ABRP 4.5.0. gets a major upgrade

[azbill]

I tried to set up a trip in ABRP once again and it was a failure for me. I am going Phoenix to Tahoe, know where the good chargers are and where the bad ones are. So I manually entered the chargers I wanted to use as waypoints, each about 2 hours apart. I like more frequent short stops. Entered everything just like I wanted it, hit Plan in ABRP, and it completely redid the trip and included chargers that were either low power (50kw) or poor performing/unreliable (via Plugshare). I simply wanted it to use my selected chargers and then give me some SoC estimates. It even skipped RAN chargers in favor of EA and EVGO ones.

For me, Plugshare is better, in that it uses exactly what I tell it to, but it has no estimating for charge times or SoC at each stop. I can actually figure that out for myself. I have the trip all set up with Plugshare and will send that to Apple or Google maps on my phone.

Too bad we cannot have the best of both worlds. And the Rivian nav does not even allow entry of waypoints manually.

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[WorldComposting]

For all the talk about ABRP and Rivian’s routing being awful, I laugh every time someone says they rely on Waze. Waze has tried to send me down streets that didn’t exist anymore, streets that had been closed for construction for months, and has sent me on surface streets with stop signs every hundred yards when a highway was only very slightly delayed. All of them have their flaws.

I'm with you on this I know a lot of people that use and love Waze but I always seem to have issues with it and typically use Google Maps. My favorite Waze issue is when it would take me down a road in a city to a stop sign then tell me to make a left which is impossible during rush hour.

I tried to set up a trip in ABRP once again and it was a failure for me. I am going Phoenix to Tahoe, know where the good chargers are and where the bad ones are. So I manually entered the chargers I wanted to use as waypoints, each about 2 hours apart. I like more frequent short stops. Entered everything just like I wanted it, hit Plan in ABRP, and it completely redid the trip and included chargers that were either low power (50kw) or poor performing/unreliable (via Plugshare). I simply wanted it to use my selected chargers and then give me some SoC estimates. It even skipped RAN chargers in favor of EA and EVGO ones.

For me, Plugshare is better, in that it uses exactly what I tell it to, but it has no estimating for charge times or SoC at each stop. I can actually figure that out for myself. I have the trip all set up with Plugshare and will send that to Apple or Google maps on my phone.

Too bad we cannot have the best of both worlds. And the Rivian nav does not even allow entry of waypoints manually.

I really never used ABRP when looking at routes as I always used plugshare to plan things out especially the comments to see when chargers are derated or in one case blocked as they repaved the lot.

I think the real reason why people want CarPlay/Android Auto is for options. If ABRP works use it if it doesn't grab another map such as Waze, Apple, or Google. Same for music I listen to YouTube Music so I'm streaming from my phone. We need more choices built in or it needs to be as good as what we want to use and if they would give us that we wouldn't care about Carplay/AA.

 

[emoore]

I tried to set up a trip in ABRP once again and it was a failure for me. I am going Phoenix to Tahoe, know where the good chargers are and where the bad ones are. So I manually entered the chargers I wanted to use as waypoints, each about 2 hours apart. I like more frequent short stops. Entered everything just like I wanted it, hit Plan in ABRP, and it completely redid the trip and included chargers that were either low power (50kw) or poor performing/unreliable (via Plugshare). I simply wanted it to use my selected chargers and then give me some SoC estimates. It even skipped RAN chargers in favor of EA and EVGO ones.

For me, Plugshare is better, in that it uses exactly what I tell it to, but it has no estimating for charge times or SoC at each stop. I can actually figure that out for myself. I have the trip all set up with Plugshare and will send that to Apple or Google maps on my phone.

Too bad we cannot have the best of both worlds. And the Rivian nav does not even allow entry of waypoints manually.

If you know what chargers you want to stop at, can't you just go charger to charger in the Rivian NAV? That's what I typically do.

 

[azbill]

If you know what chargers you want to stop at, can't you just go charger to charger in the Rivian NAV? That's what I typically do.

Yes that is what I will do, but the nav has made it impossible to enter the entire trip as I want it. First EV I ever had that could not handle my planned trips.

 

[emoore]

Yes that is what I will do, but the nav has made it impossible to enter the entire trip as I want it. First EV I ever had that could not handle my planned trips.

yeah that could be annoying if that's how you are used to planning trips. I've always planned by doing a full trip at home to get an idea of the total miles/time. And then during the trip I've gone stop to stop. So the Rivian nav works well for me but maybe I'm in the minority.

 

[dl4060]

I tried to set up a trip in ABRP once again and it was a failure for me. I am going Phoenix to Tahoe, know where the good chargers are and where the bad ones are. So I manually entered the chargers I wanted to use as waypoints, each about 2 hours apart. I like more frequent short stops. Entered everything just like I wanted it, hit Plan in ABRP, and it completely redid the trip and included chargers that were either low power (50kw) or poor performing/unreliable (via Plugshare). I simply wanted it to use my selected chargers and then give me some SoC estimates. It even skipped RAN chargers in favor of EA and EVGO ones.

For me, Plugshare is better, in that it uses exactly what I tell it to, but it has no estimating for charge times or SoC at each stop. I can actually figure that out for myself. I have the trip all set up with Plugshare and will send that to Apple or Google maps on my phone.

Too bad we cannot have the best of both worlds. And the Rivian nav does not even allow entry of waypoints manually.

I've actually had ABRP do the same thing, bypass RAN chargers in favor of EVgo/EA. Then I've had it flip back and include RAN. It does seem a bit random.

I've also had the same issue with waypoints. I've included the RAN in Inyokern on the way to Mammoth, then STILL had it have me charge at the EA in Coso Junction!! Then it changed back and started including RAN locations again.

One of my solutions has been to save RAN locations, and other charging locations, so that when I am planning I can include them. This seems to work a bit better, but can be cumbersome.

I certainly agree that some of the chargers in included in ABRP trips are not all that great, via Plugshare. I actually use both. I avoided the Shell Recharge in Escanaba, opting instead for an EVConnect at a Chevy dealership in Iron Mountain. The Chevy place is great, I forget it's name, although the charger is only 50kw. It has a nice waiting area with free snacks and water, as well as wifi if you want to get some work done on the laptop. I highly recommend it if in the UP, although it is slow.

I did find that ABRP was better with Tesla. I think part of the reason for that might be that they simply have more data with Tesla than Rivian. I've emailed ABRP about that subject and they've said as much.

This is all still a work in progress. I'm quite certain it will continue to improve. In the end I would say that the biggest issue I've encountered is with Alexa's small database of location names, as opposed to the actual route planning with either Rivian or ABRP.

I primarily use Plugshare to check out info on chargers i'm not familiar with. It has been very helpful in that regard.

 

[dl4060]

This is some really useful information! We can't improve without knowing what we're doing wrong, so I really appreciate all the feedback in this thread.


I'm really curious on this one. When I try the Dallas -> Bentonville route myself I get a route very close to what Google proposes, with a ~20 min detour to a 200kW charger most of the way to Bentonville. That results in a ~7hr drive, not 10 hours. Could you send me an example of what you're seeing so we can try to replicate it and fix it?


I hate it when ABRP does this (and we're going to fix this in the future), but the Rivian implementation shouldn't auto-switch. If I recall correctly, you get a popup saying there's a faster route, and clicking it will swap to that route. Doing nothing stays on the current route. If it doesn't show up and/or auto-switches, that's a problem we need to solve.


I'm on the ABRP Team and work closely with the Rivian team, and we've got a lot of stuff in the works that we're very excited about. On the nav / turn-by-turn quality, it's a tough trade space. I can't go into specifics, but it's hard to both get really good routing / traffic data and also all the data we need for a good range prediction from any given provider of A-B routing. But it is a solvable problem, and we're working on it.

In general, our priorities right now are:

1. Route quality - Better ETAs, better road selection
2. Range estimation - Better range prediction, personalized learning

And of course, if you've seen Wassym's talks you know that aligns with the Rivian priorities too.


I love Lost Maples! I'll be heading there this fall. Pretty exciting that we have two eclipses coming up, both going right over Lost Maples.

For that route, I would chalk that up to differences in traffic data between ABRP, Mapbox, and Google. Google's is certainly more extensive and up-to-date, especially for back roads. So if Google has better knowledge of speeds on back roads, it can pick out those routes which on paper should be worse, but in reality are better.

As far as the range prediction from Austin -> Rockport, when the Rivian deal was announced, we updated the R1T/S models quite a lot, so maybe you're still using the old alpha model? It might be worth re-selecting your car model from the list to make sure you're using the new model.

Can you point me to the non-working charger? I'll check what data source we're using for that and see if there's something we can do about it.


Constant rerouting is definitely not what we want. I'd love to get some more details from you so we can investigate and solve it.

On charger APIs, I'll say that we've (ABRP) looked into most publicly advertised APIs, and the ones we don't use are generally because they have either very restrictive terms of use or are crazy expensive.

I'll also note you can expect to get different results between ABRP and in-vehicle Rivian Nav. But the Rivian Nav should be the same between the Rivian App and in-vehicle. Rivian uses Mapbox for A-B routing, and ABRP does all the heavy lifting for turning that into a proper EV route. And of course, Rivian and ABRP have different agreements with different providers of charger data (Although, why charge networks aren't more willing to get their data out there to apps that could help drivers find their chargers is beyond me).

All in all, we really do appreciate feedback, and are always looking for ways to improve. Rest assured we're not sitting still, and we are really working on making improvements to the way ABRP and Rivian nav works. It's a complicated problem to solve, but it's one we're invested in. We all drive EVs at ABRP (including an R1S I own), and use our own tools so we can see the weak spots and identify the areas to improve on.

Jason,

Great to see you checking in here!

Thank you for everything you guys are doing. I will state again that ABRP has been invaluable to me in the process of route planning and owning an EV. I know it is a Herculean task, but it has really helped me quite a bit.

I'm excited to see what happens as more and more Rivian data is available.

We've all gotten weird nav suggestions. That goes with Tesla as well as Rivian. On the road trip from Newport Beach to the UP I just made I stopped in Barstow at the RAN. After charging, eating dinner and walking to dog the Rivian nav was trying to route me down the 40 to get to Vegas, saying the trip would take 4 hours. I laughed it off. About 20 miles east of Yermo traffic was stopped. Completely. People were getting out of their cars and walking around. After waiting for 2 hours I crossed the median, something lots of people were doing, and drove down to Yermo to spend the night. It turned out there was a huge accident on the 15. I guess the nav knew what it was talking about

I've always used ABRP for pre-trip planning, or at night in a hotel room, or during a charge. I use the Rivian NAV for the actual during trip planning. I'm curious to see how ABRP compares for within trip planning.

Keep up the good work!

 

[TheIglu]

This is some really useful information! We can't improve without knowing what we're doing wrong, so I really appreciate all the feedback in this thread.


I'm really curious on this one. When I try the Dallas -> Bentonville route myself I get a route very close to what Google proposes, with a ~20 min detour to a 200kW charger most of the way to Bentonville. That results in a ~7hr drive, not 10 hours. Could you send me an example of what you're seeing so we can try to replicate it and fix it?


I hate it when ABRP does this (and we're going to fix this in the future), but the Rivian implementation shouldn't auto-switch. If I recall correctly, you get a popup saying there's a faster route, and clicking it will swap to that route. Doing nothing stays on the current route. If it doesn't show up and/or auto-switches, that's a problem we need to solve.


I'm on the ABRP Team and work closely with the Rivian team, and we've got a lot of stuff in the works that we're very excited about. On the nav / turn-by-turn quality, it's a tough trade space. I can't go into specifics, but it's hard to both get really good routing / traffic data and also all the data we need for a good range prediction from any given provider of A-B routing. But it is a solvable problem, and we're working on it.

In general, our priorities right now are:

1. Route quality - Better ETAs, better road selection
2. Range estimation - Better range prediction, personalized learning

And of course, if you've seen Wassym's talks you know that aligns with the Rivian priorities too.


I love Lost Maples! I'll be heading there this fall. Pretty exciting that we have two eclipses coming up, both going right over Lost Maples.

For that route, I would chalk that up to differences in traffic data between ABRP, Mapbox, and Google. Google's is certainly more extensive and up-to-date, especially for back roads. So if Google has better knowledge of speeds on back roads, it can pick out those routes which on paper should be worse, but in reality are better.

As far as the range prediction from Austin -> Rockport, when the Rivian deal was announced, we updated the R1T/S models quite a lot, so maybe you're still using the old alpha model? It might be worth re-selecting your car model from the list to make sure you're using the new model.

Can you point me to the non-working charger? I'll check what data source we're using for that and see if there's something we can do about it.


Constant rerouting is definitely not what we want. I'd love to get some more details from you so we can investigate and solve it.

On charger APIs, I'll say that we've (ABRP) looked into most publicly advertised APIs, and the ones we don't use are generally because they have either very restrictive terms of use or are crazy expensive.

I'll also note you can expect to get different results between ABRP and in-vehicle Rivian Nav. But the Rivian Nav should be the same between the Rivian App and in-vehicle. Rivian uses Mapbox for A-B routing, and ABRP does all the heavy lifting for turning that into a proper EV route. And of course, Rivian and ABRP have different agreements with different providers of charger data (Although, why charge networks aren't more willing to get their data out there to apps that could help drivers find their chargers is beyond me).

All in all, we really do appreciate feedback, and are always looking for ways to improve. Rest assured we're not sitting still, and we are really working on making improvements to the way ABRP and Rivian nav works. It's a complicated problem to solve, but it's one we're invested in. We all drive EVs at ABRP (including an R1S I own), and use our own tools so we can see the weak spots and identify the areas to improve on.

If, at any time, you folks can offer a set by step "how to setup your Rivian to talk to ABRP through HomeAssistant", it would be VERY welcome. Both a Rivian owner and an ABRP subscriber, I'd love to use the trailer profile ability and give ABRP my live data so estimates get more accurate as time goes on.

 

[dl4060]

If, at any time, you folks can offer a set by step "how to setup your Rivian to talk to ABRP through HomeAssistant", it would be VERY welcome. Both a Rivian owner and an ABRP subscriber, I'd love to use the trailer profile ability and give ABRP my live data so estimates get more accurate as time goes on.

I 100% agree. I think that would be great. As an ABRP subscriber it would be awesome to synch my Rivian to ABRP the way I did with my Tesla.

 

[azbill]

yeah that could be annoying if that's how you are used to planning trips. I've always planned by doing a full trip at home to get an idea of the total miles/time. And then during the trip I've gone stop to stop. So the Rivian nav works well for me but maybe I'm in the minority.

My Ford has a very good trip planner, and I can send up to 10 saved trips to the car. It is totally flexible in that I can add stops as I want to. Then when I send it to the car is DOES NOT recompute the route, it obeys exactly what I told it to do in the trip plan.

 

[azbill]

I've also had the same issue with waypoints. I've included the RAN in Inyokern on the way to Mammoth, then STILL had it have me charge at the EA in Coso Junction!! Then it changed back and started including RAN locations again.

Coso Junction is one of the chargers I intentionally want to avoid on my trip to Tahoe, just look at the reports on Plugshare. There is another one along the way, The Premium Outlets in Cabazon, where the Rivian nav routed me to on a previous trip. Got 34kw at the charger and 3 of the 4 were all below 100kw, so I charged to 23% to get to Indio as an alternative. But for this trip ABRP and Rivian want to route me to that charger. Instead I will use Indio EA, which works great, I have used that one three times with two different EVs. It is only 40 miles from Cabazon, but there is no way to insert that stop in place of the one in Cabazon in the Rivian nav. In ABRP you can flag stops and it will recompute, but then it picks a 50kw EVGO instead of EA at Indio.

 

[Jason_ABRP]

Coso Junction is one of the chargers I intentionally want to avoid on my trip to Tahoe, just look at the reports on Plugshare. There is another one along the way, The Premium Outlets in Cabazon, where the Rivian nav routed me to on a previous trip. Got 34kw at the charger and 3 of the 4 were all below 100kw, so I charged to 23% to get to Indio as an alternative. But for this trip ABRP and Rivian want to route me to that charger. Instead I will use Indio EA, which works great, I have used that one three times with two different EVs. It is only 40 miles from Cabazon, but there is no way to insert that stop in place of the one in Cabazon in the Rivian nav. In ABRP you can flag stops and it will recompute, but then it picks a 50kw EVGO instead of EA at Indio.

This is something we're brainstorming on, actually. I don't want to promise too much, but we have some ideas on how to automatically avoid underperforming chargers.

 

[defcon888]

ABRP has been completely useless in trying to plan trips, I can't be alone with this opinion.

Example I drive Dallas to Bentonville every 1-2 months, it's 400 miles each way, I know where the chargers are, so I use plug share and know which ones are currently working and which ones aren't. IF I try to use ABRP it adds 100 miles to the trip, using chargers that are inoperable.

Why Rivian bought them I don't really understand, at least for me, it's not just worthless, if I blindly went along using it it would turn a 7 hour trip into a 10+ hour trip.

I use the Webpage of ABRP to set up my trip. Once it gives me (or I adjust the route), I send it to the Rivian.

 

[azbill]

This is something we're brainstorming on, actually. I don't want to promise too much, but we have some ideas on how to automatically avoid underperforming chargers.

I would like to see the user have complete control over what chargers to use, and then to have the Rivian honor those choices. Also, underperforming is actually hard to define, in some cases.

Other things I would personally like:

- input a desired average mileage between charges
- input a desired average time between charges
- input a maximum time spent at a charger
- input a maximum departure SoC from a charger

Obviously there would be outliers for these parameters, but this is how I plan trips in my head. For example, for me 2-2.5 hours of straight driving without stopping is the limit. Spending more than 20 minutes at a charger, unless I am eating, is undesirable.

 

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I will admit to not ever having used ABRP to plan a trip. I will also admit that I only ever looked at the site a couple times. But seeing this thread, I thought I'd give it another look. Let's tell it to plan a trip to grandma's house, in Pennsylvania:

WTaF.

It thinks my Rivian is a plane, or something?

Now I probably did something wrong. But it shouldn't be that hard. This "route" is hot garbage. I'll stick to Google Maps.

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