Announcing the EV Trip Optimizer for Tesla App

[Boatguy]

Nobody wants to shoot you and your comments are valid. If I cannot find the issue and fix it in the next release or sooner, I certainly want you to get your $5 back.

I'm not looking for a refund, I was just trying to be clear that I had enabled all features of the app. I'm sure you'll make this work eventually, though I think in it's present form the only advantage I see over evtriplanner.com is that it does the calcs based on real time weather rather than user entered weather. But since I rarely do trip planning at the moment of departure, it's not a compelling advantage. What would be compelling is a really great UI that required a minimum number of clicks, dialogs and screens.

 

[BerTX]

I'm not looking for a refund, I was just trying to be clear that I had enabled all features of the app. I'm sure you'll make this work eventually, though I think in it's present form the only advantage I see over evtriplanner.com is that it does the calcs based on real time weather rather than user entered weather. But since I rarely do trip planning at the moment of departure, it's not a compelling advantage. What would be compelling is a really great UI that required a minimum number of clicks, dialogs and screens.

Agree it is not as intuitive as it might be. As an example, your comment about weather only at time of departure -- you can go to Edit Trip Details and set the departure date and time. Obviously the weather data is more accurate the closer to present it is.

Not intuitive, but powerful.

 

[Joe F]

Weather, and all calculations based on it, can be reset at time of departure by selecting the clock icon on the main page for the currently selected trip.

 

[Boatguy]

Weather, and all calculations based on it, can be reset at time of departure by selecting the clock icon on the main page for the currently selected trip.

This begs the question of planning tool or tactical tool? I want a planning tool that will be used days, maybe weeks, in advance of the trip. For "day of travel", at an SC I put in my next destination and charge until I have a 10% - 15% safety margin, then depart; repeat until arrival. While driving I can use Teslawinds.com for information and the energy display in the car.

FWIW, I put the same trip and parameters in EVTO and EVTP and EVTO calculated about 20% more consumption and charge time which I find suspect because in my experience EVTP has always been a bit on the conservative side.

 

[BerTX]

This begs the question of planning tool or tactical tool? I want a planning tool that will be used days, maybe weeks, in advance of the trip. For "day of travel", at an SC I put in my next destination and charge until I have a 10% - 15% safety margin, then depart; repeat until arrival. While driving I can use Teslawinds.com for information and the energy display in the car.

FWIW, I put the same trip and parameters in EVTO and EVTP and EVTO calculated about 20% more consumption and charge time which I find suspect because in my experience EVTP has always been a bit on the conservative side.

I hope it is both good for planning and for use during a trip. I would think it would use whatever weather information is available to it up to about 5 days out (the usual for a forecast). Probably makes no weather adjustment outside of that.

I'm not sure how you entered the same parameters into EVTP and EVTO? Was it a straight trip with a constant wind speed from the same direction? EVTP only allows you to put in wind speed once. If it changes during the day, or your trip direction changes, that wind correction is doing more harm than good.

 

[aesculus]

FWIW, I put the same trip and parameters in EVTO and EVTP and EVTO calculated about 20% more consumption and charge time which I find suspect because in my experience EVTP has always been a bit on the conservative side.

Some user have reported this while others say theirs are spot on. Clearly over time more feedback will help improve the accuracy. It may also be that a car model setting is skewed. Not enough info yet to determine that.

The weather is obtained for your day of travel for 48 hours. Each waypoint gets its own forecast. What @Joe F was stating that while you can plan ahead, just before you go (the day before?) you can reset the date/time and it will fetch the most current forecasts. Temp and wind can be big factors. I have seen my efficiency wander about from 380 to over 500 during winter when I ran into different temperatures and winds between stops. My summer efficiency can be around 320.

Of course your method of monitoring the cars estimations while driving is spot on. I do that too no matter what tool I use for planning. I have found myself chasing the car and when I arrived the planning tool was probably more correct (maybe because of the weather changes), but I still error on the side of using the cars estimates unless I am confident that there is something it does not know.

 

[Joe F]

This begs the question of planning tool or tactical tool? I want a planning tool that will be used days, maybe weeks, in advance of the trip. For "day of travel", at an SC I put in my next destination and charge until I have a 10% - 15% safety margin, then depart; repeat until arrival. While driving I can use Teslawinds.com for information and the energy display in the car.

It's both. Go ahead and plan as far in advance as you like, and as many trips as you'd like, then with a few menu picks get up to the minute weather info applied to the currently activated trip. A few more steps and you'll populate your calendar with all required stops, then have them sync to your car, which now means all those way points you can't make with the Tesla nav, are now there and can be used to navigate to.

Some people no doubt like flying almost seat-of-pants. Some may not want to run the numbers in their head using teslawinds, or may not do so accurately enough, only to find they'll have to slow down too far out from their next charge location, impacting overall trip time.

I'm all for using any/all tools to make my time on the road as pleasurable and stress free as possible. I see EVTO as one of the more important to me at this time, and look forward to future enhancements.

 

[majcina]

I will review these this week. I think the underlying calculation are correct but it's very possible I have the wrong RM stored and also don't take into effect battery degradation on the Trip Details panel, but do so in the optimization.

I have a question for you two, and others too. Instead of stating Rated Range (remember the app does Imperial and Metric) should we use another term like Altered Range to indicate it is RR offset by degraded battery? I am pretty flexible here and will probably get back a lot of different answers but lets see what you all think.

@aesculus I think it's okay to keep using the standard "Rated Range" terminology, as long as it's visibly adjusted to account for degradation on all user screens (including trip details). I like to think most Tesla drivers are intelligent enough to figure things out if they went through the effort of denoting their degradation in vehicle setup. Overall, I love that the app is so powerful and customizable. I think the more you squash bugs the more accepted this app will be. It's a lovely concept and deserves backing for future success, just like Tesla Motors itself. Thanks again for working on this.

 

[Gwgan]

Planning a trip from my home in midcoast Maine in more or less a straight line crossing a charging desert and some mountains to Quebec City. I hope to be able to reach the CHAdeMO charger in St. Georges so the weather better cooperate.
I tried to outline this trip in several planning programs and found EVTO to the be most helpful.
EVTripPlanner does not have a way to account for the CHAdeMO stop but matches my typical Wh/mi if I add 3000lb payload.
ABetterRoutePlanner lets me add the charger but is cryptic about charge time and efficiency, the end result is close to EVTO.
EVTripping fails to create a route.
PlugShare can add the CHAdeMO but does not have any car or charge details.
EVJourney and EV-Charging, two web-based tools I found just googling around today, just give the route like Google Maps would, with no car or charging info.
Tesla in-car navigation predicts I can make it to the CHAdeMO stop but since it doesn’t have waypoints it won’t be able to tell me how long to charge until I'm there.
YMMV, but I’m subscribing to EVTO now.

 

[aesculus]

I think it's okay to keep using the standard "Rated Range" terminology, as long as it's visibly adjusted to account for degradation on all user screens (including trip details).

I changed to Estimated Range, because that is what it is. While it's based on RR, I apply a lot of factors to that so it's no longer rated, but my guess how far you could go if everything worked out.

I also updated the base numbers a bit as some (M60 for sure), were a bit over inflated. I also found a few places in Trip Details where I had not applied the battery degradation. The estimates in the main portion of the app were correct though.

The next version will have an updated way to determine battery life and the above fixes. Once this is out there it would be helpful if we can start collecting actual data to verify the model so I can make it more accurate.

 

[Gwgan]

Have you thought about adding in a “flattest route” factor? When there are choices to go around a hill along the river or over the hill with the cliff on the high road the efficiency might be much better on the low road even if the route is a little bit longer.

 

[aesculus]

Have you thought about adding in a “flattest route” factor? When there are choices to go around a hill along the river or over the hill with the cliff on the high road the efficiency might be much better on the low road even if the route is a little bit longer.

Wow. You must think I am smarter than I am.

It's sort of technically feasible, but wouldn't the "promised" lowest energy optimization give you what you really want?

 

[majcina]

@aesculus I have iOS v1.1.1, and there is a bug preventing any non-numeric characters from being entered in the "last 6 of the VIN" portion when I customize under the main screen/My Cars menu. I think this was reported earlier in the thread as well. My apologies if you already have plans to address it.

 

[Snerruc]

Tried the app on a simple route I have repeated info on. It seriously underestimated the needed energy. In the other apps, I can adjust speed to +10 and that reflects actual. Is there a place to do this in this app?

 

[aesculus]

Tried the app on a simple route I have repeated info on. It seriously underestimated the needed energy. In the other apps, I can adjust speed to +10 and that reflects actual. Is there a place to do this in this app?

Yes. In Trip Details menu item. See the Power Factor. Try 1 and see what the results are.

It's not a speed adjust but more of a power consumption adjuster.

 

[aesculus]

@aesculus I have iOS v1.1.1, and there is a bug preventing any non-numeric characters from being entered in the "last 6 of the VIN" portion when I customize under the main screen/My Cars menu. I think this was reported earlier in the thread as well. My apologies if you already have plans to address it.

Next release will let you put in anything.

 

[bmah]

Have you thought about adding in a “flattest route” factor? When there are choices to go around a hill along the river or over the hill with the cliff on the high road the efficiency might be much better on the low road even if the route is a little bit longer.

I don't want to take the road that goes over the cliff.

Bruce.

 

[Gwgan]

It's sort of technically feasible, but wouldn't the "promised" lowest energy optimization give you what you really want?

Probably, if "steepness" is taken into account. Google maps does this for bike routes and can do it for cars.

 

[nnick01]

I paid for pro and the subscription.

I am doing a trip from downtown Las Vegas to Hoover dam, and then to Zion National Park. How would I do this successfully?

 

[aesculus]

I paid for pro and the subscription.

I am doing a trip from downtown Las Vegas to Hoover dam, and then to Zion National Park. How would I do this successfully?

You then have three options:

• The quickest, but least accurate is just to do one trip from Las Vegas to Zion and add Hoover Dam as a waypoint. A one way trip. You could make another trip From Zion back to Las Vegas.
• The other way, assuming you are returning to Las Vegas is to do a continuation trip. Do the same as above, but then continue your trip from Zion back to Las Vegas on another segment. That way the weather will be set for a different day. Also this would be best if you actually end up going to more places than just Zion.
• You could do an out and back trip from Las Vegas to Zion and add Hoover Dam on the outbound segment.

Trip Optimizer Tutorial | Digital Auto Guides