How much more accurate is the full paid version? Trips will not be in to the boonies, but along major US highways like I5 and US101/US99 in California and maybe a trip to Salem Oregon. Planning first road trip in new 2021 3 LR.
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- Thread starter Kimmi
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Accuracy is only as good as your inputs. The paid version only allows you to save historical data from trips, and has live weather, including wind, which makes a big difference, live traffic, live Supercharger availability (in Cali that's kinda important), that kind of thing. It's great without paying for premium. If I used it more, I'd pay for it.
You can try the Premium for 14 days free.
Remember not to turn up any logging roads in a snowstorm.
Ha! Where were you 30 years ago? When I was younger and dumber, that's exactly what I did, except it was raining when I started but in the rockies, it doesn't take long for that rain to turn into snow. In my case 6" of brand new snow on a dirt logging road, no guardrails with a rear wheel drive rental sedan. Oh boy. That was a learning experience I'm not ever going to forget!
Hey, look, instead of taking the long route freeway, there's this road that goes directly where we want to go!
RTPEV
Active Member
Good point. On-trip accuracy will be a bit better as the site calibrates driving efficiency. For planning, probably doesn't matter as much to the OP since this is the first road trip.
Even though I'm a premium ABRP user, I actually don't always use it in-car...it is a bit clunky (this is one place where it used to be better than it is now). Live Supercharger availability is a killer feature though, so I do occasionally pop up ABRP just to see that. For me, popping up the native Tesla Trip Consumption display on a trip is sufficient to monitor progress towards the next charging opportunity. I occasionally pop it up to see if I am doing better or worse than the initial prediction and if I'm in danger of falling below my comfort level (5% or so arrival SOC). Normally I'll use ABRP to plan and determine that I can make it to a particular Supercharger that perhaps the car's nav may not think I can reach. But I'll navigate to that one anyway and keep an eye on the arrival SOC during the trip to make sure that I am doing better than predicted by the car (this is almost always the case). If I'm not seeing a comfortable enough improvement in Tesla's estimate I may pop open ABRP and/or go to the earlier Supercharger.
This is the kind of thing I am looking for:
Tedkidd
Member
I think of the $50 a year as a contribution. The greatest value to me is multi-stop planning for long trips, which I rarely take and you don't need to pay for.
RTPEV
Active Member
Absolutely! I think of ABRP as an EV sales tool! It lets people simulate their trips before plopping down money for an EV and see what the true impact of driving electric will be for them. I gladly support ABRP for that reason alone!
JCtx
Member
My car shows available supercharger stalls like 2 updates ago. Isn't it reliable??? I used ABRP for our first and only long trip so far, and don't plan to use it anymore. Confirmed that in the cold, and at the high TX highway speeds, our 2021 LR gets 2.5 miles per 1% charge, so that's what I went by on the way back, and zero issues. It's only going to get better, as the weather turns warmer. And since we don't like taking unnecessary risks, we shoot for 30% range, so we don't need that much accuracy. And we didn't have to wait for the car except once or twice, and for a few minutes only. With most superchargers less than 150 miles away, there's no need to charge beyond 90%. We hardly stopped before the Tesla, but pushing 60, we really liked getting down to stretch the body for a little bit, and go to the bathroom while the car charged. So that strategy worked for us 
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IronCoffee_Max
Member
I found ABRP is very useful for planning and I paid a monthly fee for it when I was traveling. I just used the car's trip planner for in-car usage, but augmented it with ABRP for any place where I wasn't sure. For example during winter months I was traveling to Texas and I had a stretch between a few SC - and I wanted a second opinion due to cold temps, wind, and a few other variables.
RTPEV
Active Member
Reliable? Yes. Perhaps even more so than ABRP.
Easy to use? Definitely not, unless I just don't know how to use it properly. With the built-in Tesla nav, you have to manually pan the map over to the next Supercharger to see the stall availability display (I can't recall, because I don't do it often, but you may even have to hit the lightning bolt icon to get the Supercharger to appear).
With ABRP, however, the stall availability for the next stop is shown very visibly right on the screen once you are in "range". This is VERY useful en route as it lets you monitor live usage very easily. By just glancing over every now and then you can get a good sense as to whether the Supercharger site is getting busier or not and use that as part of the decision making process about whether to stop at that one or not.
If only Tesla would include specific stall numbers in this data--then you might even be able to tell which stalls are likely to be leaving soon so if you arrive and need to pair up with another stall (at a V2 site) you know which stalls would be better to park in. Not being able to figure this out when arriving at a busy pre-V3 site is one of my biggest criticisms of the Supercharger network.
I did forget until now that another way I use ABRP is to get departure times from the Supercharger while I'm charging. The Tesla nav system will give you this information, but it's usually very conservative and has you there for 5-10 minutes longer than you really need. ABRP is usually quite accurate. When it says you can leave, you can leave!
If you are willing to enter temperatures and wind speeds manually, you probably don't need premium, at least that's how I see it. They are significant in a proper estimate. The free version still uses an rolling estimate of the consumption of your particular car. Premium will also let you maintain multiple profiles, say if you sometimes have a trailer or a roof box and want separate profiles for that.
JCtx
Member
Indeed. Stupid nav skips superchargers even if you arrive at the next one in (electron) fumes, and at reduced speeds. So what I do now when arriving at a supercharger (after connecting the car), is to click on the lightning bolt, choose the next supercharger on the route, set it as a destination (quickest way), see how many miles away it is, divide that number by 2.5, add 30, and charge the car to that amount. Easy peasy
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If your car is registered with ABRP, free, it'll pull the live temps automatically. Honestly, Tesla should just buy ABRP and incorporate it into their nav system.
@KenC , thanks, I didn't know that. The thing is, I use ABRP to plan a trip hours and often days ahead. The current SOC and temperature don't matter, I need that information for the moment I'll be driving. I use the weather predictions and the Windy app to lookup the information I need. I believe a premium subscription would do that automatically, saving me the hassle.
I used ABRP on a trip from Cali to Arizona and was blown away at how accurate it was in predicting my charge level when I arrived at the next charger.
I did pay for the premium and don't regret it at all.
Having said that it took quite a bit of head scratching to get it all setup correctly.
When I went the weather was nice. Does anyone have experience with ABRP in freezing or windy traveling?
I did pay for the premium and don't regret it at all.
Having said that it took quite a bit of head scratching to get it all setup correctly.
When I went the weather was nice. Does anyone have experience with ABRP in freezing or windy traveling?
I used ABRP on a trip from Cali to Arizona and was blown away at how accurate it was in predicting my charge level when I arrived at the next charger.
I did pay for the premium and don't regret it at all.
Having said that it took quite a bit of head scratching to get it all setup correctly.
When I went the weather was nice. Does anyone have experience with ABRP in freezing or windy traveling?
I did pay for the premium and don't regret it at all.
Having said that it took quite a bit of head scratching to get it all setup correctly.
When I went the weather was nice. Does anyone have experience with ABRP in freezing or windy traveling?
Yep, I use ABRP here in Quebec Winters. I don't travel often but when I do, I always plan with ABRP If you input the correct advanced settings (temperature, wind, speed etc) it does a very near perfect estimate of my arrival SOC. I remember a case where ABRP predicted a 6% arrival and the car started at 18% and went down as I drove. I arrived at 4%. In most cases however I arrive a couple percent over ABRP, but that's because I tend to set wind and additional weight a bit pessimistically.
If you input the correct advanced settings (temperature, wind, speed etc) it does a very near perfect estimate of my arrival SOC. I remember a case where ABRP predicted a 6% arrival and the car started at 18% and went down as I drove. I arrived at 4%. In most cases however I arrive a couple percent over ABRP, but that's because I tend to set wind and additional weight a bit pessimistically.
RTPEV
Active Member
I've used it (once) in moderately cold (around freezing) winter weather. It seemed to adequately account for the cold weather, although not quite as accurate as in milder weather.
Was there a particular question you had about it?
I did a 4400 mile roundtrip this late Summer, (and did the free subscription which I kept for a month so the developer could get $5), and there was a 15mph headwind, driving west. The car's trip planner was off by 15%, while ABRP was spot on. It was so accurate, that I lowered my buffer, target SOC from 15% to 12% for my trip back east. I would have been in serious trouble if I had relied upon the car's estimate. With ABRP, it was piece of cake.
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