Navigation System Errors: nonsense routes!

[mgboyes]

Does anyone else get mis-matches between the big screen nav and the small screen? I've had two occasions now where the large screen shows I'm on the road that I am on while the small screen thinks I'm off-roading and keeps trying to re-route me.

Really bizarre and annoying.

Small screen is a built-in map database that can be (and often is) out of date. Periodically updates get downloaded for this to the car, but not that frequently.

Big screen on the other hand is live google maps streamed over 3G. Much more likely to be up to date.

So if you're driving on a new road it's very likely the big screen will show you on the road but the small one will think you're off-roading.

 

[CharlesJR]

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Count me in on the Eastern Shore MD routing failures. On Sunday I drove from home (DC area) to Ocean City, starting with 100% charge. The nav system told me to go through Newark DE and then down to Salisbury, and at various points (as I ignored it and headed east on Route 50) it warned me to drive slowly or I wouldn't have enough range. Of course I had plenty.

I can maybe understand the nav system trying to avoid the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, especially if there's a really bad delay on it (though there wasn't when I made the trip). And in fact as soon as I passed the last exit before the bridge, the route corrected itself. But even stranger to me is that if it's going to route me so far north, through Newark, why doesn't it tell me to charge in Newark if I wouldn't have enough to make it to Salisbury?

I used the voice bug report feature in the car; not sure if they follow up with people who make reports but I'd guess not in a case like this. I do hope they're taking all the nav fail feedback into account though.

Just an FYI ... since you are coming up from Falls Church, VA ... there is a 30AMP charger (free) at the Whole Foods in Annapolis Town Center. You can grab a bit to eat for 45min while putting a quick charge on the car.

From there, if you actually follow the 404 to 113 south, its about 25 miles less than going down Route 50. 113 will hit Route 90 into Ocean City. So unless you need the Salisbury Supercharger and have access to plug in power at your destination, its better for the charging to go that route.

Now, keep in mind its not straight highway driving ... there are a lot of lights, but this help with regen. The point is that while its a shorter trip, it still takes about two hours from Annapolis.

The thing for me is how I think in terms of distance now, not necessarily time to travel.

CharlesJR

 

[paulkva]

Just an FYI ... since you are coming up from Falls Church, VA ... there is a 30AMP charger (free) at the Whole Foods in Annapolis Town Center. You can grab a bit to eat for 45min while putting a quick charge on the car.

From there, if you actually follow the 404 to 113 south, its about 25 miles less than going down Route 50. 113 will hit Route 90 into Ocean City. So unless you need the Salisbury Supercharger and have access to plug in power at your destination, its better for the charging to go that route.

Now, keep in mind its not straight highway driving ... there are a lot of lights, but this help with regen. The point is that while its a shorter trip, it still takes about two hours from Annapolis.

The thing for me is how I think in terms of distance now, not necessarily time to travel.

CharlesJR

Thanks for the tips. I like 50 a bit better than 404-113 to get to Ocean City, so Salisbury was an easy stop for us. (And I could take 404 to 13 if I still need the Salisbury supercharger on future trips.) We spent a day in Rehoboth Beach before heading home, so we took 404 back.

Side note: all three Tanger Outlets locations in Rehoboth now have 30A ChargePoint stations (4 plugs each!). And (slight bonus) they operate at 240V, not 208V. No fee to charge, but we spent more than I had expected shopping there.

 

[Tinky]

Yes - I was traveling from Bend Oregon to Mt. Shasta supercharger (July 4, 2015) and the nav insisted that I go to Grants Pass before going to Mt. Shasta ?!?' Grants Pass was farther than Mt. Shasta ?!?!

 

[Ebony Star]

Version .251 improvement?

Last night Got version .251 and trip planner seems to be more logical. Routed to a SC (first one on route) that was not in range but was the closest to my preferred route. It also gave a warning that charge was needed. Before .251 it routed me hundreds of extra miles just to use the closest SCs.​

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

Admittedly I don't take a ton of road trips using the Supercharging routing. Admittedly I haven't kept up with TMC in the last few months. So perhaps this is "normal" but here we go...

Driving on a road trip from Seattle to Central Oregon this weekend I had planned on skipping the Centralia Supercharger and heading right to Woodburn which was within range and 20% of battery to spare. (you don't need to know the Northwest for the following...)

Having done this drive before I knew I didn't need to stop in Centralia. In fact, when I hit trip overview it said to stop in Centralia and "0 min charging required." Odd.

So I drove past Centralia. About 40 miles past it on the way to Woodburn I changed the Nav destination to the Woodburn Supercharger (not my final destination in Central Oregon). I was SHOCKED to see it telling me to turn around, drive 40 miles back to Centralia, charge for 10 minutes, re-drive that 40 miles on the way to Woodburn. That made NO sense (screenshot 1)

So on the Nav I hit "remove all charging stops" and sure enough it said I could drive the 82 miles to Woodburn and arrive with 19% battery life (screenshot 2). So I could drive straight and arrive with 19% battery or I could drive an extra 80 miles and charge for 10 minutes to reach the same destination. Odd. Needless to say, I rolled into Woodburn with 60 miles of range left.

It was funny, this "issue" caused me to wonder what the car/Tesla knew that I didn't! I was actually considering calling Tesla to find out if there was something wrong with the Woodburn Superchargers! All in all, I ignored the Nav and arrived fine. Is the Supercharging routing normally this odd?

I had a similar issue with the firmware prior to 6.2.253 where if I was in Portland, and I wanted to go to Seattle it would try to take me all the way to Woodburn first. It did that even though I had enough to get to Centralia with 15% buffer or so.

But, with the latest firmware it simply directed me to Centralia from Portland even though the buffer was only 13% or so this time.

It's like the buffer percentage changed from a previous version to this one, or maybe it's just completely sporadic on what it does.

 

[NigelM]

There's still some odd bugs even after .253 and it's not all related to superchargers. My wife entered a destination this morning (somewhere she hadn't been before) and the car took her on a 45min journey which I then did directly a couple of hours later in 19mins. There's no reason either of us can see why the car took her on a circuitous route.

 

[austinEV]

I just did my longest road trip and I thought I would post my experiences. I got the "go back to the supercharger you just left" bug, among other issues. I had stopped and charged for a good long time and had way more charge than I needed to make it to my destination (which also has a SC). I didn't know the area and was leaning heavily on the nav. I was driving away from the charger and it told me to take a random exit, which I dutifully did thinking I had missed my highway. I was on the right one, the nav was routing me back to the charger I had just left... I was tired, in unfamiliar city traffic and I was very upset it had me get off the highway, turn around before I could get my head on the map and see what it was doing. After undoing what it was telling me, I had to remove charging stops and just route to the destination.

I think it is interesting they have the "remove charging stops" button. It's only utility seems to be to get rid of routing bugs. who else would do that?

Also, 2-3 times the voice instructions had Left/Right backwards. I think I outsmarted it every time, since the maps and POV directions where telling me which way to go, but very distracting.

Overall I would say the trip planning nav is worse than nothing. I will use it while parked to get an overall look at a long trip, but I will never try to navigate with the long trip planner feature again.

 

[Ingineer]

I just did a 1200 mile trip and just made sure to manually route to the next SC. Worked well except for the auto-reroute due to traffic. I like the feature, but I wish it would at least tell me it's rerouting, and better yet give me the option of taking the new route before it just starts executing.

This is especially a problem if the new route is longer and/or uses more kWh. In the most recent case I was going to arrive at my SC destination with 5% SOC, but the auto-reroute used a lot more energy, and I was showing -1% afterwards and had to drive carefully to make it. The routing change was no obvious, I was just following what it was indicating. You have to watch it carefully if you don't want to be a victim of this!

 

[mikeash]

Add me to the list of people getting crazy routing to the MD Eastern Shore. I didn't even know this was an ongoing thing!

It originally routed me through the Salisbury SC with a route across the Bay Bridge. When I told it to delete charging stops, it then gave me a crazy route, which then persisted even if I went back to adding charging stops.

That made me suspicious, so I rebooted both screens. After rebooting, it found its brains and gave me a much better route:

I have trouble figuring out why a reboot would change its choice of routes, but it might be worth a try if you see something similar.

 

[N4HHE]

Overall I would say the trip planning nav is worse than nothing. I will use it while parked to get an overall look at a long trip, but I will never try to navigate with the long trip planner feature again.

For serious travel I carry my $100 refurbished Garmin Nuvi.

 

[ltgfrk]

We were coming back from the Key's last week and hit the Marathon supercharger on the way back. Next stop, home in Boynton Beach. however, to get home the Nav wanted us to go past our house another 20 miles or so to the West Palm supercharger, charge there for 5 or 10 minutes and then go back south to our house that we would have then past nearly an hour prior. Crazy. Skipped that part and went straight home arriving with ~60 miles of range left.

 

[SabrToothSqrl]

Tesla Nav: You So Crazy!

 

[NigelM]

We were heading off to a local mall and (testing the system) I tapped on one of the grey charging icons which I know is at the Tesla store there. The nav system insisted on what I knew to be a circuitous route so I drove the route I remembered and waited for the nav to reset itself to the direct route I was taking. After about 5 minutes of multiple "Please do a U-turn" and close to our destination I zoomed in on the map and once the smaller side roads appeared the nav system did indeed reset to a direct route. This is reproducible and seems to be related to whether the system can 'see' the roads depending on how zoomed in the map screen is.

Is this a clue to odd Nav system behavior?

 

[RichardL]

We were heading off to a local mall and (testing the system) I tapped on one of the grey charging icons which I know is at the Tesla store there. The nav system insisted on what I knew to be a circuitous route so I drove the route I remembered and waited for the nav to reset itself to the direct route I was taking. After about 5 minutes of multiple "Please do a U-turn" and close to our destination I zoomed in on the map and once the smaller side roads appeared the nav system did indeed reset to a direct route. This is reproducible and seems to be related to whether the system can 'see' the roads depending on how zoomed in the map screen is.

Is this a clue to odd Nav system behavior?

Wow - that would be a horrible bug - need to check and confirm that somehow

 

[mgboyes]

We were heading off to a local mall and (testing the system) I tapped on one of the grey charging icons which I know is at the Tesla store there. The nav system insisted on what I knew to be a circuitous route so I drove the route I remembered and waited for the nav to reset itself to the direct route I was taking. After about 5 minutes of multiple "Please do a U-turn" and close to our destination I zoomed in on the map and once the smaller side roads appeared the nav system did indeed reset to a direct route. This is reproducible and seems to be related to whether the system can 'see' the roads depending on how zoomed in the map screen is.

Is this a clue to odd Nav system behavior?

All the routing calculations are done by the built-in Navigon nav system (the one that generates the maps in the instrument cluster). It has no idea how zoomed in the google map is (which is just a pretty picture of your route, not part of the route calculation).

 

[NigelM]

All the routing calculations are done by the built-in Navigon nav system (the one that generates the maps in the instrument cluster). It has no idea how zoomed in the google map is (which is just a pretty picture of your route, not part of the route calculation).

Which is what I had always assumed before. I may be wrong but I'm wondering if there is in fact some other detail in the calculation that we've haven't understood. Crazy routing is not uncommonly reported on the forums.

 

[mgboyes]

Which is what I had always assumed before. I may be wrong but I'm wondering if there is in fact some other detail in the calculation that we've haven't understood. Crazy routing is not uncommonly reported on the forums.

I think the main source of the "crazy" is the rumour that as of v6.0 Tesla switched out Navigon's routing calculation module and inserted their own (while still using the rest of the Navigon product like the map database, audio prompts, junction diagrams, instruction generation, etc etc). If you go read some of Navigon's marketing materials for OEMs you can see it's all very modular so quite easy I'd guess to replace one component like this.

We've also relatively recently gained traffic data, and if that's of low quality, or out of date, or is being misinterpreted, then all sorts of oddness could result.

 

[RichardL]

During a long road trip over the last week I noticed another 'bug' that I haven't seen mentioned before - often my route involved 100+ miles on the same freeway (I-5), so I clicked the Trip button in the navigation window - that shows miles, anticipated time and ETA, along with the expected remaining battery %. However, the anticipated journey time didn't seem to be going down anything like you would expect at 70mph - in fact the ETA was getting later and later.

When I clicked the 'resume' button to show the next turn etc. it had the same mileage, but the anticipated journey time was much more realistic. Going back to trip reverted to the 'slower' journey time. So the longer the journey the more and more these two journey times got out of sync. So for some reason the 'Trip Overview' calculation is using a different set of figures than the Detail calculation!

On the plus side, I did find the routing to be much more worthwhile in 2.5.36 than previously - it re-routed me around some bad traffic on several occasions

 

[bobweiser]

I have had a real problem with the navigation. Although it is Google Maps, it doesn't seem to be near as accurate as navigation on my android phone or near as
well as MapQuest. Sometimes going a much longer way that makes no sense. Sometimes taking me out of the way when I'm already on a straight road to my
destination. I would never plan a road trip without bringing a paper map with me. Terrible I have to do that. I'm trying to "save" miles and it's taking me miles
out of the way.