Route planning in areas with few superchargers?

[eustachio]

Apologies for the noob question, I haven't found a definitive answer on the forum.

I'm playing with ABRP, and looking at trips in remote areas with no SC coverage, but it keeps coming back with "no plan found".

I can see chargers in this area on plugshare... What's a good way to plan a route in such situations?

Don't have the car yet, but planning on M3 LR RWD.

Thanks

 

[TexasEV]

You answered your own question. Find the charging you need on Plugshare. Route planners are for planning supercharger stops.

 

[cpa]

I have taken a number of journeys that have had 200-350 mile spans without a Supercharger en route. (2014 S85).

I use a paper map to determine my preferred route with a backup route if there are no convenient charging stops.

Plugshare is your friend to determine if there are adequate charging stops.

You may have to spend the night at a campground with 14-50 hookups. You may have to stop for 2-3 hours at a destination charger and offer the owner some $$ for the juice. You may have to find a 15A wall plug and park the car overnight while you are elsewhere.

In addition, you can extend your range by 5-10% by driving much slower that you ordinarily would. Last summer I drove from the extreme northeast corner of California in Modoc County through Gerlach, Fernley, and Carson City, Nevada to the Topaz Lake Supercharger. This drive was 265 miles, and EVTripplanner said that it would take 274 range miles, both clearly beyond the capacity of the battery. I drove about 50 MPH for close to 180 miles (I only saw about 12 vehicles during this time--I was in the middle of nowhere). I arrived with 8% remaining in the battery. I used 228 range miles, starting out near 100% at 251 range miles.

I could have just as easily stopped at a HPWC in Minden, Nevada (about 20 miles closer), and charged at 80/240 for three hours to make it over the Sierra Nevada and home with plenty to spare, as that leg would have been about 40 miles uphill and 165 miles downhill.

 

[eustachio]

You answered your own question. Find the charging you need on Plugshare. Route planners are for planning supercharger stops.

I thought there might be an app/website that would let me plan a route that didn't have superchargers.

 

[eustachio]

I have taken a number of journeys that have had 200-350 mile spans without a Supercharger en route. (2014 S85).

I use a paper map to determine my preferred route with a backup route if there are no convenient charging stops.

Plugshare is your friend to determine if there are adequate charging stops.

You may have to spend the night at a campground with 14-50 hookups. You may have to stop for 2-3 hours at a destination charger and offer the owner some $$ for the juice. You may have to find a 15A wall plug and park the car overnight while you are elsewhere.

In addition, you can extend your range by 5-10% by driving much slower that you ordinarily would. Last summer I drove from the extreme northeast corner of California in Modoc County through Gerlach, Fernley, and Carson City, Nevada to the Topaz Lake Supercharger. This drive was 265 miles, and EVTripplanner said that it would take 274 range miles, both clearly beyond the capacity of the battery. I drove about 50 MPH for close to 180 miles (I only saw about 12 vehicles during this time--I was in the middle of nowhere). I arrived with 8% remaining in the battery. I used 228 range miles, starting out near 100% at 251 range miles.

I could have just as easily stopped at a HPWC in Minden, Nevada (about 20 miles closer), and charged at 80/240 for three hours to make it over the Sierra Nevada and home with plenty to spare, as that leg would have been about 40 miles uphill and 165 miles downhill.

Thanks, this is very helpful, sounds quite the adventure!

I guess there isn't a website that I can use for such scenarios yet so.

I'm fine with that, just wasn't sure if I was missing something.

 

[Rocky_H]

Ah, this is kind of a special interest of mine, since I live in Idaho and when my car was delivered 5 years ago, there weren't any Superchargers within driving distance from me, so I did some adventuring with non-Superchargers.

My basic steps are:
1) Look at www.supercharge.info for the overall map of Superchargers. If the route I'm going is interstates and obviously Supercharger covered, then it doesn't need any planning at all--no need for step 2. I did a 5,000+ mile road trip across the country last year and didn't bother to plan it because of this.

If a route doesn't have full Supercharger coverage, then:
2) Use a combination of Plugshare to find charging points and a trip planner site like A Better Route Planner or EV Trip Planner to plot out how much energy your driving distance to that charging spot will take to see how much margin you'll have and how much charging you'll need to bridge a gap to another charging spot.

My specific method on that is that I use EV Trip planner to plot the full distance straight with no charging. Let's say that says it will use 280 rated miles for that segment. My 2014 S85 can do something like 250-ish rated miles maximum, and I would feel fairly OK doing 220 to 230 rated miles realistically, being cautious. So that would tell me that I need to catch up about 60 rated miles in the middle somewhere. So then I check Plugshare for what charging resources are available and how many amps they have to get an idea of how many hours that charging stop is going to be.

I guess there isn't a website that I can use for such scenarios yet so.

I'm fine with that, just wasn't sure if I was missing something.

There's not an easy app for that, and I would say that's probably because other charging resources that are not the Supercharger network are just so unpredictable in terms of availability and charging speed that a planning tool couldn't give an overall trip estimate without knowing if each stop is going to take 1 hour or 3 hours, or... Superchargers are basically a reliable known charging speed, so they can be figured into multi-stop trip planning.

 

[Xelloss99]

Apologies for the noob question, I haven't found a definitive answer on the forum.

I'm playing with ABRP, and looking at trips in remote areas with no SC coverage, but it keeps coming back with "no plan found".

I can see chargers in this area on plugshare... What's a good way to plan a route in such situations?

Don't have the car yet, but planning on M3 LR RWD.

Thanks

ABRP is still a good planner but when it can't plan a route (or routes way out of the way because there are no direct superchargers) you can add suggestions to it to work out a route.

While ABRP doesn't plan using normal chargers, it still shows them on the map (at least the ones listed on openchargemap).

If it fails to plan a route or takes a long way, take an overall look at ABRP's map looking at superchargers in your general route. If there's a section or sections of road without one, then zoom in along the general route you want to go looking for other chargers.

Pick a likely spot with a charger you might like to stop for a sightseeing, lunch, or supper break, right click it and "Add as waypoint" and drag it on the list in the order where it would be in your route (in the middle somewhere). Click the gear next to it, select the charging power if it isn't automatically populated (or use 6.2 kW for a reasonable 30A/208V charger in a commercial location) and select a 04:00 hour charge time (or as long as you are willing to wait).
Repeat for any known overnight hotel or campground stays with a charger, but instead of specifying charge time, you can specify a waypoint depart at time for the time you leave the next morning.
Then plan the route again. Then when the route comes up, you can see how much charge you have at the next stop from your forced stops and you can reduce the 04:00 hour charge accordingly.
If you specify a depart time on your initial departure point, you will see each stop with the time of day you arrive and depart it too, which can further help out when you want to take your lunch or supper breaks.

 

[eustachio]

Thank you both, super helpful!