Sponsored

NewsCoulomb

Member
Joined
Jun 24, 2021
Threads
0
Messages
21
Reaction score
5
Location
California
Vehicles
Bolt EV, Ranger Electric
Scheduled/Reserved charge times seems like an odd concept.

Trying to envision how practical that would be based on how the Tesla Super Chargers work, especially in busy locations.
I think Schedule/Reserved chargers is DOA. Apparently, EVgo has already offered this (through their app, I believe), but I don't know of anyone who has actually used it.

To me, reserving chargers is simply reversing the problem caused by people squatting at chargers. Essentially, it's already a problem when people sit at a charger after they've finished charging. Why would we now want to give them the option to preemptively squat at a charger, blocking someone else from using it while they wait for the reservation holder to arrive?

And it does nothing to address the key issues with accessing chargers, which is ICEing. So you reserved a charger. So what? Does it matter if a Dodge Ram is parked in the spot when you arrive? And because Rivian is relying on host businesses, good luck getting those ICE vehicles towed.
Sponsored

 

NewsCoulomb

Member
Joined
Jun 24, 2021
Threads
0
Messages
21
Reaction score
5
Location
California
Vehicles
Bolt EV, Ranger Electric
It's going to a long time before Fast charging is ubiquitous enough to accommodate that scenario. That is indeed what most would like to see, but even with ICE vehicles and the widespread and ready availability of gas it can still require planning when traveling in remote areas.
When my wife and I are travelling on our motorcycles, we most definitely have to plan ahead for gas (and often meal) stops in many areas where we ride. This means looking at our route ahead of time and often stopping to fill up before the tank is empty to make it to the next reliable fuel stop. We've even been bitten by planning a stop at a gas station that showed open in Google, but in reality was only open on Tuesdays and Friday afternoons (or something like that). The hardware store owner next door asked how much gas we had left, and then directed us back and off route 20 miles to an open station. He keeps a few gallons to sell to those that can't make it (mostly motorcycles).
Someday we will likely reach the ability to wait until your charge is low before looking for a station close by (at least in most areas). But careful planning will sometimes still be required- particularly for an adventure vehicle that is used to roam away from population/civilization.
Ironically, the fewer chargers there are available, the less necessary route planners become. At a certain point, you get down to, "Can I make it or not?" Route planners become necessary when there are just enough choices that people have the option to screw up.

Yes, you're right that when every freeway exit has at least one publicly accessible fast charging site, route planners will be completely unnecessary, but in my opinion, they're pretty worthless already. Even in areas of the country with limited DCFC coverage. It's better to just look up what's available through PlugShare or Google Maps.
 

Andy96734

Active Member
First Name
Andy
Joined
Jul 1, 2021
Threads
0
Messages
41
Reaction score
29
Location
Hawaii
Vehicles
Tesla MX 90D 2016
Occupation
Retired
Clubs
 
50-2 as Hawaii and Alaska are missing,,,,
 
OP
OP

Autolycus

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 2, 2021
Threads
14
Messages
2,030
Reaction score
3,116
Location
ATL
Vehicles
ICE only :(
When my wife and I are travelling on our motorcycles, we most definitely have to plan ahead for gas (and often meal) stops in many areas where we ride. This means looking at our route ahead of time and often stopping to fill up before the tank is empty to make it to the next reliable fuel stop. We've even been bitten by planning a stop at a gas station that showed open in Google, but in reality was only open on Tuesdays and Friday afternoons (or something like that). The hardware store owner next door asked how much gas we had left, and then directed us back and off route 20 miles to an open station. He keeps a few gallons to sell to those that can't make it (mostly motorcycles).
Have you even really adventured if you've never seen a sign saying "No gas for XX miles", where XX is a reasonably large number?
 

ajdelange

Well-Known Member
First Name
A. J.
Joined
Aug 1, 2019
Threads
9
Messages
2,883
Reaction score
2,317
Location
Virginia/Quebec
Vehicles
Tesla XLR+2019, Lexus, Landcruiser, R1T
Occupation
EE Retired
It's going to a long time before Fast charging is ubiquitous enough to accommodate that scenario.
Well I drive in exactly that way most of the time.


That is indeed what most would like to see, but even with ICE vehicles and the widespread and ready availability of gas it can still require planning when traveling in remote areas.
The rest of the time is in remote areas where I don't drive that way.

Someday we will likely reach the ability to wait until your charge is low before looking for a station close by (at least in most areas).
I think that day is here in most areas or at least in the areas where most of the driving hours are logged which is the urban, suburban and inter- urban parts of the country.


But careful planning will sometimes still be required- particularly for an adventure vehicle that is used to roam away from population/civilization.
That's of course absolutely true but we wonder how many Rivian miles will be logged on "adventure" as opposed to more mundane travel.
 

Sponsored

jcook01

Member
First Name
John
Joined
Apr 30, 2021
Threads
2
Messages
16
Reaction score
19
Location
Papillion NE
Vehicles
2017 Chevy Volt, 2021 Ford Mach-E
Occupation
Engineer
Thanks for putting this together but alas the big holes in the center of the country remain.

We'll soon have to decide between accepting our R1S and cancelling for something like a Tahoe which tow our camper without fear of not making it to the next refilling station.

The estimated 150 mile towing anxiety is killing me.

Happy trails to all of you soon to be R1T owners out there.
 

ajdelange

Well-Known Member
First Name
A. J.
Joined
Aug 1, 2019
Threads
9
Messages
2,883
Reaction score
2,317
Location
Virginia/Quebec
Vehicles
Tesla XLR+2019, Lexus, Landcruiser, R1T
Occupation
EE Retired
Are you using the Premium version?
Yes. I don't think you can get the real time charger status info without it.

I have tried out ABRP, and currently have a Chevy Bolt and Ford Mach E. I have found that the apps for my cars work just as good as ABRP and give almost exactly the same answers in terms of charging stops and times. And yes I included significant terrain changes in some trips.
Can't speak to those cars. ABRP is A Better Route Planner indeed compared to the Tesla offering, IMO.
 

NewsCoulomb

Member
Joined
Jun 24, 2021
Threads
0
Messages
21
Reaction score
5
Location
California
Vehicles
Bolt EV, Ranger Electric
They are of tremendous value as teaching tools for those awaiting delivery especially if this is their first BEV.
I would argue that the opposite is true. How do you learn math? By solving the problem yourself, or by plugging it into a calculator and writing down the answer? Route planners are more akin to the latter, and they've become used primarily as a crutch for those people who don't want to be bothered to learn about their car or the charging infrastructure.

That's entirely possible in a Tesla but I see you are driving a Bolt. That's really good news about the status of non-Tesla charging.
It's pretty easy to do in most of the modern EVs. Anything with >200 miles of freeway speed range and integrated Nav/Android Auto/Apple Car Play can drive throughout most of the country with zero preplanning.

Tesla gives this and I expect Rivian to be at least as good. Tesla's assessment is quantitative as well as qualitative. When driving a route with which he is familiar most people have a rough plan such as I'll charge at the Walt Whitman or Joyce Kilmer service areas - prefferbly the latter because there is a Nathan's there and I like Nathans (I'm being a little free with the facts here because there is no charging at Whitman AFAIK). So you plug Joyce into the trip planner in the car and set out. As you progress towards it a graph displaying your historical and projected SoC to Joyce Kilmer is updated in real time so you can see how much you will have on board when you get there. Should a tail wind come up so that it looks as if you might get further you can easily change your destination to another charger further along the way. Staus (number of stalls occupied) is continuously displayed for all SC on the map. Rivian can clearly offer this infomation for RAN stations but they can also get it for EA stations.

You need to change your perspective. Route planning is very valuable when venturing into an area with which you are not familiar or when contemplating travel in a new vehicle as we are all doing here. It lets you know what to expect and how modifying your optimality criteria change what happens and what the impact of unanticipated events may be. While you can, at least within the Tesla network, generally just jump into the car and go, a wise man would benefit from knowing a little about what's out there. We used to do it with the old Rand McNally road atlases. We have much better tools now.
I'm not sure whether Tesla supports Android Auto or Apple Car Play, but I suggest you try it out when you have the chance. They've not only been capable of identifying chargers along your current, planned route for several years now, they also provide real-time availability and statuses for those chargers. I know before I even decide to stop whether other vehicles are using the chargers.

Perhaps I'm just soured on most of the route planners (in particular, ABRP) because of the erroneous information and heinous route plans they've spit out in the past. ABRP in particular has been a bit of a running joke in the Bolt EV community for a while now because for a long time, ABRP would simply state that trips weren't possible (even after multiple Bolt EV owners had made that very same trip). Bolt EV owners would regularly arrive at chargers with 10% to 20% more range than ABRP estimated, and they'd spend 10% to 20% less time charging than what ABRP had dictated. I'm sure that ABRP has improved since, but the damage has already been done. And frankly, it was proof to me why it was completely unnecessary as a tool. EV owners were succeeding in their long trips despite of ABRP, not because of it.

As for a trip planner's value when one is unfamiliar with their car and the region they are traveling, again, I can only disagree. I recommend that any new EV owner familiarize themselves with their car before heading out on a long trip (in particular, how it behaves at freeway speeds and how it charges). The car's Nav and onboard instrumentation (real-time efficiency, range estimates, etc.) provide the information one needs when traveling.

Outside of that, I'd much rather do a cursory overview of PlugShare so that I know the level of coverage and the networks I'm most likely to rely on. Is it Blink, ChargePoint, Electrify America, EV Connect, EVgo, Francis Solar, etc. that I'm most likely to use? If so, I should make sure to have an active membership with those providers. Are their long gaps without alternative or back-up charging sites that I need to be aware of? If so, I do need to keep that in mind.

Route planners add no value to that decision making process. They simply jump to a conclusion that the EV owner is supposed to trust and follow.
 

DucRider

Well-Known Member
First Name
Gary
Joined
Oct 21, 2019
Threads
17
Messages
1,652
Reaction score
3,143
Location
ORegon
Vehicles
Polestar 2, Ioniq, R1S
Have you even really adventured if you've never seen a sign saying "No gas for XX miles", where XX is a reasonably large number?
The no services for XXX miles is where it starts to get interesting (but those signs are generally found only on well travelled routes). We rode one stretch for 80+ miles last week where we saw only 3 other vehicles on the road - 1 brand new Mercedes with temp tags and two pickups that were obviously worked hard every day (as they were intended).

We stopped for lunch and borrowed the shade on the porch of the General Store/Gas Station/Bar/Restaurant/Post Office (all closed save the Post Office function)
Rivian R1T R1S RAN Rivian Charging Stations Locations Map via Google Maps 1625159561898


Got a chance to chat with several locals as we hung out. One worked a 30K acre ranch with 1,200 "pairs" (cow and calf). Another didn't have a ranch, just 150 acres and a few head. They really want someone to buy and reopen the store (we declined).

This "town" is in the RAN hole in Oregon coverage as discussed above. John Day and Burns could both use inclusion in the RAN. There are relatively new ChargePoint 62.5 kW stations in both with mixed reliability ratings.
Rivian R1T R1S RAN Rivian Charging Stations Locations Map via Google Maps 1625161693045
 

ajdelange

Well-Known Member
First Name
A. J.
Joined
Aug 1, 2019
Threads
9
Messages
2,883
Reaction score
2,317
Location
Virginia/Quebec
Vehicles
Tesla XLR+2019, Lexus, Landcruiser, R1T
Occupation
EE Retired
I would argue that the opposite is true. How do you learn math? By solving the problem yourself, or by plugging it into a calculator and writing down the answer?
Good question. The answer is "both". You develop an algorithm that is suitable to the problem, verify it and then use it to solve the problem. Route planning is conceptually pretty simple. You pick a trial route, evaluate it according to your optimality critera and write down the score. You then choose another route and evaluate it and write down the score. You keep doing this until you find the route with the lowest score. The difficulty is that there are so many possible routes that no human can do this task. A computer is required to do it in reasonable time. You are suggesting that if you don't do the calculations yourself they are somewhat less reliable than ones done by a machine. That's hardly true as the machine cannot make a mistake. You can misinterpret what it tells you or feed it bad information but it cannot make a mistake. A human can.

An anticipatory Rivian owner can learn, for example, what driving 10 miles over the speed limit will do to him or what the effect of taking his anvil collection with him are or how the outgoing uphill trip uses much more battery than the reverse down hill trip To suggest that an cannot learn from "gaming" with ABRP, or any other reasonably good route planner is folly and only hints that perhaps you don't know how to use such a tool.

Route planners are more akin to the latter, and they've become used primarily as a crutch for those people who don't want to be bothered to learn about their car or the charging infrastructure.
While that might be the case for some to those who understand these things they are a valuable tool for acquiring knowledge about you car and the charging infra structure.


It's pretty easy to do in most of the modern EVs. Anything with >200 miles of freeway speed range and integrated Nav/Android Auto/Apple Car Play can drive throughout most of the country with zero preplanning.
As I say I am delighted, as the prospective owner of a trtuck that can't use the Tesla network, to hear that this is the case. But I sure as hell wouldn't venture out along the northern shore of the St. Lawrence river without checking the situation out on PlugShare or ABRP first.



I'm not sure whether Tesla supports Android Auto or Apple Car Play, but I suggest you try it out when you have the chance. They've not only been capable of identifying chargers along your current, planned route for several years now, they also provide real-time availability and statuses for those chargers. I know before I even decide to stop whether other vehicles are using the chargers.
Tesla does not. But there is no need as all that information is available through the Tesla displays.



Perhaps I'm just soured on most of the route planners (in particular, ABRP) because of the erroneous information and heinous route plans they've spit out in the past. ABRP in particular has been a bit of a running joke in the Bolt EV community for a while now because for a long time, ABRP would simply state that trips weren't possible (even after multiple Bolt EV owners had made that very same trip).
For an optimization algorithm to be effective it must have a good model of the vehicle. ABRP was developed for Tesla and then began to add other brands over time. Perhaps the Bolt model is not as good as the models for the Tesla portfolio. The model needs to consider things like drag coefficient, rolling resistance coefficient, inverter efficiency, regen system characteristics, frontal area, slip coefficient.....



Bolt EV owners would regularly arrive at chargers with 10% to 20% more range than ABRP estimated, and they'd spend 10% to 20% less time charging than what ABRP had dictated. I'm sure that ABRP has improved since, but the damage has already been done. And frankly, it was proof to me why it was completely unnecessary as a tool. EV owners were succeeding in their long trips despite of ABRP, not because of it.
You seem rather naive about how these things work and what they are supposed to do. There is no way ABRP, or any other planner, can tell you what your SoC will be at the end of a trip because there are factors that have a profound effect on SoC that it cannot know. Was the SoC when you left what you told it to use in planning the trip? Did it start to rain during the trip? Did a head wind or tail wind spring up during the trip? Did you decide to drive faster than the speed limit or was there traffic that prevented you from realizing the speed limit? Did you adjust the Wh/mi when you ran ABRP to reflect your personal driving style? '

ABRP is there to give you a prediction based on what you tell it and what it knows about speed limits and terrain. It is used to inform you as to what you might expect. I've never been disappointed by it but as I've said before I've never used it to predict SoC at a destination.

Now recently it has emerged as an app. It connects to the car and knows what's happening in real time so presumably it now can do what the Tesla in car app does. It never occurred to me to check it on the run now that it can know about real conditions. I'll give that a shot next time I do any distance on the road.



Route planners add no value to that decision making process. They simply jump to a conclusion that the EV owner is supposed to trust and follow.
Again your perspective is not reflective of reality nor do you apparently understand how to use these programs. One can lead a horse to water but he cannot make him drink.
 

Sponsored

NewsCoulomb

Member
Joined
Jun 24, 2021
Threads
0
Messages
21
Reaction score
5
Location
California
Vehicles
Bolt EV, Ranger Electric
Good question. The answer is "both". You develop an algorithm that is suitable to the problem, verify it and then use it to solve the problem. Route planning is conceptually pretty simple. You pick a trial route, evaluate it according to your optimality critera and write down the score. You then choose another route and evaluate it and write down the score. You keep doing this until you find the route with the lowest score. The difficulty is that there are so many possible routes that no human can do this task. A computer is required to do it in reasonable time. You are suggesting that if you don't do the calculations yourself they are somewhat less reliable than ones done by a machine. That's hardly true as the machine cannot make a mistake. You can misinterpret what it tells you or feed it bad information but it cannot make a mistake. A human can.

An anticipatory Rivian owner can learn, for example, what driving 10 miles over the speed limit will do to him or what the effect of taking his anvil collection with him are or how the outgoing uphill trip uses much more battery than the reverse down hill trip To suggest that an cannot learn from "gaming" with ABRP, or any other reasonably good route planner is folly and only hints that perhaps you don't know how to use such a tool.

While that might be the case for some to those who understand these things they are a valuable tool for acquiring knowledge about you car and the charging infra structure.
Sure, route planners *can* be used as a teaching tool, but that is not how they are most often used. Also, in order for them to work, they are only as useful as their information is accurate (more on that below).

As I say I am delighted, as the prospective owner of a trtuck that can't use the Tesla network, to hear that this is the case. But I sure as hell wouldn't venture out along the northern shore of the St. Lawrence river without checking the situation out on PlugShare or ABRP first.
Again, note that I encouraged using PlugShare for unfamiliar routes or regions, but PlugShare as a community driven database of charging options is very different than a route planner.

For an optimization algorithm to be effective it must have a good model of the vehicle. ABRP was developed for Tesla and then began to add other brands over time. Perhaps the Bolt model is not as good as the models for the Tesla portfolio. The model needs to consider things like drag coefficient, rolling resistance coefficient, inverter efficiency, regen system characteristics, frontal area, slip coefficient.....
I am aware, which is why I was initially very forgiving of ABRP's inaccurate route plans for the Bolt EV. However, after I submitted data logs for more than 10,000 miles of driving and hours of DC fast charging (along with the submissions of dozens of other Bolt EV owners), I expected the outputs to improve. They didn't.

You seem rather naive about how these things work and what they are supposed to do. There is no way ABRP, or any other planner, can tell you what your SoC will be at the end of a trip because there are factors that have a profound effect on SoC that it cannot know. Was the SoC when you left what you told it to use in planning the trip? Did it start to rain during the trip? Did a head wind or tail wind spring up during the trip? Did you decide to drive faster than the speed limit or was there traffic that prevented you from realizing the speed limit? Did you adjust the Wh/mi when you ran ABRP to reflect your personal driving style? '

ABRP is there to give you a prediction based on what you tell it and what it knows about speed limits and terrain. It is used to inform you as to what you might expect. I've never been disappointed by it but as I've said before I've never used it to predict SoC at a destination.

Now recently it has emerged as an app. It connects to the car and knows what's happening in real time so presumably it now can do what the Tesla in car app does. It never occurred to me to check it on the run now that it can know about real conditions. I'll give that a shot next time I do any distance on the road.

Again your perspective is not reflective of reality nor do you apparently understand how to use these programs. One can lead a horse to water but he cannot make him drink.
If your assessment wasn't so far off the mark, I might actually take offense at what you wrote, but it seems to me that you might not understand what you're talking about.

I am fully aware that you can modify and optimize ABRP to better match your particular EV and your specific driving conditions and habits, but that completely contradicts your first assertion that ABRP is a teaching tool. How can a new EV owner be expected to adjust ABRP's settings to what they should be if they're relying on it to teach them about what they can expect from their car?

And I have to question whether you've ever used the tool. ABRP most certainly does predict your battery state of charge (SOC) upon arrival (it's a key metric in predicting whether and how fast you can actually complete a route), and it most certainly does recommend the amount of time you should spend charging based both on predicted charging speeds and required SOC to make the next, prescribed stop. Of course those are based off of initial input values, but when ABRP's baseline numbers are so far out of line for a particular EV, the tool ceases to be of any real value (for both experienced EV owners and new EV owners attempting to learn about their vehicles).

You, yourself, said the tool was extremely accurate for Teslas, so maybe that's leading to this disconnect. I can say with certainty that the same is not true for many non-Tesla EVs. We regularly had Tesla owners active on Bolt EV groups informing prospective buyers about how they couldn't complete particular trips or how those trips would take so long and be so costly as to be entirely unpalatable. Always, they were using ABRP as a source for their information because they had no first-hand experience with the Bolt EV or the public charging infrastructure along those routes (Electrify America's chargers were often mislabeled as "40 kW" or "50 kW"). I can attest to how harmful those dialogs were to EV adoption in general and Bolt EV adoption in particular, and they were all based on ABRP's preset values that (in theory) were based on real-world data logs that I and other Bolt EV owners provided.

Now yes, I have heard good things about the "Premium" subscription to ABRP, and even for Bolt EV owners, it's doing a better job of guiding them through routes because it is relying on real-time data, not ABRP's wholly inaccurate baseline stats for the Bolt EV.

Bringing this back to Rivian, I expect Rivian's onboard guidance and route planning to be far superior to ABRP. Hopefully, Rivian breaks this cycle of planning trips around the needs of the car rather than the needs of the occupants, but it might still be a little early for that.
 

azbill

Well-Known Member
First Name
Bill
Joined
Jun 8, 2020
Threads
14
Messages
1,261
Reaction score
1,560
Location
Arizona
Vehicles
R1T, Mach E, Hummer EV SUT
Occupation
Engineer
Yes. I don't think you can get the real time charger status info without it.

Can't speak to those cars. ABRP is A Better Route Planner indeed compared to the Tesla offering, IMO.
Chevrolet provides real time status for most networks, but not EA right now. Ford provides real time status for most networks including EA.

For both of these vehicles I can initiate charges for most networks directly from their apps, except that Chevy is missing that feature for EA right now. I have had the Mach E for just under 3 weeks, but went to a local EA site, plugged in, waited, and it started charging. So I can confirm that Plug and Charge really does work. There is an account setup you have to do first, but it works for EA and Greenlots.
 

Gator42

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 3, 2020
Threads
13
Messages
880
Reaction score
1,455
Location
SC MA NV
Vehicles
2020 Defender
I think the park Chargers are going to be "waypoints" with the intent that you will be there for hours hiking, and not need a quick pit stop. Same as Tesla destination Chargers
Can someone point me to the more definitive information that this is the case? Rivian seems to only say waypoints are for 'where you shop, play, stay and eat' but I get the impression the locations on the map are exclusively for DC fast chargers....
 
Last edited:

ajdelange

Well-Known Member
First Name
A. J.
Joined
Aug 1, 2019
Threads
9
Messages
2,883
Reaction score
2,317
Location
Virginia/Quebec
Vehicles
Tesla XLR+2019, Lexus, Landcruiser, R1T
Occupation
EE Retired
I don't want you to take offense but it seems from your remarks that optimization and estimation may not be things with which you have had much experience prior to BEVs. And I don't think you may be reading what I wrote too carefully as I never said that ABRP was accurate for Tesla. It's an optimization tool that operates under certain assumptions. Therefore, it cannot be accurate as it cannot know how the experienced conditions will deviate from the assumed ones. To think that it might be accurate is naive. And I think that this may be your problem. You want it to be able to do things it can't do.

And ABRP doesn't predict your SoC at the destination. That is one of the boundary conditions you put in. It finds the best route that satisfies your specified requirement for SoC at the destination and at intermediate stops.

As for knowing what I am talking about I will only say that I have about 50 years of experience dealing with optimization and estimation. It was not the central focus of what I did professionally but I surely did a lot of it.

That's all I'm going to say. You don't appreciate what it can do for you. Don't use it. But don't tell other people it is detrimental. Just because you can't benefit from it does not mean they can't.
 
OP
OP

Autolycus

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 2, 2021
Threads
14
Messages
2,030
Reaction score
3,116
Location
ATL
Vehicles
ICE only :(
Chevrolet provides real time status for most networks, but not EA right now. Ford provides real time status for most networks including EA.

For both of these vehicles I can initiate charges for most networks directly from their apps, except that Chevy is missing that feature for EA right now. I have had the Mach E for just under 3 weeks, but went to a local EA site, plugged in, waited, and it started charging. So I can confirm that Plug and Charge really does work. There is an account setup you have to do first, but it works for EA and Greenlots.
It would be great if there were a clearly defined set of protocols to facilitate this sort of behavior regardless of the car manufacturer and charging network. It shouldn't need to be that Chevy has to go sign an agreement with every single charging network out there. Eventually there will be lots of regional networks that might only have a handful of stations. Plug and charge shouldn't be limited to just the large networks.
Sponsored

 
 




Top