EVTripplanner Accuracy

[Tribaltech]

Dear friends

I need some advice. I am a relatively new owner of a Model S. Its the most fabulous vehicle I've ever owned but I have to be honest, as I am planning a road trip from Michigan to Toronto, it is giving me a bit of anxiety. Rather lots of it. I have researched this topic extensively and know that winter driving conditions and high speeds kill range along with HVAC and cold battery with snow, ice or watery road conditions. And that a preheated car and battery is a beautiful thing for long drives and preserving range. And that the EVTripplanner website if your wonderful friend.

On that topic of evtripplaner dot com, I had a question.

Q1.) How accurate is EVtripplaner's route planner? Assuming I enter in the speed multiplier, payload, windspeed, and everything to the best estimate as possible.

Q2.) When EVTrippplanner asks you to stop at a SuperCharger, is that gospel or have you been in situations wherein EVT was asking you to stop and charge at a particular place way more conservatively than it was needed. Did you ever decide to override EVTP's recommendation and just drive to the next SC? Did that work out OK for you or did you regret not following EVTP to the "T"?

Please provide some guidance in how good is EVTP and how reliable is the Tesla Route Planner comparatively? And if you have any other suggestions apart from the above in how I can plan for my trip to reduce range anxiety as best as possible while minimizing the time I spend charging more than i need to. I hope that makes sense.

I greatly appreciate your help with this. Thank you!

 

[ColBatGuano]

I just completed a road trip from Texas to Michigan and back. Lots of headwind, rain, and cold weather. We had to make an extra stop in Illinois on the way home. It was raining and 38° with a headwind hovering around 15mph. Looking at the routes from anywhere in Michigan to Toronto I doubt you will be able to skip any chargers.

Evtripplanner is pretty accurate, I've found the built in Tesla Nav is pretty good too. Another opton is A Better Routeplanner and Waze for Tesla Incidents and Supercharger Traffic will let you view live wind info on your in car browser (I think it can show rain/weather too). I keep PlugShare (for none supercharger charge locations if needed), and NOAA weather radar on my browsers favorites as well.

Don't be too conservative with your charging; if you are nervous go over the charge level that the Nav says by 10-15%.

I'm sure you will get lots of good advice from others more experienced than I. Have a great trip!

 

[Off Shore]

Everyone has their own system, but many of us use EVTP or one of its peers for trip planning, and the Tesla Nav to go from point to point, usually supercharger to supercharger or destination. You get the benefit of the informative energy use graph, which lets you know in real time how you're doing WRT your plan. As with any time you use tools from different sources there may sometimes be issues, but calm thinking after careful planning will get you far. Always add 10-15% to the recommended charge. Most of us were a little freaked on our first trip, and most of us did fine. Welcome!

 

[TexasEV]

First rule of winter driving-- don't skip a supercharger. It's better to have more charge than you need than not enough.

 

[Tribaltech]

Everyone has their own system, but many of us use EVTP or one of its peers for trip planning, and the Tesla Nav to go from point to point, usually supercharger to supercharger or destination. You get the benefit of the informative energy use graph, which lets you know in real time how you're doing WRT your plan. As with any time you use tools from different sources there may sometimes be issues, but calm thinking after careful planning will get you far. Always add 10-15% to the recommended charge. Most of us were a little freaked on our first trip, and most of us did fine. Welcome!

Thank you. You can't imagine how reassuring it is to hear that. I am certainly suffering from "virgin EV driver" issues for sure. A road trip right now is freaking me out and honestly it gets to a point of starting to give you some serious questions in how I could invest in a $90K+ vehicle which has taken me from engaging in what used to be a pretty much brainless activity to a precision-controlled flight planning type of ordeal. Hope after the first trip things get better for me. Doesn't help that no matter what happens an EV road trip will never be faster than an ICE road trip. And that is a fact of life I need to get used to for the foreseeable future.

 

[Tribaltech]

I just completed a road trip from Texas to Michigan and back. Lots of headwind, rain, and cold weather. We had to make an extra stop in Illinois on the way home. It was raining and 38° with a headwind hovering around 15mph. Looking at the routes from anywhere in Michigan to Toronto I doubt you will be able to skip any chargers.

Evtripplanner is pretty accurate, I've found the built in Tesla Nav is pretty good too. Another opton is A Better Routeplanner and Waze for Tesla Incidents and Supercharger Traffic will let you view live wind info on your in car browser (I think it can show rain/weather too). I keep PlugShare (for none supercharger charge locations if needed), and NOAA weather radar on my browsers favorites as well.

Don't be too conservative with your charging; if you are nervous go over the charge level that the Nav says by 10-15%.

I'm sure you will get lots of good advice from others more experienced than I. Have a great trip!

Very helpful, I didn't even know of a Better Routplanner or Waze for Tesla incidents. Thank you so much

 

[S100D]

Very helpful, I didn't even know of a Better Routplanner or Waze for Tesla incidents. Thank you so much

There is another great app called Tesla Winds.

Tesla Winds and Elevation

It is a a bit of a challenge to get working but well worth it. You can do a search on TMC for more information.

 

[RiverBrick]

EVTripplanner is better than the car pre-trip. By the timne you have driven 20 miles, the car is very good about correcting its prediction to account for your actual consumption, though.

EVTripplaner may slightly underestimate your Winter consumption if you have Winter tires.

 

[StaceyS]

I think EVTrippanner is pretty good, but I use the car's trip planning and then use the graph in the Energy App. (Set your destination using the nav app, then click the energy app, and click the trip tab above the energy graph.)

We have a 218 mile trip to the closest Supercharger in the southbound direction from our home. In the winter (which weirdly seem to be when we're most often doing this run), its a bear to make it. There's a free Level 2 charger (230v 80amp) a little over half-way and so far, we've always stopped there for a bit of a buffer, which has always made me feel better. Tesla's going to be installing a Supercharger there pretty soon, which will make the trip a breeze. We're driving from Bend to Tahoe next week for Christmas, and we're only going to be hitting 1 Supercharger on the whole trip (Mt Shasta). The rest of the drive will be aided by that L2 charger in KFalls, and an overnight stay at a hotel in Susanville that has a destination charger.

We've had our car for 18 months now and have driven it long distance in pretty crappy conditions through remote areas. I think I'm getting to the point where I'm not quite as obsessive about range as I used to be, but when you drive in remote areas like we do, its impossible not to think about it!

 

[David99]

I use EVtripplanner a lot. It's pretty accurate, but if course so many factors can influence energy usage that it's impossible to always be correct. A big factor is wind and temperature for example and of course how fast you are going. I like to use it to plan my trip and get an idea where I will be at what time and how long the charging stops will be. Once I go on the trip I never use it. The in-car trip planner is the most accurate tool to use. Since it gets all the data directly from the car it basically considers all factors automatically and in realtime. If you go faster, the trip energy graph will show you how your energy consumption works out to your destination and if you can make it or not. If it gets cold and there is snow on the road, the energy usage from the car will go up but instead of having to guess it, the car's trip graph will show it 100% accurately.
IOW, all these planning tools are great to plan, but you will have to guesstimate some factors yourself. Once you drive, just use the tools the car has.

BTW, i found the most accurate tool is EVTripping.com
It looks up weather data from the time and location along your route and will adjust accordingly. This is much more accurate on longer trips where changes in temperature are common. All other tools only allow one set temperature for the entire trip.

 

[Josh.md.us]

Doesn't help that no matter what happens an EV road trip will never be faster than an ICE road trip. And that is a fact of life I need to get used to for the foreseeable future.

@Tribaltech, welcome and congrats on your Tesla purchase. Interestingly, I've done several trips where driving my Model S was, in fact, faster than driving an ICE. I can plug into a Supercharger, go inside to use the bathroom and buy a cup of coffee, and find my car ready to go when I got back in. In my ICE I would then have to wait in line to get gas. (This was a trip that would take two stops in an ICE and I only stopped twice to charge but arrived at my destination nearly empty. Not every trip works out that way but I wanted to debunk your use of the word "never".)

 

[Tribaltech]

@Tribaltech, welcome and congrats on your Tesla purchase. Interestingly, I've done several trips where driving my Model S was, in fact, faster than driving an ICE. I can plug into a Supercharger, go inside to use the bathroom and buy a cup of coffee, and find my car ready to go when I got back in. In my ICE I would then have to wait in line to get gas. (This was a trip that would take two stops in an ICE and I only stopped twice to charge but arrived at my destination nearly empty. Not every trip works out that way but I wanted to debunk your use of the word "never".)

That's great to hear. Thanks for the encouragement

 

[aesculus]

And from a total time perspective, if you are going to make more than one stop, it's usually better to sip often then gulp occasionally.

 

[_jal_]

One of the things I like about evtripplanner is the ability to enter wind, temperature and payload. Temperature and wind make a huge difference, and it does a pretty darn good job estimating Wh/mi based on those inputs.

 

[David99]

One of the things I like about evtripplanner is the ability to enter wind, temperature and payload. Temperature and wind make a huge difference, and it does a pretty darn good job estimating Wh/mi based on those inputs.

EVTripping.com does it even better. It takes temperature (and maybe wind, I'm not 100% sure) from local weather services. So on a long trip the temperature can change a lot. Instead of one temperature, it automatically calculates the energy usage based on local temperature on your trip.

 

[green1]

evtripplanner is basically perfect, but you have to get your input right, if your temperatures are wrong, or your wind speed is wrong, or your payload is wrong, the results will be wrong.

The on board trip planner is just about useless. It doesn't take payload, headwind, or temperature in to account at all, it often guesses wrong at speeds, and has poor elevation data. If you rely on it, sooner or later you likely will be stranded.

 

[David99]

The on board trip planner is just about useless. It doesn't take payload, headwind, or temperature in to account at all, it often guesses wrong at speeds, and has poor elevation data. If you rely on it, sooner or later you likely will be stranded.

I agree it doesn't take certain things into account, but I wouldn't go as far as calling it useless. Once you start driving it is actually the most accurate tool you have as it takes everything into account by getting energy usage from the car itself. So whatever conditions are out there, it's all automatically accounted for once you are driving and after driving for 5 min you have a very good idea where you will be in terms of energy.

 

[green1]

I agree it doesn't take certain things into account, but I wouldn't go as far as calling it useless. Once you start driving it is actually the most accurate tool you have as it takes everything into account by getting energy usage from the car itself. So whatever conditions are out there, it's all automatically accounted for once you are driving and after driving for 5 min you have a very good idea where you will be in terms of energy.

I welcome you to drive from the Hope BC supercharger, to the Kelowna BC Supercharger then. Please, put in exactly the amount of electricity the trip planner tells you to. Heck, put in a spare 10%, you still won't make it. Not without doing half the speedlimit and praying a lot.

A trip planner that tells me I have a problem, half an hour after I leave the supercharger, is useless. I need to know how much electricity to put in BEFORE I leave the charger.

 

[Max*]

I agree it doesn't take certain things into account, but I wouldn't go as far as calling it useless. Once you start driving it is actually the most accurate tool you have as it takes everything into account by getting energy usage from the car itself. So whatever conditions are out there, it's all automatically accounted for once you are driving and after driving for 5 min you have a very good idea where you will be in terms of energy.

The trip planner is useless.

The trip tab of the energy screen is priceless, while driving.

I think you guys might be talking about 2 different things.

 

[green1]

The trip planner is useless.

The trip tab of the energy screen is priceless, while driving.

I think you guys might be talking about 2 different things.

I'm talking about both. The trip tab of the energy screen is great, but it doesn't help if it won't tell me I have an issue until after I'm driving. That's the whole point, a useful trip planner (like evtripplanner) allows you to decide how long you need to spend at the supercharger before continuing. Nothing on board the car currently serves that function in a way that you can trust.