My P85D is in Boulder, CO with 6.2. Given that I drove to San Diego and back a few weeks ago, I decided to give the Trip Planning feature a try to see how it worked compared to my manual trip planning.
The first test was to put in a trip to Del Mar, CA from the car's location in Boulder, CO. Here is the screen that resulted:
That was the route that I returned on. It is obvious that the Trip Planner leans heavily towards minimizing the number of Superchargers used rather than minimizing total travel time. I was surprised that Barstow, CA was skipped between Primm, NV and Rancho Cucamonga, CA, and that Beaver, UT was skipped between Richfield, UT and St George, UT.
I decided to do a comparison of times with and without the intermediate charging stop. My method was to use EV Trip Planner to predict energy use, travel time, and distance traveled. I set the parameter to an 85 with 19's, speed 1.0, and the rest default. Remember that 1.0 speed means average Google travel speed, not posted speed limit. For charge times, I assumed the rated miles predicted by EV Trip Planner plus 50 miles; this is about a 20% reserve, when the charge state changes from green to yellow. I calculated the charge times calculated using Tesla SuperCharge timer - Google Sheets. The results were consistent with the charge times calculate by the Trip Planner.
Trip Planner Analysis - Google Sheets shows my analysis results.
Here is a summary:
Stopping in Barstow is a big win, stopping in Beaver is a slight win, and Las Vegas is a wash. Travel time on and off the highway to Vegas is what makes that a wash. Barstow is a big win because Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga is a stretch, especially with a 50 mile buffer.
It is obvious that the Trip Planner function picks fewer Supercharger stops rather than minimizing travel time.
My next test was to plan a route to Pagosa Springs. To do that quickly requires hypermiling from Silverthorne to Pagosa or stopping at the HAL2 in Salida. Neither of these are in the Trip Planner mindset. The actual route was through Silverthorne, Grand Junction, and Farmington, Supercharger centric, but the long way around.
The last test was the most surprising. I asked the Trip Planner to pick a route to the Flagstaff, AZ Supercharger. I thought that it would pick the route via the original 4-corners S-turn. The surprise was that the Trip Planner could not find a route.
The first test was to put in a trip to Del Mar, CA from the car's location in Boulder, CO. Here is the screen that resulted:
That was the route that I returned on. It is obvious that the Trip Planner leans heavily towards minimizing the number of Superchargers used rather than minimizing total travel time. I was surprised that Barstow, CA was skipped between Primm, NV and Rancho Cucamonga, CA, and that Beaver, UT was skipped between Richfield, UT and St George, UT.
I decided to do a comparison of times with and without the intermediate charging stop. My method was to use EV Trip Planner to predict energy use, travel time, and distance traveled. I set the parameter to an 85 with 19's, speed 1.0, and the rest default. Remember that 1.0 speed means average Google travel speed, not posted speed limit. For charge times, I assumed the rated miles predicted by EV Trip Planner plus 50 miles; this is about a 20% reserve, when the charge state changes from green to yellow. I calculated the charge times calculated using Tesla SuperCharge timer - Google Sheets. The results were consistent with the charge times calculate by the Trip Planner.
Trip Planner Analysis - Google Sheets shows my analysis results.
Here is a summary:
Start | Intermediate | End | Without Stop | With Stop | Time Saved |
Richfield | Beaver | St George | 3:09 | 2:58 | 0:11 |
St George | Las Vegas | Primm | 3:14 | 3:12 | 0:02 |
Primm | Barstow | Rancho Cucamonga | 3:42 | 3:14 | 0:28 |
Stopping in Barstow is a big win, stopping in Beaver is a slight win, and Las Vegas is a wash. Travel time on and off the highway to Vegas is what makes that a wash. Barstow is a big win because Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga is a stretch, especially with a 50 mile buffer.
It is obvious that the Trip Planner function picks fewer Supercharger stops rather than minimizing travel time.
My next test was to plan a route to Pagosa Springs. To do that quickly requires hypermiling from Silverthorne to Pagosa or stopping at the HAL2 in Salida. Neither of these are in the Trip Planner mindset. The actual route was through Silverthorne, Grand Junction, and Farmington, Supercharger centric, but the long way around.
The last test was the most surprising. I asked the Trip Planner to pick a route to the Flagstaff, AZ Supercharger. I thought that it would pick the route via the original 4-corners S-turn. The surprise was that the Trip Planner could not find a route.