I wrote a blog post on my test of the new trip planner. The post is 3,200 words Road Trip Testing the New Trip Planner | TESLA OWNER .
In summary with the current software, Tesla is trying to appease two opposing needs at the same time: range anxiety and optimal charging time. Unfortunately, these two needs are inversely correlated. If I want to have no range anxiety, I would fill up my battery as much as possible before continuing or at least add more of a cushion, but that would take up more time at the superchargers. If I want to optimize my charging time, I need to watch the driving speed and monitor the energy usage.
The trip planner is working aggressively to get you out of the superchargers as fast as possible. But then as you leave the supercharger, the range assurance software starts to kick in and then get quite nervous that you need to charge quickly if you use more energy than the trip planner expected. The current setup can trigger quite a bit of range anxiety because there is so little margin between these two parts of the software causing a lot of early warnings.
Here are my summary points that I think drivers should know when using these features.
1. The amount of time to charge at each supercharger is relatively aggressive giving you an extra 25 miles to drive. If you want to drive faster than the speed limit or take any detours, you may wish to top off further.
2. While driving from supercharger to supercharger and stopping perhaps for a few minutes just off the interstate, you may get some very scary warnings. Then the system may get very confused sending you off to an odd HPWC or even another supercharger.
3. If you are inadvertently running low on juice, the list of charging stations Tesla uses does not include all available chargers such as Chargepoint, Blink, RV parks or municipal chargers.
4. Once Tesla says that you are safe to continue on your journey, double check the amount of battery level before unplugging.
5. You may get very inaccurate reports when you are out of cell phone range.
I'm confident that Tesla will clean up this "Beta" software.
In summary with the current software, Tesla is trying to appease two opposing needs at the same time: range anxiety and optimal charging time. Unfortunately, these two needs are inversely correlated. If I want to have no range anxiety, I would fill up my battery as much as possible before continuing or at least add more of a cushion, but that would take up more time at the superchargers. If I want to optimize my charging time, I need to watch the driving speed and monitor the energy usage.
The trip planner is working aggressively to get you out of the superchargers as fast as possible. But then as you leave the supercharger, the range assurance software starts to kick in and then get quite nervous that you need to charge quickly if you use more energy than the trip planner expected. The current setup can trigger quite a bit of range anxiety because there is so little margin between these two parts of the software causing a lot of early warnings.
Here are my summary points that I think drivers should know when using these features.
1. The amount of time to charge at each supercharger is relatively aggressive giving you an extra 25 miles to drive. If you want to drive faster than the speed limit or take any detours, you may wish to top off further.
2. While driving from supercharger to supercharger and stopping perhaps for a few minutes just off the interstate, you may get some very scary warnings. Then the system may get very confused sending you off to an odd HPWC or even another supercharger.
3. If you are inadvertently running low on juice, the list of charging stations Tesla uses does not include all available chargers such as Chargepoint, Blink, RV parks or municipal chargers.
4. Once Tesla says that you are safe to continue on your journey, double check the amount of battery level before unplugging.
5. You may get very inaccurate reports when you are out of cell phone range.
I'm confident that Tesla will clean up this "Beta" software.