on route planning and good vehicle care would be very helpful. Keep up the great work -- I hope Tesla draws inspiration from the project, and that your good work will somehow carry on beyond the point at which you may lose interest or time to work on it.

Good proposal, I'll add it ASAP. Will help to avoid some of the confusion, I hope.

 

[blincoln]

I was road tripping the last two weeks. I tried ABRP in the car's browser. It worked once, but the next time I entered a destination it had an auto-complete list pop down containing the previous destination. No matter what I tried, I could not get it to accept what I typed for the new destination - it kept using the one in the list once I pressed return. I think this might be a failure of the browser itself. Might need to add an explicit "accept" button to get around it.

Sorry about that - the Google Autocomplete feature just does not work well in the car browser. It can be made to work like this: Start typing, then select the other waypoint text input, and then back again - then relevant proposals show up. Maybe I should just disable it in the car browser?

 

[blincoln]

@blincoln , any plans to factor in external temperature? See my post here showing Tesla data: Putting some numbers on the factors that affect range

Regarding consumption: I understand that for non-owners (a very important user group for a route planner!) it is hard to guess and grasp the Wh/mile numbers, but the thing is that once you own a Tesla, you quickly learn how this consumption figure is affected by your own driving, weather, roof racks, etc. It is simply a lot easier to enter a reasonable consumption number (which is valid for your particular situation) than to enter weather conditions, snow on the road, temperature, type of rims, cabin temperature, payload in the car, etc.

That said, I will of course try to give good guesses on the consumption given a certain Tesla model as a reasonable starting point.

 

[WannabeOwner]

I will of course try to give good guesses on the consumption given a certain Tesla model as a reasonable starting point.

I think that's a good idea.

My consumption has gone up fairly significantly from Summer into Winter ... something that also effects an ICE of course but which I never bothered to factor-in for a trip back in the old days. Might need a slider to allow the user to select (for a given model / whatever) whether the conditions are "ideal, summer, not excessively hot" though to "abysmal" !

 

[MorrisonHiker]

One problem that I've noticed recently is that if I change the model, the "Consumption at 65 mph field" changes to a number with decimals...but then I can't submit the form unless I remove the decimal value.

 

[j2cc]

excellent planner ! thanks a lot. Accuracy on charging time for the new S60 model is great !
Useful featurewill be for me to get " avoid tolls" button.

 

[blincoln]

One problem that I've noticed recently is that if I change the model, the "Consumption at 65 mph field" changes to a number with decimals...but then I can't submit the form unless I remove the decimal value.

Ah, thanks - fixed!

 

[blincoln]

I am deeply impressed by this project, Bo! Thanks so much for sharing all this work with other Tesla owners. I have only one suggestion. A nice addition would be to make the terms that appear in the list of setting link to definitions and explanations, sort of a rudimentary user
guide to the app. Terms like "Battery Capacity Degradation" are somewhat baffling to the newbie, so knowing how you are defining such terms, and what impact the setting have on route planning and good vehicle care would be very helpful. Keep up the great work -- I hope Tesla draws inspiration from the project, and that your good work will somehow carry on beyond the point at which you may lose interest or time to work on it.

Now in place - thanks for the proposal!

 

[blincoln]

Dunno if Google provides the info, but that route proposes charging in both Folkestone (while waiting for Shuttle) and also Calais - but the bit in between is a train-journey under the Channel, so not "driven"

Finally got to try out that route - the new releases of ABRP seem to manage low starting charge just fine by charging in Winchester. And yes, it does not count "ferry" parts of the trip as driving and therefore consumes nothing there. Let me know if you manage to still get it to behave strangely!

 

[berkeley_ecar]

Now in place - thanks for the proposal!

WOW. That was a fast turn-around! I'm a bit baffled here, though -- I just visited A Better Routeplanner (forcing a reload in case I was working with cached information) but don't see a difference yet. Also, to use it on my iPhone, I just access it via a web client? Thanks again for sharing the great work.

 

[WannabeOwner]

it does not count "ferry" parts of the trip as driving and therefore consumes nothing there

Looks much better, thanks. Only downside (and I don't have a clue how to improve this) is that it wants to charge in Calais rather than Folkestone (presumably because that is the furthest one that can be reached and, as such, charging will start from a lower start point and consequently will be quicker [than charging from, and to, a higher SOC]). There is a Charger in Calais (Town) which is outside the port (i.e.a available to anyone). There is also a charger in both Calais and Folkestone that is inside the port. The benefit of these is that you can charge there whilst waiting to board the tunnel train, which would otherwise be dead time, so preference would be to charge at Folkestone on the way out and Calais (the charger inside the port, not the one in the town) on the way back to UK. Although 25-ish miles apart, that journey is transported in a train (i.e. similar to being on a ferry).

As a work-around, using the "Take a long break here" on the Folkestone charger gave the correct routing

 

[sdorn]

WOW. That was a fast turn-around! I'm a bit baffled here, though -- I just visited A Better Routeplanner (forcing a reload in case I was working with cached information) but don't see a difference yet. Also, to use it on my iPhone, I just access it via a web client? Thanks again for sharing the great work.

It works for me. Just mouse over the text boxes in the settings section and a little box pops up explaining what it is for.

 

[berkeley_ecar]

It works for me. Just mouse over the text boxes in the settings section and a little box pops up explaining what it is for.

Hmm wonder what I'm doing wrong then, as it is still not working for me. Using firefox 50.1.0 on Mac OSX 10.12.2, with URL A Better Routeplanner, and have flushed the firefox cache first: I see a map, and a translucent gray panel on which a text area toggles between "Show Settings" and "Hide Settings." When the settings are showing on this panel, I can hover over the text label for each individual setting, but no explanatory information appears. Could there be some sort of intermediate host that is caching an older version of the website, and serving me that?

 

[MorrisonHiker]

Hmm wonder what I'm doing wrong then, as it is still not working for me. Using firefox 50.1.0 on Mac OSX 10.12.2, with URL A Better Routeplanner, and have flushed the firefox cache first: I see a map, and a translucent gray panel on which a text area toggles between "Show Settings" and "Hide Settings." When the settings are showing on this panel, I can hover over the text label for each individual setting, but no explanatory information appears. Could there be some sort of intermediate host that is caching an older version of the website, and serving me that?

It looks like he put the hover over the form fields, not the labels. It took me three tries before I found them myself.

 

[berkeley_ecar]

It looks like he put the hover over the form fields, not the labels. It took me three tries before I found them myself.

D'oh! Yes. Poster sdorn had also pointed this out, and I had even tried it, but must have been impatient -- it does take an instant for the popup to appear, and I think I did not hover long enough. This is a genuine improvement, blincoln! Still wonder if you should not also allow the definitions to popup when you hover over the text labels for each text entry box. The definitions also suggest some potential tweaks to the labels you are using. Perhaps "Charging Overhead Time" would be preferable to "Time to Open Charge Port", and "Extent of Battery Degradation" might be clearer than "Battery Capacity Degradation". As the application can use a login to My Tesla to get the value for "Start Depart Charge", can it also potentially fetch the value for the field "Consumption at 65mph" (as a newb, I don't yet understand what information My Tesla can provide)? These are just random stray thoughts, enabled by a better understanding arising from the labels. One can imagine huge additional potential for this already powerful application, especially if it started to include other charging options (though the scope of work required to do so would likely exceed blincoln's time and interest!). Lovely work, thanks.

 

[blincoln]

D'oh! Yes. Poster sdorn had also pointed this out, and I had even tried it, but must have been impatient -- it does take an instant for the popup to appear, and I think I did not hover long enough. This is a genuine improvement, blincoln! Still wonder if you should not also allow the definitions to popup when you hover over the text labels for each text entry box. The definitions also suggest some potential tweaks to the labels you are using. Perhaps "Charging Overhead Time" would be preferable to "Time to Open Charge Port", and "Extent of Battery Degradation" might be clearer than "Battery Capacity Degradation". As the application can use a login to My Tesla to get the value for "Start Depart Charge", can it also potentially fetch the value for the field "Consumption at 65mph" (as a newb, I don't yet understand what information My Tesla can provide)? These are just random stray thoughts, enabled by a better understanding arising from the labels. One can imagine huge additional potential for this already powerful application, especially if it started to include other charging options (though the scope of work required to do so would likely exceed blincoln's time and interest!). Lovely work, thanks.

I see that the labels could use a hoover popup as well, but that would require a little too much work for now so I hope the input fields will do for a while.

"Time to Open Charge Port" is my kick in Tesla's ass since that is something which annoys a lot of owners daily. I hope they get the hint And I think with the popup explanation it should be understandable. Actually, there was a bug related to it which I fixed earler today - for a couple of weeks that setting has been completely ignored by the planner...

 

[sdorn]

"Time to Open Charge Port" is my kick in Tesla's ass since that is something which annoys a lot of owners daily.

I think I'm missing something here. It takes all of 1 second to open the charge port. You just touch the corner and it pops right open. Are you referring to the charge port placement which requires you to back in to charging stalls in public lots? That is annoying.