If the car plans a route through the mountains, does it take into consideration the impact on range that going up a steep mountain road will have on range? I am concerned that it is too optimistic about how far I can go before charging on a route that I know kills the gas mileage in an ICE car.
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Route planning through mountains
- Thread starter Hahne
- Start date
araxara
X-LR M3AWD, MYLR
I drive from Tucson, AZ to Pinetop, AZ. This 200 mile trip has about a 4000ft elevation rise. I usually do a bit better than the trip screen, but in any case it’s usually within 5%. The nice thing on the trip screen is that it also shows your current consumption along with its projection. This allows you adjust your speed to better match the projection in case you are off.
There was talk in the past that the navigation would also take wind speed into account, but I don’t think that is factored in currently. For my trip, wind speed can be a factor because some areas have 65mph speed limits. I usually drive them at 69mph.
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RTPEV
Active Member
I find it accurate, if not a bit pessimistic (in other words, I usually do better than the car predicts). But of course, your mileage literally may vary.
abetterrouteplanner.com also takes elevation changes into account, and I find this to be even more accurate (partly due to the fact that it "learns" your specific car and driving style if you've granted it access to your telematics), as well as providing the ability to pre-plan a trip.
Here is my advice: if you have concerns about how accurate the range prediction is, just set conservative arrival SOC goals (this is easily done in ABRP) the first time you take a trip. So rather than arrive with 10%, arrive with 20-25% for that first trip until you get confidence in its ability to predict range. You will have to sit at charging stations a bit longer, but that may be preferable to you than having range anxiety.
Then, when you are on your trip, monitor the trip energy graph in your car:
This will give you a very clear visual picture of whether how you are doing (green line) compared to the original prediction (gray line). If you are above the line, then all is good. Below the line, the car was optimistic, but unless the arrival SOC drops below an uncomfortable threshold (5% or so?) then you are still fine. If it's well below, then you had better come up with a new plan!
ABRP offers this type of display as well along with all kinds of other great info:
The gray background in the ABRP display is the elevation map, so you can see in this example a long downhill section, and you can also see that the lines in both displays are not perfectly straight, indicating that yes, it is taking the elevation changes into account.
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Terminator857
Active Member
I find that people who drive aggressive / fast, tend to find estimate optimistic, at least EPA estimate. Those that are not in a rush tend to beat the estimate.
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RTPEV
Active Member
That makes sense, although usually on a road trip I have it on autopilot, so the car is just driving the way it wants!
Around town, I agree that the car's predictions are significantly optimistic and I don't nearly get the range it says I should (that is also due to more stop and go and climate control use as well).
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Same here, but I've noticed that if your trip has both up and down elevation changes, the regen estimate is overly optimistic.
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RTPEV
Active Member
You can with ABRP. While it takes into account weather (temperature, wind and precipitation), you can also force it to use whatever energy consumption figure you want rather than have it use what it's learned from your driving.
As I said above, however, commuting efficiency is usually much different than long distance road trip efficiency. Not only do you get more stop and go events (which eat your efficiency), but you also have to contend with getting the cabin heated/cooled to a comfortable temperature, which significantly impacts efficiency at the beginning of the commute/trip, but not so much for the main part of the trip. You also need to contend with reduced battery CAPACITY (not efficiency) when the battery is cold soaked, which is less of a concern on the second and subsequent legs of winter road trips.
Fortunately one rarely needs to "plan" commutes (of if you do, you possibly didn't get a car with adequate enough range). While range/efficiency is typically horrible during cold winter commutes, it's at least predictable and if you have a car with enough range, you simply plug it in every day (or as often as needed) as part of your daily routine.
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