Route planning

[vitesse]

I'm amazed that abetterrouteplanner.com (ABRP) is funded just through voluntary donations as it's very sophisticated and very useful. I think it's a little conservative as I have managed to better the predictions; today we did 200 miles including one Supercharger stop and the predicted charging stop was half an hour and a final SoC back home of 21%. We ended up doing additional miles (both purposely and we made wrong turns ) and the Supercharger stop only required a 20 minute stop and we arrived home this evening with 25% in the battery. Of course I'd rather it was slightly conservative so that's perfect.

The in-car nav is also pessimistic on destination SoC compared to real figures at arrival. More concerning is that the Tesla nav is decidedly iffy at times; counting the wrong number of roundabout exits, showing the wrong number of lanes and wanting us to turn in to one way streets the wrong way. This is a bit concerning when the ambition is to enable autonomous cars - with the state of the nav they will be autonomously getting lost a lot of the time!

ABRP is clearly excellent. Is this the only one to consider or there others worthy of investigation as well?

 

[4EVar]

I'm amazed that abetterrouteplanner.com (ABRP) is funded just through voluntary donations as it's very sophisticated and very useful. I think it's a little conservative as I have managed to better the predictions; today we did 200 miles including one Supercharger stop and the predicted charging stop was half an hour and a final SoC back home of 21%. We ended up doing additional miles (both purposely and we made wrong turns ) and the Supercharger stop only required a 20 minute stop and we arrived home this evening with 25% in the battery. Of course I'd rather it was slightly conservative so that's perfect.

The in-car nav is also pessimistic on destination SoC compared to real figures at arrival. More concerning is that the Tesla nav is decidedly iffy at times; counting the wrong number of roundabout exits, showing the wrong number of lanes and wanting us to turn in to one way streets the wrong way. This is a bit concerning when the ambition is to enable autonomous cars - with the state of the nav they will be autonomously getting lost a lot of the time!

ABRP is clearly excellent. Is this the only one to consider or there others worthy of investigation as well?

The Zap Map website and accompanying app is pretty good too. And you can include or exclude all kinds of chargers including some home chargers that people are willing to let the public use (with prior arrangement)

 

[WannabeOwner]

are there others worthy of investigation as well?

No

On your journey that was more frugal than predicted did you hit traffic or roadworks? I rarely have a journey which has a completely clear run, and 20 minutes at 40-50 bumps up the range significantly. I forget who is how here, did you do the Booze Run to France? that got exceptionally frugal figures IMHO so either you have a feather-foot or a frugal car

ABRP Blog has graphs of actual data from cars charging / driving, so prediction is likely to be good because Boo has gone to a lot of trouble, rather than just building "a routing thing".

There was a forerunner but I don't have it in my favourites any more, so can't point you at it. Prediction was good etc. but it gor no development love so languished as ABRP got all sorts of improvements.

You can help ABRP (maybe financially if they sell the aggregated data) by using the Data Logging options.

But, yeah, it would be a decent tool for an annual Sub let alone free/voluntary sub. I have a list of voluntary sub sites that I use and give them all some cash at Christmas time each year (without a reminder system I'd never remember when I ought to nudge myself to next contribute ...)

 

[jollie89]

If you're consistently beating the ABRP efficiency assumption then you could adjust it in the detailed settings. Also, make sure you have your exact model selected or it may be assuming you're in an electron guzzler with low range!

A bit of margin sounds like a good thing though

 

[vitesse]

If you're consistently beating the ABRP efficiency assumption then you could adjust it in the detailed settings. Also, make sure you have your exact model selected or it may be assuming you're in an electron guzzler with low range!

A bit of margin sounds like a good thing though

Yes, I'm a bit of a nerd and have been tweaking the settings endlessly It's actually quite pleasing and reassures me that our new-to-us 70D has a battery in good nick

 

[thegruf]

... This is a bit concerning when the ambition is to enable autonomous cars - with the state of the nav they will be autonomously getting lost a lot of the time!...

Well Elon did say you would be able to summon it from anywhere in the country.
So when it get autonomously lost ... guess you just found out why!

 

[jollie89]

I just read that currently ABRP is currently being conservative and not factoring in the recent supercharger uncorking:

Faster Tesla Supercharging - How does it actually perform?

This could explain shorter charge times than expected.

 

[vitesse]

Sadly, my 70D isn't uncorked (not a limited 75 kWh battery).

Also my expectation was 80kW at the SuC, which I set in ABRP, but me and another guy we're only getting 50kW (careful not to share a supply), so another factor we didn't get penalised for in time.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Sadly, my 70D isn't uncorked (not a limited 75 kWh battery).

I think @jollie89 was referring to the Supercharger giving you more power (than before) rather than extra battery capacity battery being unlocked ... or the performance being uncorked (e.g. when Tesla reduced 0-60 time for the whole fleet [cooking version only ] from 5s to 4s [give or take].

Not enough buzz-words to keep pace with Tesla shuffling from foot-to-foot ...but don't think I've heard of [existing V2] Supercharger upgrade being referred to as "uncorking" ...

me and another guy we're only getting 50kW

That's unusual ... I would have moved to another stall, but clearly if someone else was getting that too maybe there was a problem (don't suppose you know what battery the other guy had? A 75 would get close to 100kW I think, and a 90/100 close to 120 kW [if not paired])

 

[DJP31]

Also my expectation was 80kW at the SuC, which I set in ABRP, but me and another guy we're only getting 50kW (careful not to share a supply), so another factor we didn't get penalised for in time.

What was your SoC at the time and had you been driving long before stopping to charge? I know the new software warms the battery (if you’ve set the SuC as the destination in the Nav) but the battery heater isn’t hugely powerful.

 

[WannabeOwner]

What was your SoC at the time and had you been driving long before stopping to charge?

Ah yes, good point ...

 

[vitesse]

We had been on the road about 90 minutes and SoC on arrival was about 65%. The plan was to top-up to 90% to avoid having to top-up on the way home. The other chap who was already there was charging his MX and also only had 50kW. This was 10:30AM and the temp was 20C.

 

[vitesse]

I think @jollie89 was referring to the Supercharger giving you more power (than before) rather than extra battery capacity battery being unlocked ... or the performance being uncorked (e.g. when Tesla reduced 0-60 time for the whole fleet [cooking version only ] from 5s to 4s [give or take].

Not enough buzz-words to keep pace with Tesla shuffling from foot-to-foot ...but don't think I've heard of [existing V2] Supercharger upgrade being referred to as "uncorking" ...



That's unusual ... I would have moved to another stall, but clearly if someone else was getting that too maybe there was a problem (don't suppose you know what battery the other guy had? A 75 would get close to 100kW I think, and a 90/100 close to 120 kW [if not paired])

The other chap had a recent MX with a 100 kWh battery.

 

[cezdoc]

We had been on the road about 90 minutes and SoC on arrival was about 65%. The plan was to top-up to 90% to avoid having to top-up on the way home. The other chap who was already there was charging his MX and also only had 50kW. This was 10:30AM and the temp was 20C.

At 65% SOC, 50 kW is the maximum you'd expect when Supercharging a 70 battery. There's a great blog post by Abetterrouteplanner - have a look at the graph for BT70 (I have a 70 and the data matches my own experience)
Tesla Battery Charging Data from 801 Cars

If you're sharing, you'd get a flat rate at a multiple of 30kW (i.e. 30, 60 or 90 kW) until the other car's charge rate drops enough to allow your share to go up (to the next multiple or the max your car can take, whichever is lower).

 

[cezdoc]

+1 for Abetterrouteplanner.

What I find is that it doesn't take account of traffic - or possibly uses live traffic data at the time of planning which might be completely different by the time you're on the road, especially for longer trips. As @WannabeOwner points out, any traffic has the benefit of reducing power consumption so you get to the next charge stop with more energy (& reducing your charge time).

So my preferred planning approach for long trips is to use abetterrouteplanner to check charging stops and charging time (and if necessary adjust to fit meal breaks etc.) but to then stick the same route into Google maps to check expected travel time (using "typical" traffic if the trip is taking place at a different time/day). If Google is predicting longer journey legs then I will expect less energy consumption and shorter charging stops.

 

[cezdoc]

I just read that currently ABRP is currently being conservative and not factoring in the recent supercharger uncorking:

Faster Tesla Supercharging - How does it actually perform?

This could explain shorter charge times than expected.

Based on the existing charge profile of the 70 battery, I'd be suprised if it could take any more power. The current (legacy?) charge profile maxes out at about 115 kW up to 20%, after which it declines linearly. So there doesn't look to be much headroom to improve the rate, unlike the 75 kW battery which historically had a lower plateau (under 100 kW) up to 50%, hinting at the possibility of more headroom to increase the rate below 50%.

 

[vitesse]

Thanks everyone. To be honest, I only really mentioned the charge rate because charging finished much faster than expected despite the lower actual power compared to what I'd set in ABRP, plus the other chap was not happy he was only getting 50 kW on his MX and that was what I was getting at the same time. The max I have seen elsewhere with our car is 107 kW for a short time with a little under 30% SoC.

We are fairly strict at not exceeding the speed limit at the moment and that could be helping range. But overall the basic message is that I'm pleased with the range we are getting and also the speed of charging at Superchargers. ABRP is an excellent tool and so far very trustworthy for range planning

 

[vitesse]

The ABRP battery data is also interesting. The classic 70kWh battery I have has a real world capacity that is 89% of the 85 kWh battery rather than 82% based on the respective 70 and 85 kWh labels. You do get more maximum power from the 85, of course, partly thanks to it being a 400V battery instead of 350V.

 

[WannabeOwner]

The plan was to top-up to 90% to avoid having to top-up on the way home

Your journey will be shorter if you charge at the "most distant" Supercharger, rather than the nearest one ... all other things being equal of course.

Supercharger is fastest from 0% up to about 50% and the "pretty good" up to about 70%

As per this ABRP graph (which is specific to 100kWh battery, but the others are same sort of profile, albeit lower MAX value):

you can see that above 60% SoC the charging power, and thus the rate of charging in miles-range-gained per unit time, drops like a stone.

If you have already stopped to charge then worth going up to, say, 80% if it avoids another stop (which will have a 5 minutes get-off-highway, plug-in, get-back-on-highway penalty), and it might also be all-stalls-occupied etc etc ... but if you are going to have to stop again anyway then best strategy is to charge to no more than 60-70%, and then charge at the next one.

 

[vitesse]

@WannabeOwner Thanks for that. But just to make it clear, on Saturday it was my strategy to top-up on the way down to Portsmouth to see our daughter so I could get home again without needing to stop late in the evening on the way home. We were driving back through central London as we were taking our other daughter home to Bermondsey. But I want to stress that I really value your charging insights and that I do understand them