Do YOU Trust Trip Advisor or Navigator?

[Pruitt]

I sure don't anymore.

Trip Planner and Navigator certainly had their quirks in 7.1, but at least they were not totally spastic. I trusted them to an extent. Trip Planner never gave me any problems, but Navigator did some oddball things at times. like selecting routes that were not the quickest, the shortest distance or even on better roads. Once you learned the quirks, you could account for them easily.

But under 8.0, I trust neither Navigator nor Trip Planner. Reasons so far:

• While in NJ a couple weeks ago, I was heading for a city park in a town near Trenton. Navigator took me to a nearby apartment complex parking lot.
• Last Saturday I drove from Goose Creek, SC to Savannah, GA. Navigator kept switching routes early in the drive, and at one point had me going up Old Trolley Road in Ladson to an intersection with Highway 165, then back down to the same road I was on about a mile and a half further up! The route it selected was about five miles. No reason.
• While returning from Savannah to Goose Creek, Trip Planner told me to charge up at the Savannah supercharger for about 10 minutes. OK so far, but it also wanted me to drive to Santee SC next, and charge up there for about 20 minutes - when Santee is about the same distance from Savannah as my destination (home)! I got a photo of that one (So it's not real good. sorry):

On other trips I've had Navigator flip routes around while the trip is in progress, for no discernible reason, adding miles and time to the drive.

According to the 8.0 Release Notes, Trip Planner is supposed to be much improved. It's "improved" to the point that what it tells you is very suspect.

With this kind of stuff, and the Media Player (USB) faux pas, you gotta wonder what they're smoking in the programming department at Tesla Motors.

 

[Owner]

The trip navigator has had a lot of issues in the past.
Road Trip Testing the New Trip Planner

Some of the problems have been fixed, it is a little better. But you still have to use your head.

Waze isn't great either. Recently I was in a car in San Francisco with a friend who likes it a lot. He spent the entire time looking at the smart phone instead of the road. The worst part was it drove us on a route where the road was blocked for a Giants game -- because the traffic was lighter. There were a slew of cars making a U-turns likely using Waze.

The point I am making is that if you have area familiarity, you need to think your route through not just rely upon technology. I never use turn-by-turn stuff myself. If I had the overview map of SF on my Tesla, I could have seen that there was a lot of green in the Giants parking lot before driving that way. I lived for a few months in that section of town, so I'm familiar with that area although it has grown enormously in the last 10 years.

The USB is a different story. They managed to take features out of the code! Pretty unprecedented in software.

 

[WannabeOwner]

if you have area familiarity

I fell foul of that when I first started using Waze. It showed a route (in town) 3-sides-of-a-square and I said "*&^%$£ to that"! and the moment I went straight on I got caught in stationary traffic and Waze immediately added 20 minutes to my arrival time - good job there isn't a told-you-so voice option!

 

[msnow]

I sure don't anymore.

Trip Planner and Navigator certainly had their quirks in 7.1, but at least they were not totally spastic. I trusted them to an extent. Trip Planner never gave me any problems, but Navigator did some oddball things at times. like selecting routes that were not the quickest, the shortest distance or even on better roads. Once you learned the quirks, you could account for them easily.

But under 8.0, I trust neither Navigator nor Trip Planner. Reasons so far:

• While in NJ a couple weeks ago, I was heading for a city park in a town near Trenton. Navigator took me to a nearby apartment complex parking lot.
• Last Saturday I drove from Goose Creek, SC to Savannah, GA. Navigator kept switching routes early in the drive, and at one point had me going up Old Trolley Road in Ladson to an intersection with Highway 165, then back down to the same road I was on about a mile and a half further up! The route it selected was about five miles. No reason.
• While returning from Savannah to Goose Creek, Trip Planner told me to charge up at the Savannah supercharger for about 10 minutes. OK so far, but it also wanted me to drive to Santee SC next, and charge up there for about 20 minutes - when Santee is about the same distance from Savannah as my destination (home)! I got a photo of that one (So it's not real good. sorry):

View attachment 199131

On other trips I've had Navigator flip routes around while the trip is in progress, for no discernible reason, adding miles and time to the drive.

According to the 8.0 Release Notes, Trip Planner is supposed to be much improved. It's "improved" to the point that what it tells you is very suspect.

With this kind of stuff, and the Media Player (USB) faux pas, you gotta wonder what they're smoking in the programming department at Tesla Motors.

Tesla Nav is TERRIBLE. You can't depend on it and never could. It's always been that way.

 

[byan1232]

I agree with what everyone has said so far.

The only point I would add is that the charging recommendations are accurate. Normally, I arrive at superchargers at the same percentage that the NAV said when I left. Additionally, when the NAV tells you to proceed to the next supercharger, it's always accurate.

I drove from NJ to CA and back this summer and trusted the charging solutions offered by the NAV every step of the way.

In terms of daily routing... that's a different story... Google Maps/Waze is still my best friend.

 

[brucet999]

I agree with what everyone has said so far.

The only point I would add is that the charging recommendations are accurate. Normally, I arrive at superchargers at the same percentage that the NAV said when I left. Additionally, when the NAV tells you to proceed to the next supercharger, it's always accurate.
.

I would add here that Nav's supercharger selections default to the longest trip leg possible, so someone like me, who prefers to stop every couple of hours, may be routed past a SC where a short charge and bathroom stop could have materially shortened the charging time at the Nav-selected more distant SC.

 

[rowdy]

Tesla Nav is TERRIBLE. You can't depend on it and never could. It's always been that way.

This x1000. I've been directed up dirt tracks. Asked to jump over creeks. You absolutely cannot rely on the nav.

It amazes me that Tesla haven't given us Waze/Google maps yet. They work fine on my phone and it's annoying to have to load up each time I jump in the car. Just make the nav use Waze/google and I'm happy. This has been going on for years.....

 

[bob_p]

The current FrankeNAV (Navigon, Tesla, Google) requires human interaction to override the routing recommendations.

At least for us, the Trip Planner typically underestimates the energy consumption while driving to the next charger and underestimates how much charge we should have before leaving a supercharger. When we initially tried following the Trip Planner recommendations, we usually ended up having to slow down considerably in order to stretch the charge far enough to make it to the next charger.

If AP 2.0 is going to support full self-driving, then FrankeNAV will have to be replaced with something that will not require human intervention. The navigation software will have to use much more accurate data - and that is up-to-date for changing road conditions - something like the Google maps data we see today on the console (which isn't used by the NAV software).

The navigation routing will have to be much better - and not have the odd quirks that I see periodically with the current software (which still thinks it takes 5 minutes to drive past two houses on my block).

And the trip planner will have to take into account more driving conditions (elevation changes, rain/snow, wind, traffic congestion, ...) to more accurately predict how much charge will be used on each leg and how much charge will be needed at each charger.

So Tesla will have to make some major improvements to the navigation software in order to support AP 2.0 - the only question is when will we see NAV 2.0?

 

[EinSV]

So far I have had good luck with Nav finding commute routes that I would never take that end up saving lots of time. Yesterday it routed me around US 101 on a surface street I never would have taken, and as I crossed 101 it was packed due to an accident. Last week it routed me home on a road I refuse to take because it is "always" jam packed. For some reason that day it was wide open and smooth sailing and probably saved me 10-15 minutes of commute time. In the past, I loved using Waze and also had good luck with it, and so far in my limited experience Nav seems similar. (And without the incredibly annoying pop-up ads they have on Waze now.) It is not perfect, but so far (a month in) it has worked very well for me.

 

[msnow]

The current FrankeNAV (Navigon, Tesla, Google) requires human interaction to override the routing recommendations.

At least for us, the Trip Planner typically underestimates the energy consumption while driving to the next charger and underestimates how much charge we should have before leaving a supercharger. When we initially tried following the Trip Planner recommendations, we usually ended up having to slow down considerably in order to stretch the charge far enough to make it to the next charger.

If AP 2.0 is going to support full self-driving, then FrankeNAV will have to be replaced with something that will not require human intervention. The navigation software will have to use much more accurate data - and that is up-to-date for changing road conditions - something like the Google maps data we see today on the console (which isn't used by the NAV software).

The navigation routing will have to be much better - and not have the odd quirks that I see periodically with the current software (which still thinks it takes 5 minutes to drive past two houses on my block).

And the trip planner will have to take into account more driving conditions (elevation changes, rain/snow, wind, traffic congestion, ...) to more accurately predict how much charge will be used on each leg and how much charge will be needed at each charger.

So Tesla will have to make some major improvements to the navigation software in order to support AP 2.0 - the only question is when will we see NAV 2.0?

Better question: when will we see a functional Nav 1.0?