My cross country trip.. Routing seems to be off.

[maverick3n1]

I'm planning a cross country trip from California to Alabama. I haven't yet gone on it, but I put the information in my car GPS to see what the trip would look like, time, charge time and so on, as well as to get an idea of what the trip was going to cost me.

What surprised me was the choices it made as to which charge stations I'd be stopping at, and for how long. The algorithms did not appear to work very well when it came to where it had me stopping.

To my knowledge, you get the fastest charge speeds when you are down around 10%. The first charge station it had me stopping at was a 150kwh station when I would have had about 100 miles left in range (This was when I had 250 mile range on the battery). It had me there for approx. 45 minutes (Driving a Model 3 Performance). As I looked at the path and showed all charge stations, I found that if I went another 50-60 miles, bringing my battery down to approx 10%, I would hit a supercharge station off the same freeway that was 250kwh.

The next charge station it had my stopping at after the first one (assuming I followed the original path) was only about 100 miles from the first, and it only had me charging for 15 minutes there. With my change of skipping the 150kwh supercharger for the 250kwh super charger, I could skip the second charge entirely and still have enough power to make it to the third charge station. The charge station staggering seems a bit odd to me. Note that I checked the map range at around 9:30pm, so there was no traffic to account for. I would have arrived at that first charge station at around 11:45pm that it suggested I go to, so it couldn't have been accounting for activity at those locations, as they lot would likely be empty.

Perhaps someone can shine some light on this one?

 

[Nosken]

A Better Routeplanner is great. You can try multiple scenarios. I’ve got 180,000 miles with three over 4,000 mile road trips. ABRP is indispensable. I plan my trip, including meal and overnights with it. I incorporate PlugShare.com to find hotels to charge overnight at. Once planned, I just use the computer in the car, referencing ABRP occasionally.
Enjoy the trip.

 

[RTPEV]

Yes, the car's routing is getting better, but nowhere near is good as ABRP's. Plus, if you don't like what ABRP recommends, it's easy to select alternatives. And unlike @Nosken I actually use it extensively in the car as well (on the browser) for this reason. If I decide I need to stop before the car does, I can select an alternative stop and it will replan. Plus it shows all kinds of great data about upcoming stops including stall utilization, and an energy graph right there in front of you which is very helpful to see.

 

[Rocky_H]

skipping the 150kwh supercharger for the 250kwh super charger,

First off, the units are driving me a little nuts. Kilowatts (kW) is charging power. Amounts of energy are in kilowatt hours (kWh). So refer to the Superchargers as 150 kW or 250 kW.

As to the routing thing, the car navigation's "Beta Trip Planner" is what picks the Superchargers, and I kind of low-key hate it. Whoever programmed it put in a preference that is really bad for actual travel. While other third party sites like www.abetterrouteplanner.com and www.evtripplanner.com use the preference for shortest trip time, which makes sense, the in-car system is set for least number of stops, which is pretty annoying sometimes. So I've had it do some really dumb stuff, like telling me to charge to almost 100% for almost an hour so that it can try to skip over the next Supercharger and arrive at the one after with only 6% left!!! Stupid as %&*@.

So I will put in the whole trip maybe just at the beginning to get some very general idea of what the length of the trip is going to be, but I won't use that while actually driving it. At each stop, when I get to the Supercharger, I'll plug in, and then zoom out on the map a little to find the next Superchargers and then pick the one I like that looks like it's a good distance. If you do use the car's trip planning router, and you see a charging time about 50 or more minutes, it's probably doing that stupid thing of trying to charge too high to skip one. Cancel that and look for a better choice.

 

[LoudMusic]

Same same.

Though I don't think ABRP is overwhelmingly better Mostly it's unbelievably slow. And if you're planning a long trip that routes through multiple Superchargers it might plan entirely different routes by simply resubmitting the route request.

I put the final destination in the car's navigation, then modify along the way. On an all-day or multi-day trip you're probably going to have some impromptu changes anyway.

 

[drtimhill]

As others have noted ABRP is your friend, but make sure to use in-car nav when driving to an SC so it knows to precondition.

 

[vikingrob]

One thing that I have noticed is that the estimates I have seen from the navigation system are good, though along the way I do check the energy graph to get an update on the expected state of charge at the next supercharger or at my destination.

Some other pieces of advice for road trips: First, keep the charger kit that you got with the car in the car. You will eventually need to use it. Second, keep the J1772 adapter in the car. You will need it.

Navigation hints: If you are stopping at a hotel that does not have a 6 kW or better charging station, or to your home if you can't charge at home, charge up to get to the next supercharger, or to your preferred max charge, whichever is more, at the last supercharger before the hotel or your home. Set that last supercharger as your destination for the day. Once you finish charging at that last supercharger, set the hotel or your home as your destination.