Murbs
Member
Tesla's insistence at finding the nearest Supercharger and making a beeline to it regardless of direction is one the most frustrating idiosyncrasies these cars have.
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Tesla Software updates - Australia
- Thread starter Grenadine
- Start date
Tesla's insistence at finding the nearest Supercharger and making a beeline to it regardless of direction is one the most frustrating idiosyncrasies these cars have.
As Zeedoktor said, just click that blue text below Chargefox and the Supercharger stops will disappear and not be part of the routing. It's worked well for me for a couple of years. The Chargefox stop should remain. Of course, not being able to manually select precondition IS a pain and a feature will hopefully be added one day. On the other hand, I've found that as long as you have been travelling at 110km/hr for about an hour, no preconditioning is needed. So it is a pain only when travelling a short distance.
Yeah, we did remove charging stops once we saw what the GPS was doing. It should just make itself known when backtracking in order to prioritise Tesla superchargers.
Interesting about the 110km/hr eliminating the need for preconditioning. Our car (LFP battery) still reported that it was warming the battery for optimum charging when we plugged into a 50kW QESH charger, despite travelling on the highway for a couple of hours.
By comparison, the "dumb" 2022 Kona EV shows multiple charger options in navigation, although it does charge less quickly (maximum 100kW) and slows down a lot more above 80% charge (NMC battery). Here's hoping Tesla make the navigation smarter via an update sooner than later.
Re conditioning (admittedly not with LFP) , I have a number of times had the preconditioning message but when I looked on Scan_My_Tesla found that in fact no extra energy was being used.
Tesla can add third party chargers to the Nav and I understand has done this in some other countries. However, the charge operator has to request this and furthermore must provide excellent uptime and availability statistics and maintain them to stay part of the programme. Then the Tesla will include them in the preconditioning. From my experience of non-tesla DC chargers in Australia, I doubt any of them would yet qualify due to poor uptime stats.
In Europe, over a 60 day period, the charger in question must have been used by a Tesla successfully once every 4 days or more and must have charged successfully over 90% of the time. Not sure if the 90% refers to Tesla or all cars using the charger. If you fail to meet the criteria, you get removed from the Tesla Nav.
Tesla can add third party chargers to the Nav and I understand has done this in some other countries. However, the charge operator has to request this and furthermore must provide excellent uptime and availability statistics and maintain them to stay part of the programme. Then the Tesla will include them in the preconditioning. From my experience of non-tesla DC chargers in Australia, I doubt any of them would yet qualify due to poor uptime stats.
In Europe, over a 60 day period, the charger in question must have been used by a Tesla successfully once every 4 days or more and must have charged successfully over 90% of the time. Not sure if the 90% refers to Tesla or all cars using the charger. If you fail to meet the criteria, you get removed from the Tesla Nav.
Yep, that makes perfect sense.
Last thing Tesla would want is to be directing people to non-functional chargers when they have their own fully functional system which already has the best coverage and reliability.
I do hope that other providers continue to improve and that the ones that prove themselves get added to the app.
The Tesla Superchargers are certainly great. For my own selfish purposes, I would settle for Tesla showing non-Tesla chargers outside the range of the Supercharger network (which is still a long way south of where I live).
It would be great if the option to show non-Tesla chargers was a setting. Default it to off if it doesn't meet Tesla's standards, but at least giving us the option would be an improvement. Having to look at my phone's GPS (while I have the in-car nav set to a Super Charger for preconditioning) is an early adopter quirk that should really be smoothed out.
Early adopters were 9-10 years ago. They had to battle zero chargers and rely on 3 phase plugs in showgrounds.
It's not an early adopter quirk. It's a business decision. Tesla knows full well that the current navigation system is clunky and doesn't recognise third party chargers which results in users being directed to Tesla's own superchargers (and paying 70c/kWh).
We can try to rationalise it how we want but at the end of the day it's about who gets the charging dollars.
It's not really "prioritising" Tesla superchargers, it's just trying to route you to the entered destination with a conservative energy buffer. If you'll get there on over about 10% with no supercharging stops, it won't route you to a supercharging stop.
I know of plenty that would easily qualify. It just seems like that hasn't been rolled out to Australia yet, for whatever reason.
bearing in mind that when this system was set up there were mostly only Tesla chargers available
just a key element in their market success
I am not sure what you are saying. Mine simply doesn't know that non-Tesla chargers exist. In the example of setting a destination of Miriam Vale, I had the option of charging at QESH/Chargefox chargers in Gympie, Childers, Gunalda and Miriam Vale, but the car tried to make me drive back to the Tesla Superchargers in Gympie, because that was the only charger it knew existed.
This last trip was the only time my car has been within range of Tesla Superchargers. I usually manually enter the address of the DC charger I need. This was my first experience of the car trying to steer me backwards to reach the Tesla supercharger charger
There is an option to turn the suggested supercharger routing off in the navigation options. Just do that. It is far too conservative anyways to be useful. Just plan your stops if needed and put them into the navigation as per normal. Worry no more.
NeilA
Member
That's my experience too.
I plan most of my trips on ABRP and Plugshare and enter the non Tesla chargers manually.
A bit of a pain.
Respectfully, I still believe that we are early adopters for the following reasons:
1. Only certain demographics in Australian can afford an EV today. This will obviously change in the future, particularly as the second hand market continues to grow
2. Home charging is not yet ubiquitous. I'm a renter, my landlord actually believes EVs are a conspiracy (apparently I'm "brainwashed" for buying one). There is no chance of me getting an EV charger installed. One of my mates lives in an apartment and wants to buy an EV, yet the strata won't let him install an EV charger. Most renters are locked out of home charging, I'm just fortunate that I can charge at my office
3. Doing a road trip still requires a greater level of planning. Many DCFC in Victoria are single stalls, and as I pointed out, not yet integrated into in-car navigation systems. NSW seems to have a much more developed charging strategy, but it's all over the place around the country
4. The most popular vehicle segment in Australia (polluting bloody utes!) is not (yet) addressed by EVs. Most car manufacturers are still figuring out how to build and sell EVs
5. How we ensure we all contribute to road maintenance is not a solved debate. Regardless of one's personal views on the matter, we have had different attempts at either a distance-travelled levy, and/or variations in cost of registration at a state level
But exciting times ahead
Tell him he is un-Australian. Say you bought your EV to support Aussie mining jobs in Lithium as well as coal miners, while his ICE vehicle is powered by Middle Easterners financing terrorism and such things. Make's their heads spin. Usually my go to comment to those nutters. They don't know what to say.
That's a great way to get evicted in a rental market with historically low vacancies!
My point is just that EVs are still being perceived as "too expensive", "unreliable" or "unfit for purpose". His next is almost certainly going to be electric - as I understand it, he recently bought a Volvo SUV, and this company is committed to be fully electric in Australia by 2026!
As an early adopter in adelaide, here is what I had to contend with;Respectfully, I still believe that we are early adopters for the following reasons:
1. Only certain demographics in Australian can afford an EV today. This will obviously change in the future, particularly as the second hand market continues to grow
2. Home charging is not yet ubiquitous. I'm a renter, my landlord actually believes EVs are a conspiracy (apparently I'm "brainwashed" for buying one). There is no chance of me getting an EV charger installed. One of my mates lives in an apartment and wants to buy an EV, yet the strata won't let him install an EV charger. Most renters are locked out of home charging, I'm just fortunate that I can charge at my office
3. Doing a road trip still requires a greater level of planning. Many DCFC in Victoria are single stalls, and as I pointed out, not yet integrated into in-car navigation systems. NSW seems to have a much more developed charging strategy, but it's all over the place around the country
4. The most popular vehicle segment in Australia (polluting bloody utes!) is not (yet) addressed by EVs. Most car manufacturers are still figuring out how to build and sell EVs
5. How we ensure we all contribute to road maintenance is not a solved debate. Regardless of one's personal views on the matter, we have had different attempts at either a distance-travelled levy, and/or variations in cost of registration at a state level
But exciting times ahead
- no showroom. I had to fly to melbourne and as they also had no showroom so the tesla person brought the car to my hotel. It received way more attention at crown casino than the lambo’s. I think he sold a few more whilst there.
- no public chargers at all anywhere in SA. There were no apps since ev chargers did not exist.
- the car did not come with a 240v plug in charger. I had to convince tesla to change their policy and include one.
- no service centre or technician in the state. If there was an issue, tesla would fly someone in and I would do the right thing and pick him up at the airport. Had lunch too….miss those person to person days. Even got to help him change a screen…all within my garage.
- difficulty in registering due to lack of engine, and therefore no engine number
- constant harassment, and I mean every time you stop, with curious onlookers asking what brand of car that is, and when you say Tesla they just ask “who makes a telsa”
- constant negative questions like “will it get to melbourne”. These days its ”will it cross the nullaboar in record time whilst towing a car trailer and 6 horses” (or insert your own crazy criteria)
- unique tyre size that no tyre shop carried, so I had to keep my own tyre stocks. On the plus side they were cheap as tesla sold them to owners at cost.
- spending $160k (i got the cheap version) on the sole tesla model (there were two variants of model s available) not knowing if the company would survive or whether I’d end up with an unservicable pile of metal. Back then tesla was on the edge of bankrupcy.
- convincing tesla to install a few destination chargers in adelaide/sa so that we had charging that was moderatly quick...and convincing the building owners that it was a good idea.
All of this was a blast and its become less fun as tesla became more structured and corporate, eventually dispensing with the deep person to person contact and resultant friendships.
So great that you have taken the ev plunge and you have your challenges, but as you can see those challenges were next level 10 years ago when tesla entered australia AND decided to sell outside of sydney.
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