Long roadtrip route planning on MCU1 - Tesla vs ABRP

[cucubits]

As crazy as this may sound we're going on a longer roadtrip with the Model S for the first time since we have it (almost 2 years).

I've been going through this a lot and we have multiple options. ABRP shows two quite different routes: one using mainly interstate highways and it's a bit longer than the other route which uses smaller state highways for the most part.

I would very much like to choose one specific route (out of the two ABRP shows) but for the life of me I can't get the car to agree with me. If I put the destination and let it plan the whole thing, it'll always choose the route with the interstate. If I select one by one the superchargers where I actually want to stop, for a while it keeps the route the way I want but then I hit the last one, it just moves the whole route to its initial choice.

It would be cool to have the whole route from the beginning with my chosen stops. Is there a way to do this or I will have to just use legs, navigate manually each time from one charger to the next?

This is the route I'd like but the car always chooses the one with the grey section through Austin/San Antonio. My option would be shorter (both time and distance) and fewer stops. What am I missing here?

 

[beatle]

I use ABRP to plan out the trip and then I always navigate via legs. Navigation is weird.

 

[Steve-O]

As crazy as this may sound we're going on a longer roadtrip with the Model S for the first time since we have it (almost 2 years).

I've been going through this a lot and we have multiple options. ABRP shows two quite different routes: one using mainly interstate highways and it's a bit longer than the other route which uses smaller state highways for the most part.

I would very much like to choose one specific route (out of the two ABRP shows) but for the life of me I can't get the car to agree with me. If I put the destination and let it plan the whole thing, it'll always choose the route with the interstate. If I select one by one the superchargers where I actually want to stop, for a while it keeps the route the way I want but then I hit the last one, it just moves the whole route to its initial choice.

It would be cool to have the whole route from the beginning with my chosen stops. Is there a way to do this or I will have to just use legs, navigate manually each time from one charger to the next?

This is the route I'd like but the car always chooses the one with the grey section through Austin/San Antonio. My option would be shorter (both time and distance) and fewer stops. What am I missing here?


View attachment 666671

As crazy as this may sound we're going on a longer roadtrip with the Model S for the first time since we have it (almost 2 years).

I've been going through this a lot and we have multiple options. ABRP shows two quite different routes: one using mainly interstate highways and it's a bit longer than the other route which uses smaller state highways for the most part.

I would very much like to choose one specific route (out of the two ABRP shows) but for the life of me I can't get the car to agree with me. If I put the destination and let it plan the whole thing, it'll always choose the route with the interstate. If I select one by one the superchargers where I actually want to stop, for a while it keeps the route the way I want but then I hit the last one, it just moves the whole route to its initial choice.

It would be cool to have the whole route from the beginning with my chosen stops. Is there a way to do this or I will have to just use legs, navigate manually each time from one charger to the next?

This is the route I'd like but the car always chooses the one with the grey section through Austin/San Antonio. My option would be shorter (both time and distance) and fewer stops. What am I missing here?


View attachment 666671

 

[Steve-O]

As crazy as this may sound we're going on a longer roadtrip with the Model S for the first time since we have it (almost 2 years).

I've been going through this a lot and we have multiple options. ABRP shows two quite different routes: one using mainly interstate highways and it's a bit longer than the other route which uses smaller state highways for the most part.

I would very much like to choose one specific route (out of the two ABRP shows) but for the life of me I can't get the car to agree with me. If I put the destination and let it plan the whole thing, it'll always choose the route with the interstate. If I select one by one the superchargers where I actually want to stop, for a while it keeps the route the way I want but then I hit the last one, it just moves the whole route to its initial choice.

It would be cool to have the whole route from the beginning with my chosen stops. Is there a way to do this or I will have to just use legs, navigate manually each time from one charger to the next?

This is the route I'd like but the car always chooses the one with the grey section through Austin/San Antonio. My option would be shorter (both time and distance) and fewer stops. What am I missing here?


View attachment 666671

I use ABRP on my iPhone to navigate in these situations. Until we get multiple waypoints this is always a problem. I also set my destination in the cars Navigation system. I use the ABRP guidance until the cars guidance eventually matches ABRP. The other technique is to just use destinations in the cars Nav system that are on the ABRP route but relatively close to you so they match up. Then you have to keep updating the destination but still have the overall solution showing on ABRP until they do match up once again.

Sorry about the above empty post. Trying to figure out how to delete it.

Steve

 

[Steve-O]

The other option to use that works well is like you said, rely on the ABRP selection of Superchargers and navigate to each Supercharger as you go

 

[hgmichna]

You can use the Tesla navigation to navigate to the second or third Supercharger that is already on your desired route.

Once you have passed the branch and driven some distance, you change to your final destination.

Pretty simple, only one modification on the way, and no need for ABRP. I would still check ABRP for comparison and for minimum charging requirements. But it is not absolutely necessary.

 

[JimmyB]

I use ABRP to plan out the trip and then I always navigate via legs. Navigation is weird.

This is also what I did last month, following advice I’d previously read on here. Worked perfectly. I also really like the way ABRP recalculates on the fly, so that if - as happened in our case a couple of times - you take longer at a stop because you’re enjoying your lunch, it will revise its route so you skip the next charger (or whatever the quicker options are)

 

[bob_p]

The difference in the routes could be based on the assumption of how much charge should be present when you reach superchargers.

Tesla really should provide route customization options so the routing engine would take into account the driver's goals for the route. The software should also provide options for alternative routes.

We purchased an Sprinter-based RV last summer (no EV-based RVs - yet) and use Google Maps on Android Auto for navigation. We miss the large display in our S & X while driving. But the navigation software is much, much, much better. We're notified of upcoming issues such as traffic slowdowns, speed traps, ... We're provided options for alternate routes. We can scan ahead on the route for gas stations, restaurants, rest areas, ... Our biggest disappointment is that we're limited by the smaller size of the MBUX console display.

When Tesla introduced NAV 2.0 several years ago, Musk promised we would start to see some significant features added to the navigation software because Tesla had full access to the navigation source code (which they didn't have with NAV 1.0's use of Navigon). But that hasn't happened. And because FSD will be relying on Tesla's navigation software, Tesla really needs to add more functionality to the software - so the occupants would be able to customize the route where the FSD software will be driving.

 

[cucubits]

So we're back from the trip. Using legs with the navigation worked surprisingly well. We just followed our stops suggested by ABRP. It's amazing how accurately it predicts charging times and battery percentages.

For the life of me I can't understand why they haven't implemented a sort of manual route planning in the car's navigation. Surely it's not difficult to program and it would be really useful, especially now that there are more and more supercharges and route choices available. Whenever I tried to let the car set the whole route it would do crazy things like route me towards the interstate even if it's longer and would set the stops to charge for way too long. It's just not good.

We had a lot of fun with this roadtrip, surprisingly the ~2 hour total charge time / 550-600miles is not that bad.


Since this was our first longer roadtrip with the Model S, I've made a list of our findings:

- AP is great. It was easy to find a comfortable position for me to hold the wheel to not have any nags. It's very relaxing on long stretches of highway. You do need to keep paying attention. Once we stopped in the middle of the road to save a turtle. Helped it cross and we were on our way. It's not hard, pay attention and don't run over turtles... I've seen so many dead ones.

- what was most unexpected and a nice surprise is the charging speed. It's a 2016 75D and I was sure it would charge slowly but it looks like the speed restriction did not kick in yet. It started charging with about 120kW down to about 50-60kW when it got over 50-60% full. Perfectly acceptable, only about 20 mins for each stop from 10-20% to 60-70%.

- another unexpected find: driving at 70-75mph vs 85-90mph did not make that much of a difference consumption wise. I expected it to be much higher but it wasn't. I averaged around 300Wh/mile. No idea if this is good or bad. The car has 50k miles.

- I would say that for about 500-600 miles, the 75D is fine, but I do wish it had a bit more range. I feel if I could skip one charging stop and go for about 200 miles / 3 hours legs, it would be much better. Trips longer than this are not viable anymore as the time difference from using an ICE car becomes too big.

- last one for texas drivers. When going out of town - put your front license plate on. We got pulled over for not having it. No biggie, the lady who pulled us over was very friendly and only gave us a warning, but the pucker factor was there when I saw the lights as I was going a few miles over the limit (had already slowed down as the radar detector started beeping a while before that) .

 

[hgmichna]

- I would say that for about 500-600 miles, the 75D is fine, but I do wish it had a bit more range. I feel if I could skip one charging stop and go for about 200 miles / 3 hours legs, it would be much better. Trips longer than this are not viable anymore as the time difference from using an ICE car becomes too big.

In my experience it is much smaller, because in an ICE car you also have to have some breaks.

Filling the tank also takes several minutes, then paying, then moving the car to parking, which is all unnecessary in an electric vehicle.

Sure, you can be faster with a Diesel car and a big tank, but not by that much. Not having regular breaks on a long drive increases accident risk. Take all this into account when you compare.

 

[CaliSurfer]

Thanks for the update! My family and I are going on our first road trip in July in our MS. We are heading from CT to KY. This information was greatly appreciated and will help us plan our trip.

 

[WhiteWi]

If you r new use ABRP as back up, after you figure out how everything works I stopped using it and just used in car nav with my own adjustments to recommended stops. Going 75 produced efficiency around 266 vs 306 or so at 85. That is a lot. To put it in perspective when I left home it showed that I would have arrived at SC with 5% but by driving 70 and staying behind semi’s I was able to go 75 half way in to that leg and arrive with 11% left! 16 MS 75 with 33k and mcu2.

 

[cucubits]

16 MS 75

It's important if it's the 75 vs 75D. The single motor 75 is more efficient and that difference in consumption you mention may not apply quite the same way to the 75D. I wasn't too scientific in my notes but I didn't get that big of a difference in driving 70-75 vs 85-90 with the 75D.

 

[kavyboy]

for texas drivers. When going out of town - put your front license plate on.

Was that in Victoria, TX? That's where I got stopped for no front plate. It was a super friendly younger officer, and I just got a warning. Mostly, he just wanted to know about the car.

 

[Bigtanuki]

I use ABRP while pre-planning the trip to work out the best routes for what we want to see and how far we want to drive in a day. Once I have all the addresses, I load them into the cars nav system one by one. That list then just resides in the list of recent destinations. Once we hit the road it's a simple matter of just picking the next leg off of the recents list.
I agree that ABRP does work pretty well estimating charges and taking into account weather on your trip.

 

[kavyboy]

I use ABRP while pre-planning the trip to work out the best routes for what we want to see and how far we want to drive in a day. Once I have all the addresses, I load them into the cars nav system one by one. That list then just resides in the list of recent destinations. Once we hit the road it's a simple matter of just picking the next leg off of the recents list.
I agree that ABRP does work pretty well estimating charges and taking into account weather on your trip.

I do something similar. I just put the destination superchargers in a notebook before starting, then feed them in one at a time. Otherwise, on my trip, nav will keep trying to route me to the next one even though I'm just doing local driving for a while. (Some of us want to see things along the way.)
The notebook also serves as a log with columns for arrival %, length of charge time, etc. - not that I ever use that info for anything.

 

[cucubits]

Was that in Victoria, TX?

On the long stretch between South Padre and Kingsville, right before the border patrol checkpoint.