Odd supercharger routing and -10% arrival on recent trip.

[MB11]

Okay sorry this is a little long. My wife’s just taken a trip from the north-west down to High Wycombe for the weekend. This is the first reasonable longer distance using superchargers we’ve travelled (MYLR). Although it’s still only 200 miles (normally trips are 140 miles and regularly executed consuming approx 50% give or take 5%). I Charged to 100% before she left and this got her all the way with 24% left. Reasonable but higher consumption than usual. There was no convenient charging at the destination so the car was parked up for a few nights. Initially made the mistake of leaving Sentry on and within 12 hours got a warning that it turned off because the battery got down to 20%. Returning to the car today it was down to 18%, a quick schedule of a trip home on the app suggested a stop in at Oxford services (18miles away) and then a further stop at Warrington for five minutes (why not just an extra 5 at Oxford?). This was then sent to the car. When the time came to select the sent route in the car and drive off (10min), it changed the routing to Uxbridge supercharger which was well out of the way, similar distance to Oxford? Leaving Uxbridge charger (which cost a £2 car park charge) once enough to resume the trip was on board it then decided to route to Warrington with an arrival charge of -10%. She didn’t notice and carried on with the journey, It was just lucky that I decided to check on the app where she was up to. I noticed an arrival at -10% the car was happily cruising up the M40 with a -10% arrival on the screen. I had to call her and get her to cancel the Nav on the fly then restart it, it then scheduled another stop at Hilton Park (10% remaining).

My points on all this:

1. When you arrive there is no guarantee you’ll have enough after a few nights to get to a decent fast charger. The Nav appears to aim to get you to the destination, if that’s with 5% left it’s up to you to check there’s a charger nearby.
2. The route you build on the phone app isn’t what you necessarily get, and it’s happy to send you 20 min out of your way (40 min round trip) to a pay car park. Even though there are 16 SC’s the same distance in your direction of travel- not great!
3. Appreciating that the aim is to get enough on board and then move on. It’s still doesn’t really seem sensible to make multiple stops to charge when the journey is only 200 miles and the range is supposed to be 300+. The full journey shouldn’t take more than 80%, although the trip down suggested pretty average economy.
4. All in all a bit of a mess really and confidence damaging for my wife. You really can’t just plumb in your destination and expect the car to work it all out. You need to put a lot of thought round it to make sure you’re not going to get stranded.
5. You need to sense check that it’s made its calculations correctly. The car was quite happy with a -10% arrival.

Not the seamless experience I expected.

 

[btc1k]

The nav planning goes to superchargers en-route for quick as possible top-ups, to get you to your destination with 10%. There are threads on the forum criticising the nav for when it gets to destinations at higher %, as people may not want the added charging fees of arriving to their destination at a higher SoC.

So for your route down - you want it to arrive with a high SoC in case you are staying for a few nights and don't have time to visit a fast charger. Also accounting for sentry losses when the car is parked. And the car needs to stop only in the direction of travel. But appreciating you only want enough to get enough charge to be able to move on asap. But you prefer longer and less frequent stops, rather than more frequent, shorter stops.

For a seamless experience, it has to be as least user selectable options as possible. But what you are asking it to calculate, seamlessly, is a whole host of variables.

The tech is there (via things like ABRP), for you to fiddle with variables to get a unique plan for your required user experience. But it takes a few minutes, so isn't seamless. Difficult to see how it could be the best of both worlds.

On my longer journeys, I have found 5 min of ABRP planning to be very useful. And now I'm 35k odd miles in, I don't find I need it and have a good feel for the car and what I need to do with charging.

On your return journey - not sure what happened there - as the Tesla nav will flag up a reduced speed or a charging stop needed if navigating - i.e it won't let you go to a destination with -10% without a warning. However, it's easy to remove charging stops in which case it will then let you.

 

[MB11]

Maybe it’s me, but arriving with only 10%, particularly in winter when it will want to preheat prior to changing on your next trip, doesn’t leave much room to find a local charger or the nearest SC ~ 20miles . It’s never been a problem before, I just plug it in when I get home. I’ll certainly plan more throughly next time!
On the -10%, I don’t know if she deleted the SC stop, there was a lot of confusion when it sent her off in the unexpected wrong direction to initially charge. I’ll need to have a play with it myself. Thought it was is an experience worth sharing though!

 

[Lockey]

I've had the car change the supercharger when I'm en route (usually because the original one is busy or faulty), not great when you're heading for Hopwood Park then it wants to take you to the one near the centre of B'Ham at rush hour. I've got a pretty good mental map of the superchargers on my normal long distance routes so keep an eye on where the car is planning to charge. Once or twice I've had to pull over to check the route/chosen supercharger when it looks wrong, bit of a pain but it doesn't happen very often.

It's a shame there isn't somewhere to set what you want your approx SOC to be on arrival, sometimes 10% is perfect other times definitely not!

 

[exlatccatsa]

For my trips to HW from Scotland, I always stop at Banbury, it seems to be the last cheap Supercharger Southbound before HW. it usually gets me there with between 50 and 60%. Whilst in HW I generally charge at the podpoint at the retail park (4 hr limit) at 14p/kWh. I use ABRP to plan the route beforehand and make modifications on the day.

 

[GRiLLA]

Maybe it’s me, but arriving with only 10%, particularly in winter when it will want to preheat prior to changing on your next trip, doesn’t leave much room to find a local charger or the nearest SC ~ 20miles . It’s never been a problem before, I just plug it in when I get home. I’ll certainly plan more throughly next time!
On the -10%, I don’t know if she deleted the SC stop, there was a lot of confusion when it sent her off in the unexpected wrong direction to initially charge. I’ll need to have a play with it myself. Thought it was is an experience worth sharing though!

It's you. Imagine you arrived somewhere where you could plug in but had mucked around so you had loads of charge on board at SuperCharger prices. I would normally plan the full trip, there and back, so it knows where you are going next and can pick the optimum places to charge. Planning via the app doesn't consider traffic at the point you leave, so it's quite common to get a different route if there are viable alternatives, it would be very clear on the cars screen.

I also doubt very much it would take you from Wycombe to Uxbridge then back up the M40, perhaps there was some reason it was preferring a route round the M25 and up the M1, just like it wouldn't have planned a route with -10% arrival. User Error there I would expect.

 

[btc1k]

For the wife factor - which applies in your case it seems - I plan an ABRP trip for her and give her the charging stops... !

 

[exlatccatsa]

You don't know how lucky you are.. a wife that can drive.. that would be wonderful

 

[UkNorthampton]

Abetterrouteplanner return trip printed out when I go to/from unfamiliar places.

I'm confident now to return on minus % or slow down by 5 mph, but passengers insist on safety margin. I had a long journey that said -6%. I slowed down by 5mph, then when car said I had +vehicles, and as I just wanted to get home, I went rapidly and still fine.

I suppose with multiple stops possible in tesla navigation, you could do say x to y (real destination), then z, with z on the way back or as safety margin.

You can send navigation from Google maps to tesla app on your phone.

I also wing it, skip stops or stay longer if meal needed.

If low when return, plug in while car/battery still warn. The screen even says this. If you have cheap energy, it might be different but I'd probably want 20-40% in just in case.

For me, this is easier and more relaxing than ICE

I don't bother about prices but I do care how much of a diversion is needed, especially when busy. So sometimes skip one. I also often navigate near to a preferred stop, avoiding preconditioning as often family take a long time, longer than charging

 

[MB11]

It's you. Imagine you arrived somewhere where you could plug in but had mucked around so you had loads of charge on board at SuperCharger prices. I would normally plan the full trip, there and back, so it knows where you are going next and can pick the optimum places to charge. Planning via the app doesn't consider traffic at the point you leave, so it's quite common to get a different route if there are viable alternatives, it would be very clear on the cars screen.

I also doubt very much it would take you from Wycombe to Uxbridge then back up the M40, perhaps there was some reason it was preferring a route round the M25 and up the M1, just like it wouldn't have planned a route with -10% arrival. User Error there I would expect.

I’d rather be able to set the % on arrival so I can cover for an unfamiliar location. I get the traffic issue it may change, but it did send her nearly 20 miles in the wrong direction ( similar distance to the M40 Oxford Junction) to a charger with 1 free location, when the M40 Bristol junction had 16 with many free, then 20 miles back past said charger! I was watching from home wondering what was going on. From Uxbridge everything went ok.

 

[spdpsba]

a wife that can drive.. that would be wonderful

Lots of AA instructors are single and available- if you are interested

 

[Tony Hoyle]

These days I do journeys ad hoc.. the map shows SC locations and I just make a decision at the time., usually including one near the destination if it's a longish journey. If I'm going somewhere really unfamiliar I'll probably map it out using ABRP beforehand but that's just to make sure there are no SC deadspots.

 

[yessuz]

You don't know how lucky you are.. a wife that can drive.. that would be wonderful

Oh my.. a dream...

Funny enough - my wife has driver's license for 20 years. Did not drive for like 15. And I cannot even force her to try on long trips.

 

[yessuz]

Lots of AA instructors are single and available- if you are interested

Need a phone number. Asking for a friend

 

[spdpsba]

Asking for a friend

Mods won’t allow me to change this to a dating site unfortunately

 

[GRiLLA]

it did send her nearly 20 miles in the wrong direction

Well I've never seen that in the 5 years I've been driving Tesla, or read anyone else on here ever detail a similar experience where it takes you the opposite direction to the way you are heading. Nearest I've seen was heading back from Wales on the M4 heading up the M5 expecting to charge at Michaelwood, but it decided it was busy so routed me to Cribbs, but that's only a small detour.

There will be a reason, and that will have been viewable in the car, perhaps Oxford was temporarily closed but seems unlikely or there could have been delays on the M40/M42 so it was quicker to go M25/M1/M6, but by the time she was charged the delays had gone, or switched.

The navigation doesn't make wildly wrong decisions.

 

[Tony Hoyle]

It does have a habit of overestimating the speed of country lanes and taking you on a magical mystery tour around small villages to avoid a 10 minute queue on the motorway.

But even that's not wildly wrong, just annoying.

 

[ringi]

It does have a habit of overestimating the speed of country lanes and taking you on a magical mystery tour around small villages to avoid a 10 minute queue on the motorway.

But even that's not wildly wrong, just annoying.

Thats a hard problem as other satnav systems doing the same results in slower speed on the county lanes then is normal.

 

[jankratochvil]

It does have a habit of overestimating the speed of country lanes and taking you on a magical mystery tour around small villages to avoid a 10 minute queue on the motorway.

That "Reroute to save" I had to increase to 30 minutes (I hope that is enough). Otherwise it sends you to woods around to avoid a slight traffic jam that was some time ago on the freeway you are driving.

 

[MrBadger]

Thats a hard problem as other satnav systems doing the same results in slower speed on the county lanes then is normal.

It’s simply wrong for sat nav routing to think, and thus factor in, that unclassified roads are 60mph. Whilst technically they are, they are rarely capable of it irrespective of other traffic or more vulnerable road users.

I’ve been detoured up roads that are 6’6” with passing places and 180 degree switchbacks and the car thinks the road is capable of doing 60 and faster than an alternative straight A road with slightly slow moving traffic.

And let’s not get into sat nav’s wanting to cut corners through housing estates or up roads with speed humps or blind turnings just to save a hundred yards or a potential stop at traffic lights that safety controls traffic merges.

It’s not just Tesla sat nav. Seems a common occurrence that affects many different sat nav’s. Last example above was from last week using Google app. By time I had rejoined the ‘correct route’ the car that I had been previously following before being taken on a magic mystery tour around a housing estate was many cars ahead and disappearing off into the distance.