Trip planner issues - Ontario

You might be onto something here since all the Supercharger distances given are "as the crow flies"

Got all kinds of wacky things like that one in about the same area earlier this month. Was driving west and kept telling me to turn back to Kingston after I had left it.

The trip planner does seem to try to put you to the nearest SC (as the crow flies) even if you don't need the charge.
One owner here said every morning when he left his house that is 5 minutes from an SC, the trip planner routed him there even if he was at 90% SOC.

When I have been in downtown T.O., the trip planner is pushing me towards the Laurence SC even though I can get home with plenty of battery charge left.

#FAIL

After using the trip planner extensively over the past month, I've seen interesting examples of wacky routes, but this one is the more bizarre!

Like others noted, I've had the "go back to where you last charged" show up 10 minutes into a road trip stint, and just ignored it until I was half way to the destination where the advice switches and shows that we can make it with just under %20 to spare.

Another one was recommending a route that would take us 1000 km out of our way, but still in the same general direction.

Also, I did wonder why the distance to superchargers seemed wrong and now it's making more sense that these are "as the crow flies" distances. Good find!

FWIW, before Tesla, my Garmin GPS told me to get to Chicago from Toronto via Montréal. But yes, Tesla's trip planner is not worth using. You'd think that by this time they would have fixed its worst errors. The car may be rocket science, but trip planning isn't, even with various chargers included.

I've seen worse during many trips from the GTA to Ottawa and vice versa in the last few months. Even from Mississauga to Toronto, the navigation is unreliable at all, especially during rush hours...

I just traveled to Great Barrington, Mass. and Winsted CT and return and the trip planner was flawless. All of the percent battery left predictions were conservative and I had usually 5% more than predicted despite "spirited" driving and A/C on. Went there via Kingston, Syracuse (stayed there overnight) and Albany chargers. Return via Albany, Syracuse and Buffalo chargers. Even on the return rerouted my via the Rainbow bridge due to heavy traffic at Lewiston border crossing.
Will be travelling to north of Philadelphia in 2 weeks. We'll see how it does.

mrElbe said:

I just traveled to Great Barrington, Mass. and Winsted CT and return and the trip planner was flawless. All of the percent battery left predictions were conservative and I had usually 5% more than predicted despite "spirited" driving and A/C on. Went there via Kingston, Syracuse (stayed there overnight) and Albany chargers. Return via Albany, Syracuse and Buffalo chargers. Even on the return rerouted my via the Rainbow bridge due to heavy traffic at Lewiston border crossing.
Will be travelling to north of Philadelphia in 2 weeks. We'll see how it does.

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In certain areas it works fine. But in many cases it is completely wrong, even in areas well covered by Superchargers. I was travelling between Kamloops and Hope, BC when all of a sudden it decided that I had to return to Kamloops. Mid-trip! Despite the prediction being for an arrival with 11% battery remaining. (Not a huge buffer, but enough).

And anyone on the prairies or in northern Ontario will recognize what idiocy is involved in the algorithm. It takes a simple, straightforward trip from Dryden to Kenora, for example, and turns it into an impossible 1053 km trip through the Duluth supercharger. I pretty much had to wait, every time, for it to finish its lunacy, hit "TRIP", hit "Remove charging stops", and then wait again for it to recompute. Meanwhile, the rest of the user interface is frozen.

Honestly, I could have implemented a smarter algorithm and more responsive user interface with both hands (and one brain) tied behind my back.



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Doug_G said:

Unfortunately the trip planner is a total fail. What you end up doing is hitting the "remove chargers" button, and manually selecting Superchargers as your destination.

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Even that doesn't work, as it will occasionally suddenly decide mid-trip to alter your route, including sending you back to the Supercharger you just left.

Doug_G said:

I think the problem here is that the Trip Planner is sort of kludged on top of the already weak Navigon system. It lets Navigon calculate a route, then it tries to find Superchargers near that route, then starts Navigon again with these Superchargers as new waypoints. The problem with that approach is that it misses major route alternatives that have convenient Superchargers. What they need to do is start out looking for all Superchargers even remotely near a straight-line route, then the calculate routes through those waypoints and then pick the optimum based on (a) success and (b) total trip time.

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Good insight, excellent analysis. I expect that you're spot on.


P.S. I still love the car.

Just finished 1st road trip - Ottawa <-> SW Ont (only had 70D for 2 months). I too experienced the "return to xx Supercharger" minutes after leaving and being told that I'd charged enough + often 10-15min extra charging.

FWIW I think the problem is tied to avg. energy consumption used in calculations. In all cases I had a/c running while charging. Leaving, my avg. was +300 wh/km, versus ~180 on arrival. The return message would come up a few minutes after leaving. Once the avg. returned back to ~180, trip planner gave up on having me return and okayed pushing ahead.

I've had no success at routing from Ottawa south west without being directed thru Cornwall; even at full charge (I know my 70D doesn't have as much range, but at this time of the year, Kingston is comfortable drive even at 80%). Can't figure that one out.

Car's a great drive; trip planner is handy for finding SC locations otherwise gem in the rough!

Doug_G said:

If all else fails, there is an option to turn off the trip planner feature. I remember seeing it in one of the Settings screens. They still consider it Beta (which is generous lol).

Yeah I still love the car. This feature could be pretty awesome with some more work.

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You mean there are some people who still have this feature turned ON???? I thought it was pretty well known that it was completely hopeless and caused more issues than it was worth...

I tried to get it to navigate to Nordegg AB the other day from Calgary, The "correct" way is to go north to the Red Deer supercharger, and then west to Nordegg. (approximately 326km, 3hrs 20 minutes plus charging)
The car suggested west to the Canmore Supercharger, then further west to the Golden Supercharger, then back east to Lake Louise and up through the park, this would have been 516km or 6hrs, and an extra supercharging stop. And worse yet, it doesn't even make any sense.
The Golden supercharger is 1km closer to Nordegg then the Canmore one, but would add 158km to the trip, But the Red Deer Supercharger is significantly closer to the destination than either of them, and well within my driving range from home.

I had a weird Trip Planner fail last week on my way back from Chicago. I was routed through St. Joseph - Ann Arbor - Comber - Woodstock. I reached St. Joseph and it told me when I had enough to continue, but we were still eating, so I let it continue charging. About 15 miles away from St. Joseph, it suddenly wanted me to get off the Interstate, turn around and head back to St. Joseph. WTF? I was freaked out that I might not have enough juice to make it to Ann Arbor. I turned off the Trip Planner and just selected Ann Arbor as my destination and it worked fine, getting me there with about 25% to spare. I just used Supercharger to Supercharger routing after that.

Wife left for downtown Toronto today and was routed through the Lawrence supercharger, um, car was 90% charged for a 25 km trip, what? Anyway, she figured it out and didn't lose too much time. She did remind me that I told her yesterday to trust the traffic aware routing, as the sloppy road conditions might lead to road closure or blocked conditions this morning. Little did I think the trip software would choose this moment when I'm not in the car to act up. Oh well, she did compliment the grip of the car in the bad conditions, so she is quietly confident in the RWD Tesla in the snow now.

Doug_G said:

If you live anywhere near a Supercharger it's probably best to turn off the Trip Planner feature.

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True, but I was surprised in my example above that a planned route would just abort part way through the drive and try to turn me back... for apparently no good reason.

One of the reasons I was a bit freaked is that the next Supercharger (Ann Arbor) was showing as a grey icon instead of the usual red for Superchargers. I wondered if Ann Arbor had gone off-line or something and that was why the sudden re-routing. No other warnings, however and Ann Arbor was fine when I got there (aside from 3 stalls being ICEd).