Road trip planning tools [ABetterRoutePlanner and EV Trip Optimizer]

[lupend88]

I saw this in the Model S thread and I'm sure many of you have already seen this. Major thanks to @blincoln for putting this together. See his original post below and click on the link to plan your Model 3 trip! This personally helped me decide I wanted to spring for the larger battery as well.

A Better Routeplanner

As a new Model S owner, I felt the need of a route planner for my Tesla which helped me plan my long trips using Superchargers. The in-car planner has its issues and many other sites did not fit my specific Tesla needs either.

So, I hacked up A Better Routeplanner (which was a lot of fun). It works both off-car in your computer and phone as well as in the car browser. It will even follow your car as you drive and follow-up the consumption.

Try it out and see if you find it useful.

 

[Thomas Edison]

This is really helpful, thanks for sharing it!

 

[lupend88]

This is really helpful, thanks for sharing it!

No problem! I've been messing with it all day.

 

[insaneoctane]

@lupend88
Quite awesome, thanks!

 

[jtpassat]

this is quite nice. I like the features of setting how much charge to start and finish with. much better than that other trip planner.

 

[lupend88]

this is quite nice. I like the features of setting how much charge to start and finish with. much better than that other trip planner.

Agreed. Does anyone know if the Model 3 will be able to do this on it's own?

 

[PRSIST]

Agreed. Does anyone know if the Model 3 will be able to do this on it's own?

I would find it hard to believe that the navigation capabilities of the Model 3 are going to be any different from the MS&X. The Nav will route through superchargers which is great.

This is a nice little route planner. I have taken all the GPS coordinates of the superchargers and uploaded it into my Microsoft Streets and Trips program and use that to route through superchargers. Not as precise as this little planner does though. I like the drive time, and recharge time estimates to give a little more insight on travel time. One of my trips calls for 1 hour and 40 minutes to charge in order to get to the next supercharger. Will have to some checking on that.

 

[dswansonsb]

Nice. Could you add an option to set a minimum departure charge percentage? I'd much rather arrive at my destination with as much of a charge as possible (slower charging rates at destination) and take advantage of faster supercharger charging rates along the route.

 

[jsmay311]

It looks like a pretty slick site, but I'm awfully confused by the routes and travel times it's spitting out for me.

For example, testing a trip from my house in the western suburbs of Chicago to Cincinnati, it routes me through the LaFayette, IN Supercharger, which makes sense. But it takes a route through Chicagoland that avoids all of the expressways (which would significantly increase travel times) and then gives an estimated travel time that is WAY less that what Google Maps estimates.

Here are the ABRP vs Google Maps estimates for the trip from my hometown to the LaFayette, IN supercharger using a 100% reference speed:

ABRP route estimates: 144 miles, 2:22 driving time (A Better Routeplanner)
Google Maps, ABRP route: 144 miles, 3:18 driving time (Google Maps)
Google Maps, default route: 159 miles, 2:28 driving time (https://goo.gl/maps/fkKuf5R43Sn)

The difference in the times is not due to Google adding time for traffic delays (there is little/no traffic currently, and changing the departure time to the middle of the night doesn't reduce the travel time much), nor is it due to ABRP forcing a shorter route because it estimates the car not having enough charge to reach the SC.

I recognize that in some cases an EV would be best served deviating from Google Maps' default route if there's a shorter route that only slightly increases the driving time. But these routes and time estimates just don't seem to make any sense no matter how I slice it.

 

[jsmay311]

Is anyone else getting unusual routes and wildly unrealistic travel times from A Better Routeplanner?

 

[Thomas Edison]

Is anyone else getting unusual routes and wildly unrealistic travel times from A Better Routeplanner?

Mine looks perfectly fine with about 50 different destinations.

 

[Ken7]

Great planner. What assumption, in terms of battery range, does this use?

 

[jsmay311]

Mine looks perfectly fine with about 50 different destinations.

Thanks.

Upon further inspection, this is so weird... It looks like when starting a route near my hometown (Aurora, IL) and heading south, ABRP wants to force the route to take the local US Highways (30 and 52 specifically), and then it assumes you'd go WAY faster on those roads than you actually would.

Idk if this is just a bug that's unique to my neck of the woods, or if it's a more systemic problem.

 

[Thomas Edison]

Thanks.

Upon further inspection, this is so weird... It looks like when starting a route near my hometown (Aurora, IL) and heading south, ABRP wants to force the route to take the local US Highways (30 and 52 specifically), and then it assumes you'd go WAY faster on those roads than you actually would.

Idk if this is just a bug that's unique to my neck of the woods, or if it's a more systemic problem.

What is the actual speed you would go vs what it says?

 

[Arthur Tucker]

You can change your max speed in the options, this may be affecting travel time.

 

[jsmay311]

What is the actual speed you would go vs what it says?

I don't think it gets into the level of detail of showing specific speeds on specific roads, but you can see in my first post above that ABRP was estimating a 2:22 travel time for a route that Google Maps estimates 3:18. In contrast, when I pick a different starting point somewhere else in Chicagoland such that it doesn't route through these few US highways and instead takes interstates, the time estimates closely match Google's estimates. So based on that I'm inferring that the average speeds that ABRP is estimating on these US highways is inaccurate.

You can change your max speed in the options, this may be affecting travel time.

Thanks, but that's not affecting it.

 

[gregincal]

I think it uses a much more simplistic model in terms of time than a real trip planner like Google maps. At the moment I'd use it more to see where and how long you might need to charge, rather than estimating your total trip time (you can add that time on to the Google map estimate).

 

[Thomas Edison]

Thanks.

Upon further inspection, this is so weird... It looks like when starting a route near my hometown (Aurora, IL) and heading south, ABRP wants to force the route to take the local US Highways (30 and 52 specifically), and then it assumes you'd go WAY faster on those roads than you actually would.

Idk if this is just a bug that's unique to my neck of the woods, or if it's a more systemic problem.

Your average speed going the same route is 61mph on ABRP and 44mph on google. Being that it's currently rush-hour, isn't it safe to assume that google was accounting for traffic and ABRP wasn't? Wouldn't that account for the discrepancy?

 

[gregincal]

Your average speed going the same route is 61mph on ABRP and 44mph on google. Being that it's currently rush-hour, isn't it safe to assume that google was accounting for traffic and ABRP wasn't? Wouldn't that account for the discrepancy?

In my case I deliberately told Google I was going to start my journey at 3am. It still showed 25% longer driving time than what was predicted by ABRP.

 

[Thomas Edison]

In my case I deliberately told Google I was going to start my journey at 3am. It still showed 25% longer driving time than what was predicted by ABRP.

That is weird, I think using your advise from your earlier post makes a lot of sense.