A little webpage I'm making to help with Supercharger trip research

[tdiggity]

I'm making a webpage to help with Supercharger trip planning. The main issue I have with the Official Tesla Supercharger page is that it's not easy to figure out what dot on the map is which location and which supercharger is next on your journey.

So, I created a webpage to help with that. It's very rough draft right now, but slowly putting it together:

http://wheresthesupercharger.com/

The idea is that it will help you locate the closest supercharger. Once you're at a supercharger, you'll want to know which superchargers are nearby, and how far they are so that you can charge to a safe level and then be on your way.

let me know what you think!



Update - 4/10/2014
* New URL!
* Very mobile friendly
* Ready to accept more SC info. Has only California data now.
* You'll only see superchargers that are < 265miles away.
* Next up: add the rest of the superchargers
* Next up: show bearing/heading for nearby superchargers so you know which one to go to!

 

[selsrog]

Super

Super!
Do please keep developing this.

 

[stevezzzz]

I like it! The extreme simplicity of the home page will make it easy to use casually, and if you continue developing the site along the lines you've suggested, there will be plenty of meat for someone who drills down. Good work.

 

[Jess]

I was just wishing Tesla would make such an app. Thank you so much for doing this!

 

[cjc9er]

I also see the value in this. Might be interesting to collaborate with the EV Trip Planner folks, because there are four key considerations at work here when you are sitting at one supercharger planning what to do next:

1. Where am I going next?
2. Which route am I going to take to get there?
3. How much energy will that require?
4. How long do I need to spend at this supercharger to ensure I have that much energy in the battery plus a little margin of safety?

EV Trip Planner is really good at #3, but the first and second items usually have to be figured out some other way first, like Google Maps. To really calculate #3, EV Trip Planner ideally needs better integration with wunderground or one of the other weather sites that understands what temperatures, wind speeds, and wind directions will be at the cities along your route.

What nobody is really tackling yet holistically is the time piece of the equation. EV Trip Planner knows the speed limits along each segment of road and keeps track of the overall average speed of the entire trip, but doesn't yet report total hours. The new application that tdiggity is working on could possibly help by combining expected drive times with expected charge times to help us all better plan out our drives.

Ultimately (and soon!), all of this brainpower should be living in an app on the Model S dashboard, fully integrated with the onboard nav system and the remaining range calculator. It would keep track of how much time we've spent driving since the last charge, how long until we get to the next one, the most energy efficient route to the next supercharger, expected wait times there if any, expected charge times to get to the next waypoint on our journey, etc. The possibilities are all quite interesting!

 

[Cliff Hannel]

@cjc9er and all...Cliff here from EVTripPlanner.

We're days away from releasing the new version 2.1 of EVTripPlanner. It includes:
* chargers-along-path from DOE database (includes superchargers)
* "charge here" button on chargers adds the charger to the routing
* improved formatting
* added information
* improved energy estimation algorithm

It is in process (as we speak), so you might get hung up and find errors, but you can take a look at http://EVTripPlanner.com/planner/2-1

In the future, we think about things like:
* least-time routing (which chargers will take the least time to route through, how much should I charge at each?)
* least-cost routing (which chargers will cost the least to route through, how much should I charge at each?)

We'd like to do "energy from where I am now", but the mobile app isn't done and Tesla's browser doesn't support geolocation (or other standard) APIs!

Tesla says they'll do something like this - integrate Nav and Energy, but we're still waiting. They don't have much incentive, as it isn't preventing or creating car sales.

Plug for my son, Ben (16 now), who does all the coding/development: If you're using and liking EVTripPlanner, donate to his college fund (he's not going someplace cheap!). We're planning thousands of routes every week (over 50,000 so far in under a year) and look forward to evolving the site and getting even more users. To see where people are planning routes, go to http://EVTripPlanner.com/WhereTheTeslasGo

 

[tdiggity]

awesome, Cliff!

I haven't had time to work on my site. But, still plan to offer a minimum usecase for finding a few nearby superchargers from your current location.

 

[Robert.Boston]

Cliff: Thanks to you and Ben for working on this; I tossed a twenty into the hat, which I realize doesn't go very far towards college tuition...but I've got two of my own in college.

Algorithm C doesn't appear to have a headwind/tailwind correction in yet.

Thanks for your work on this!

 

[cjc9er]

Nicely done, Cliff and Ben! I'll be an enthusiastic user of the updated site and also put a plug in for it on my recent blogs at ecova.com. Any prospect of getting permission from Tesla to be one of their onboard apps? The touchscreen seems to have made provision for adding more software there in the future, but hasn't done so yet.

 

[jvonbokel]

To see where people are planning routes, go to http://EVTripPlanner.com/WhereTheTeslasGo

Super cool! (I love data!) I bet Tesla has a similar map (albeit more precise) and is using it to guide their Supercharger plans.

 

[Cliff Hannel]

The new version of EVTripPlanner is live at EV Trip Planner
This version:
* shows conventional and superchargers along the route
* has improved interface
* maintains a history of your routes so you can repeat a route easily (if you register)
* saves your settings (if you register)
* makes it easy to add chargers to your route
* compensates for air density changes due to elevation and temperature
* download CSV of the route (for use with Excel)
* more!

 

[dsm363]

Thanks for working on this. Is there a way to force a route along Superchargers even if route is longer? For instance if you go from Seattle to Phoenix it takes you the shorter route but one that avoids I5 which contains Supercharges along 90% of route.

 

[tdiggity]

Updated my app - http://wheresthesupercharger.com. Only has California superchargers on it, but I've taken steps to be able to include all the superchargers pretty easily. I'm going on a road trip from NorCal to SoCal, so this should be pretty handy (albeit not hugely impactful because I know where I'm going already).