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The trip planner is weird in general, but I've found the energy use estimates to be extremely accurate, usually within 1% on long drives. It definitely does not assume 55MPH. I drive at approximately the speed of traffic (typically 70-80MPH on interstates) and the estimated SoC at arrival is bang on. The system definitely not only accounts for higher speeds, but real-world speeds driven by actual drivers, not just official speed .
Interesting to note that Ben, the evtripplanner guy, lists himself on LinkedIn as an intern at Tesla over the last 6 months - so there is hope!
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Then it just needs to stop trying to send us back to the supercharger we just visited 160 miles back (and that we can't reach with current charge anyway) when we're sitting in the parking lot of the next supercharger on our trip which 7.1 IS STILL doing!
The trip planner is weird in general, but I've found the energy use estimates to be extremely accurate, usually within 1% on long drives. It definitely does not assume 55MPH. I drive at approximately the speed of traffic (typically 70-80MPH on interstates) and the estimated SoC at arrival is bang on.
My nav screen and nav dashboard rarely show the same thing.Yep.... my Nav and I often disagree. I'm pretty sure it's trying to kill me... it insists it isn't.
Has anyone else had their dash nav and touch screen nav disagree?
Last weekend we used the trip planner for a road trip, typically driving about 5 MPH above the speed limit.
It appears the trip planner gets concerned if the estimated charge at destination is 5% - which doesn't provide a lot of margin for error, so we typically charge at a higher level before leaving the supercharger, to give us a larger margin.
Despite doing that, during the middle leg of the trip, within a few miles of leaving the charger, driving at speed limit+5, the estimated charge at the next charger dropped rapidly. To reverse this, we ended up dropping our speed by 20MPH (15MPH below the speed limit) for almost the entire drive to the next supercharger.
And, it appeared the predominant wind was actually behind us. The temperature was in the 60s and it was sunny - perfect driving conditions. Traffic was light enough that we were able to maintain a constant speed. The drive had some changes in elevation - but they were rolling hills - not going into the mountains. So it was pretty hard to explain why the charge estimate was so far off. And if we'd left the first charger when the trip planner had recommended - we would have had to slow down even further to get to the destination.
I contacted Tesla about this - because clearly their algorithm did something wrong in making the estimate on that one leg of the trip. Their initial response was instructions for displaying the energy graph on the dashboard - and that if I drove at 300 Wh/mi or below, I'd be doing better than rated range.
That advice doesn't really help - because the trip planner isn't using rated range - what you want to see is how you are doing against the trip planner's projection - which can only be done by using up half of the 17" display to show the trip energy chart.
I reported the issue because I hoped Tesla could dump the logs for my trip and look at the weather conditions - and find out why the estimates were so far off for this one segment. Hopefully they'll do that...
The goal for the trip planner is to minimize range anxiety - and let the car's software help plan energy management on the trip - so the driver doesn't have to worry about it. This will be critical as Tesla moves from early adopters to selling higher volumes of their cars. And while the current trip planner is a good start - it needs more work to achieve the goal of reducing range anxiety.
Some specific changes that should be made to the trip planner software:
- Add a setting for projected speed vs. speed limit for planning projections
- Add a setting for desired charge at destination - with the current software 20-25% is probably safe, with better projections 10% should be OK
- Using data from the internet, use more information on the driving conditions to improve the estimates (traffic speed, elevation, temperature, weather, ...)
- Add a setting for the range warning threshold. The software currently warns at 5%, we'd prefer that to be 10% to allow us to slow down earlier
- And, provide an information display with more details on how the projections are being made - so the driver can verify the assumptions the software is using
Plus, they could do so much more with estimating supercharger wait times, but that's another topic...
I just do not see why they cant use google maps, who has billions of miles saved in data, accurate speed tuning / traffic. AND they could plug autopilot in so that it will at least try to stay in the directions you need / slight exits to new highways (not exits to tolls or side roads of course.
Great suggestions. Got a question, isn't the trip planner accounting for elevation changes since like a year ago?
Quickly learned some things about this on my last trip from L.A. to Sedona. Wind seems to be the biggest issue by far. Driving through the desert, I could visually see pretty insane winds that I was driving through. The problem is, the car is so dynamic that I barely felt anything. So if you have no idea that you're driving into a headwind or cross wind, you could be in for some serious issues. I would leave a charger with a 30% buffer and show up under 10% consistently during these winds. This is driving between 60-65mph, nothing crazy. If Tesla could work wind into the algorithm I think we'd all be a lot happier.