ABRP Tips & Tricks

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Agreed, if you are using it to plan. I'm not even sure the real-time traffic is all that useful en-route (for re-routing). I trust Waze more for that aspect of it, but I haven't found a single nav app that I trust completely (I typically will run 2 or 3 in parallel to see if any one of them recommends a detour).

For traffic planning (i.e. choosing a specific route based on historical/predicted traffic), well, not really a big deal for me. If I'm looking for a tool to suggest major route changes to avoid predicted slow traffic, I'll just Google/Waze for that and use waypoints in ABRP to more or less follow the route. Yes, it would be nice to have ABRP be able to more accurately predict arrival times (due to heavy expected traffic) during the planning phase, but for my trips anyway, predicted arrival times in the planning phase vary significantly from reality anyway to make that a less useful feature. Once you're on the road and the live traffic data is consulted, arrival times are usually pretty accurate (although again, get thrown off when you stop for a bathroom break anyway!)

For me, the main benefit of premium (other than just wanting to support a very useful tool) is the live charger availability display (and forecast). Real-time weather is helpful to adjust the plan, but the Tesla nav system can do that now as well, so not strictly necessary.

Premium also does real-time weather. For people who deal with weather, that can be important.

As a user of the free version, I have just put a rough temperature in.
The biggest irritant to me about the free version is that I feel like I always have to use Advanced Settings.
It has Starting SOC.
But the times I've used it, I've generally wanted to set outside temperature and ending SOC as well.

 

[RTPEV]

Just seems like a lot of work to have to go back and forth between apps, which is really a benefit of a planning app. I feel as though if I need live data, I can just tell on Tesla's Nav. For a subscription to be worthwhile, it seems that being able to use just the one app would be most useful. I'll reach out to the developer when I have more time. Thankfully, I paid with Google play store credits that would likely go to waste, but I doubt I'll renew in it's current state of I'm paying out of pocket.

Yeah, I get it. I too wish there was a single app that did everything I wanted to all at once. I haven't found one though. And running multiple apps is not difficult. Usually this means having the car's NAV running in the background (or even foreground), necessary anyway so the battery is preconditioned, and running ABRP either on the car's browser or my phone. And typically on a road trip my wife will be with me, so I'll have pull up Waze on her phone to break any ties if the other two NAV apps disagree. It's actually not as big a deal as it sounds.

I think what you are looking for, though, is PREDICTED traffic data, not live data. ABRP does have LIVE data. Whether it uses it the best, I can't say...like any of the other apps, it's hit and miss. I've had occasions where Waze completely missed something, but the car suggested a detour. My wife, driving in a separate car was using Waze and missed the recommendation and I beat her home by 30 minutes. That was surprising, because I usually trust Waze above all others.

 

[CKwik240]

I think what you are looking for, though, is PREDICTED traffic data, not live data. ABRP does have LIVE data. Whether it uses it the best, I can't say...like any of the other apps, it's hit and miss. I've had occasions where Waze completely missed something, but the car suggested a detour. My wife, driving in a separate car was using Waze and missed the recommendation and I beat her home by 30 minutes. That was surprising, because I usually trust Waze above all others.

Surely, one app that does everything would be ideal. My biggest gripe is that paying for a subscription seems pointless or at least it doesn't carry much value.

I just tried navigating with ABRP and it's not including traffic. There's nearly an hour difference from Google maps.

 

[RTPEV]

Surely, one app that does everything would be ideal. My biggest gripe is that paying for a subscription seems pointless or at least it doesn't carry much value.

I just tried navigating with ABRP and it's not including traffic. There's nearly an hour difference from Google maps.

I don't disagree with your sentiment. What I am saying is that you have a very one dimensional view of what feature(s) have merit. In your case it seems to be traffic aware arrival time prediction (and again, that is prediction, not live re-routing due to CURRENT conditions). There are other features that premium offers, but apparently those don't carry any weight with your particular preferences.

 

[CKwik240]

I don't disagree with your sentiment. What I am saying is that you have a very one dimensional view of what feature(s) have merit. In your case it seems to be traffic aware arrival time prediction (and again, that is prediction, not live re-routing due to CURRENT conditions). There are other features that premium offers, but apparently those don't carry any weight with your particular preferences.

It's not one dimensional. It's a matter of priority. Traffic is usually going to make a whole lot more difference in travel time than an extra few minutes at a supercharger to coordinate for weather.

And no, I'm not talking about rerouting. I'm taking about estimating the travel time based on traffic conditions. Being able to do so based on departure time would be very nice. But it doesn't even seem to be doing it live. I literally set the navigation on both ABRP and Google Maps and there was about an hour difference of actual drive time between the two. So as far as I can tell, there is no variation of live traffic going on. How does one "plan" a trip week of we can't consider traffic.

 

[RTPEV]

It's not one dimensional. It's a matter of priority. Traffic is usually going to make a whole lot more difference in travel time than an extra few minutes at a supercharger to coordinate for weather.

And no, I'm not talking about rerouting. I'm taking about estimating the travel time based on traffic conditions. Being able to do so based on departure time would be very nice. But it doesn't even seem to be doing it live. I literally set the navigation on both ABRP and Google Maps and there was about an hour difference of actual drive time between the two. So as far as I can tell, there is no variation of live traffic going on. How does one "plan" a trip week of we can't consider traffic.

I think I'm having trouble getting my point across. I'll try once more...

When you navigate to a destination (unless it's extremely close by, but since you said the time was off by an hour, I'm guessing that is not the case in your situation), most of the traffic congestion ahead would be based on PREDICTED traffic at the time of the day you would be passing through, not the CURRENT live traffic (which would be pointless anyway, because by the time you get to that point, the traffic situation could have changed dramatically). So again, when you are comparing arrival times for a long trip, you are really talking about whether or not the system you are using can make use of historical traffic data to PREDICT congestion/delays en route, whereas LIVE traffic data is really only useful for short journeys and re-routing in the event of slowdowns just ahead.

I'm not saying you can't be disappointed in ABRP's lack of ability to use predictive traffic. That sounds like a shortcoming that is important to you, and it's a fair complaint. But that's really not what live traffic is going to get you.

As for making the comment about your feature preferences being one-dimensional, that is because the only feature you seem to be concerned with is the predictive arrival time. I've listed several other features that premium buys you, but those didn't seem to matter because you used the term "pointless". Sure, maybe they mean less to you than arrival time prediction, but then it wouldn't be pointless, it would just be less of a value.

At any rate, I understand your dissatisfaction with it. I'm glad that you didn't have to pay out of pocket for something you didn't find valuable.