ABRP is just not a good road trip planner

[RoadTripFan]

Am planning a winter trip to (very) upstate New Hampshire from Central Virginia. Created a plug share route, also a route in the Rivian App just to compare. Have the premium version of ABRP and thought I would give it a shot as well.
With ABRP, I am really disappointed at its lack of utility for a multi day road trip. Choosing specific chargers (and yes, I did create preferred chargers in settings) is simple in terms of clicking on them, but then the route planner does not recognize that you want to charge there and leaves its previous chargers on the route. Still not certain that it recognizes there are some Tesla Chargers out there that I can not use even with theadapter. Tried to save the trip and change the name... website just froze up. had to save it under the name it generated, then go back into saved trips and edit the name.
After a lot of effort I got it to take the route I wanted but it was by no means intuitive or simple.

Now, I have driven EVs for going on 6 years now so am pretty good at planning these out. But if I were newer at this I would find it even more frustrating on ABRP.

With other apps and the Rivian planning I will make the trip just fine, but was hoping to do this trip on ABRP and see how it did with winter weather and predicted usage. It may not be the worst planning app out there but neither is it as much "better"as its name would suggest. I guess it could be name "A So So Route Planner" but then the website would be "ASSRP" and I can imagine the marketing for that would have a lot of downsides. I want to like this app, but ABRP make it noticeable "better"?

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[DD4ST]

I agree ABRP is non-intuitive. I use it for initial planning because it incorporates very detailed stats on the specific vehicle. But it has a steep learning curve and choosing a route other than the one it plans takes some ingenuity. For example, I did a trip whee we drove part of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Not being a main road, ABRP would not route me there unless I picked out specific waypoints along the route. And then as soon as I hit a waypoint it would try to route me back to the highway. I do recall there was a way to change a ABRP-planned charging station by choosing to change the charger. Don’t try to set it as a waypoint. I also tried their paid version which gets data from the vehicle, which was interesting but I don’t think it changed/helped make the planning better. That being said, once I pre-planned with ABRP I then plugged the charging stations into the vehicle navigation so that the battery could be properly prepped for optimum charging rate. Funny thing is Rivian now owns ABRP.

 

[Bar_Down]

There is a learning curve, but it's doable. The trick is in the settings (esp. Reference Consumption and Reference Speed/Max Speed). I have been able to dial it in pretty well, but the Reference Consumption at 65mph bears no relation to my actual efficiency.

On a typical trip (something I've driven 10 times in 18 months), I end up burning less energy than ABRP assumed, but I find that ABRP overestimates charging speed and somehow those have offset for me making my total trip duration about what it was estimated to be. Traffic is the real wild card.

I wish we had more insight into the charging curves assumed and how the efficiency curves vs. temperature and vs. speed. ABRP doesn't give that detail, but I like it and prefer it to plug share planner. It is a good double check of Rivian's built in Nav (but curious to me that they give different answers.)

 

[RoadTripFan]

There is a learning curve, but it's doable. The trick is in the settings (esp. Reference Consumption and Reference Speed/Max Speed). I have been able to dial it in pretty well, but the Reference Consumption at 65mph bears no relation to my actual efficiency.

On a typical trip (something I've driven 10 times in 18 months), I end up burning less energy than ABRP assumed, but I find that ABRP overestimates charging speed and somehow those have offset for me making my total trip duration about what it was estimated to be. Traffic is the real wild card.

I wish we had more insight into the charging curves assumed and how the efficiency curves vs. temperature and vs. speed. ABRP doesn't give that detail, but I like it and prefer it to plug share planner. It is a good double check of Rivian's built in Nav (but curious to me that they give different answers.)

And it could just totally be I need to develop a better skill set with ABRP. But I guess I am hopeful with its Rivian Connection the two of them would create something more user friendly. (Also, with range anxiety being a thing holding up EV conversion, better, simpler apps - and more charging infrastructure- can make a big difference for EV adoption. )

 

[Budman]

I’ve not found ABRP that helpful either. I usually do most planning within PlugShare. It has a trip planning feature a lot of people are not aware of. I created a tutorial here; https://www.rivianforums.com/forum/threads/how-to-use-plugshare-for-route-planning.29911/

 

[SANZC02]

I wonder what I do differently?

I’ve used ABRP many times including 5500 and 7400 mile road trips in my Rivian and a 6500 mile road trip in my Tesla. As well as some shorter trips.

I’ve found it to be very accurate and made it super easy to plan my trips.

 

[RoadTripFan]

I wonder what I do differently?

I’ve used ABRP many times including 5500 and 7400 mile road trips in my Rivian and a 6500 mile road trip in my Tesla. As well as some shorter trips.

I’ve found it to be very accurate and made it super easy to plan my trips.

I am sure I could get better at using it. Just wish it was more intuitive/easier to plan with.

 

[josh0]

That’s interesting, because it’s not the experience I’ve had at all. I have a multi-day trip coming up with the plan saved in ABRP, so I just pulled it up and manually added an off-route but not terribly so charger as a waypoint (RAN in this case), and it automatically adjusted everything to have me charge there for 29 minutes up to 74% SoC before continuing on to charge again at an SC further along. It’s also definitely taking into account the different charging memberships, because I added them one by one and watched it re-calculate the trip when I did (this is three days of driving across a lot of different regions, so I’ll be charging multiple times at Tesla, EvGo, and EA, and a single month of membership at all three will easily pay for itself).

 

[RoadTripFan]

I agree ABRP is non-intuitive. I use it for initial planning because it incorporates very detailed stats on the specific vehicle. But it has a steep learning curve and choosing a route other than the one it plans takes some ingenuity. For example, I did a trip whee we drove part of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Not being a main road, ABRP would not route me there unless I picked out specific waypoints along the route. And then as soon as I hit a waypoint it would try to route me back to the highway. I do recall there was a way to change a ABRP-planned charging station by choosing to change the charger. Don’t try to set it as a waypoint. I also tried their paid version which gets data from the vehicle, which was interesting but I don’t think it changed/helped make the planning better. That being said, once I pre-planned with ABRP I then plugged the charging stations into the vehicle navigation so that the battery could be properly prepped for optimum charging rate. Funny thing is Rivian now owns ABRP.

Yes, this is more what I am wanting to do. Multi-day, multi- stop road trip where I want to take the route I want and not the one it gives me. With any of the Nav apps you have to trick them a little to make this happen, ABRP is the one that I have the hardest time doing this with. (and again, this could be a user issue)

 

[Dark-Fx]

Clicking on the settings button for your stop doesn't give you this window?

 

[RoadTripFan]

Clicking on the settings button for your stop doesn't give you this window?

I'll have to take a look tonight when I home from work.

 

[Electrified Outdoors]

I agree ABRP is not the most intuitive but it has made progress and it has a lot of very powerful features and for that reason it’s my preferred planning app. It doesn’t work as good for the actual navigation. I use Waze for that.

If I want a specific charger, I put the address of the charger in as an additional waypoint and a BRP is smart enough to know that there’s a charger there and it will tell me to charge and to how much.

I use PlugShare to actually scope out with the chargers look like how they’re laid out, etc. this is most important when I’m towing, but we also use it to see what kind of amenities are around the charger.

 

[Bar_Down]

I agree ABRP is not the most intuitive but it has made progress and it has a lot of very powerful features and for that reason it’s my preferred planning app. It doesn’t work as good for the actual navigation. I use Waze for that.

If I want a specific charger, I put the address of the charger in as an additional waypoint and a BRP is smart enough to know that there’s a charger there and it will tell me to charge and to how much.

I use PlugShare to actually scope out with the chargers look like how they’re laid out, etc. this is most important when I’m towing, but we also use it to see what kind of amenities are around the charger.

I 100% agree with this.

 

[zefram47]

It's not intuitive, but it's gotten a lot better of the years. 100% ABRP is the best EV road trip planner available outside of a vehicle...and much of Rivian's planner is based on ABRP now. ABRP is far more powerful and learning some of its nuances would be quite useful, like changing reference consumption if you know it's overestimating for conditions. ABRP now has live data available through the Rivian API by connecting your accounts which should lead to better estimates.

I had to play some games to get good estimates while towing on a 1000 mile roundtrip, but once I got it dialed in it worked better than the built-in planner, especially as I could see needed %SoC instead of "miles". I tend to plan on the ABRP website, adding/removing chargers that I want or don't want, as-needed...then you can save the route and use it on your phone, etc. I generally plan the full route, but will often just route to the next charger direct to verify numbers, etc. Now, making the Rivian nav use specific, pre-planned, chargers is often a royal pain and again I'll sometimes revert to just navigating to the next charger I intent to use. One of the big things with ABRP is it takes into account terrain changes. I've never used Preium, but I assume it also factors in weather/wind as well which can make a huge difference at highway speeds.

 

[not_a_car_guy]

I found ABRP really good especially for winter road trips. It takes into account all sorts of parameters including weather.

I would say ABRP is "better" in the sense that it provides a lot more powerful knobs and buttons to customize your trip, however that comes with the price of being harder to use "out of the box". There is a learning curve, but once you learn it, you can do a lot with it.

I would say ABRP has been ever so slightly on the conservative side in terms of arrival SOC, which is exactly how I would want it.

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