Road tripping and navigation

[tugboat1980]

Brand new Model 3 SR+ owner!! Just took delivery this weekend! Loving it so far. I do have a quick question though. I didn’t buy the car for road trips, we use the minivan for that, but my wife and I will be going on a kid-less road trip this summer and are taking the Tesla. I have a question about routes. I know of abetterrouteplanner and generally will prefer more stops (I need to get out and stretch, I have horrible endurance and get sore after long stretches without stops) and prefer ABRP’s more stops philosophy. But, We’ll also be prone to sit down for breakfast at Cracker Barrel or something.

I also think using the onboard nav may be easiest to manage. How many people “wing it” and add supercharger stops when getting close to a city that the Tesla nav has you bypassing? I think this may be how I do this road trip but aren’t sure if others do this.

 

[Gasaraki]

I always use the built in nav IN ADDITION to ABRP. You use ABRP to get an idea of how the trip is going to go, and what road it wants you to use. Then I would use the in car nav to navigate to the different superchargers. You can time your food stops with your supercharging stops if you want BUT the supercharging is too fast for a full meal. So maybe you don't time it at a supercharger or just move the car once it finishes supercharging. (You will get fined if you leave the car plugged in when it's done charging)

Make sure the info you put in to ABRP is correct. I've been finding that the in car Tesla NAV has been doing a better job of doing shorter, faster stops than ABRP recently. ABRP was having me stop at superchargers when I don't need to since I can make the next supercharger with a lower state of charge. (which is better)

 

[RTPEV]

I usually "get to know" the Superchargers en route so I know which ones are easy on/easy off and which ones have better amenities, but of course there have been so many added recently that I'm not even sure I can keep up!

Again, ABRP is your friend though. If you feel like stopping sooner than you need to, you can use the Alternates feature to suggest alternate stops (including the upcoming ones). And, it will now show you what amenities are nearby at each stop (although I don't know if that's a premium feature or not).

As @Gasaraki said, in practice I use both the in-car nav AND ABRP in tandem. Once I've settled on a particular Supercharger, I always navigate to it using the car's nav so that it does any pre-conditioning of the battery. You can do this using the SHARE feature in ABRP to send the next destination to the car.

 

[Knightshade]

I don't use the in-car for charging decisions on long trips because it has no idea where I'm going overall- it only knows where I'm going NEXT.

if I plan to stop multiple places it may well put me in a bad position charging-wise.

ABRP allows waypoints in its routing/charging recommendations- so I pre-plan any long trip there (and seeing the whole route on the map, with charge levels at each place, also potentially allows you to move order of stops around in a way that might be more ideal for your needs too)

 

[UncleCreepy]

I guess it depends on how detailed you want your trip displayed/planned. I've never used anything other than the car nav, even on a 6000 mile road trip and never had any problems. I like to keep it simple which is why I don't use any external apps unless I need to find hotels where I can recharge overnight. Plugshare is good for that purpose.
Regardless which solution you choose, you can't really go wrong.q