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Range Assurance Disappointment
I had my first experience with the the range assurance software today. Went to my parents for Easter. Drive is about 170km each way. Having done the drive several times before I know I can get there in just under half a charge. I can charge at 240V and 20 amps from the plug in the garage. I left my parents with a 64% charge and put home in the GPS. To my surprise, instead of routing me straight home the software routed me to a supercharger that was about 30km out of the way adding 1 hour to an 1 1/2 drive if I had actually went and supercharged. I of course ignored it and drove straight home arriving with 15% charge left. I don't have much to complain about with the car, but unnecessarily adding 1 hour to an 1 and a half hour drive isn't very helpful. Common Elon, you can do better than this.
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Its philosophy is plenty of charge is better than little charge.
That's how it can "ensure you never unintentionally run out of range."
It's meant for newly diagnosed range-anxiety people, not for those who know the difference between Ideal Vs Rated Miles, Miles left shown on GPS and Rated Miles left shown on the Dashboard...
Beta.
Guinea pig.
Rinse and repeat. Hey, y'all wanted to be more involved, right?
from OK to Caution), it might be using 20% as its requirement for
"enough" extra charge to start the trip.
Since you had only 15% left (about 45 Rated Miles), it might think
that hiu should have a greater reserve before starting home.
now on since the GPS went nuts in New York City...I kept telling her that Tesla will update it...but come on...just do a patnership with Garmin or Google and make the navigation work! I have an 17 inch GPS that I don't trust...
At least your car doesn't think it's an amphibian fish running around in Pacific Ocean (as reported by one of the forumers):
<img src= "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-NjYKaAL0za0/VPF8DRlka5I/AAAAAAAAank/WDNdio4RuqY/w522-h928-no/My+Tesla+thinks+it's+in+the+middle+of+the+ocean.jpg" width="640"/>
The circles should really be half that, because if there isn't a supercharger in range, the actual distance you can safely drive away from an SC is only 75 miles - because you have to turnaround to get back to the SC.
I don't have the new 6.2 release yet - so I can't verify this. Does the on-board range assurance work the same way - or does it take into account the distance you need to get back to a known charging station (allowing you only about 1/2 of your estimated range away from the nearest charging station)?
Perhaps a simple update could state "hey, you have enough charge to make it to your destination, but it'll be close, and you won't be able to do much once you get there, so here's a suggestion to consider?"
Bear in mind, as the supercharger network grows, that same logic might have you stop for 20 minutes along the way. The car's battery capacity is finite ... some folks would no doubt be white-knuckle driving the whole way home and might see the benefit of an extra hour of travel to ensure they had enough juice. Isn't that really the point? Nobody ever said that eliminating range anxiety came without a cost ... it's software after all, not new superchargers every 2 miles.
Apparently the Tesla app has more range anxiety than the OP. :-))
One thing I noticed recently is that energy used per mile can increase a lot in heavy, slow-moving traffic in very warm, summery weather. Fortunately, we don't get much of that kind of traffic around here but that has to be a major source of uncertainty in developing trip planning software. If there is a big accident that backs up traffic with no nearby exit to a source of charging, you might want to have more than a 40 mile buffer that can turn into 10 miles of actual range.
As far as placing a car in the Pacific Ocean is concerned, that's not news. I had a Lexus with nav system many years ago that routinely placed us in the waters around San Francisco. One would think that the software could be improved in 20 years, though...
It is odd that it did not take into account your ability to charge at your destination especially since you have charged there previously. Did that destination still appear on you map as being a place where you have charged before ?
As with many things, this will improve dramatically. Tesla is very good about making improvements. I would not be surprised if they don't add a simple yes or no question to appear on the screen after you enter your destination.
Do you have access to a charger at your destination
No: routes you to the closest supercharger
Yes: has a follow up question (4 buttons appear on the screen)
Level 1 (110v outlet), Level 2 (220v outlet), HPWC, or Level 3 CHAdemo
You select one of the 4 and it tells you "how long" you will have to be able to remain in order to make it back to the closest supercharger.
Hopefully once you've made this trip it will remember and simply tell you how long you have to charge a the destination to return to the nearest supercharger.
Of note it could default for conservative charge rates i.e. Level 1 (2 miles/hour), Level 2 (16 miles/hr), HPWC (40 miles/hr), ChAdemo (100 miles/hr)
Lets say I had bought the car specifically because of range assurance. Would I have been impressed that my drive went from 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours? Not at all.
It was my home charger so the car knew their was a charger at my destination. I didnt have it in range mode because I didnt have to. You'd think it would at least suggest using range mode before redirecting your route.
Does anyone know how to turn off range assurance? I didnt look hard but couldnt find it yesterday. I dont mind being a beta tester but when its for a feature I dont want or need I'd prefer to forgo the aggrevation.
This "last stop" glitch is easy to work with. As soon as you pass your second to last stop, select "delete charging stops" - it will then route your straight to your destination and show the estimated SOC at your destination.
Overall it worked well. Same complaint as seen here before. It needs waypoints and/or route options. I wanted to go up the coast, it wanted me to go through central California. Easy enough to fool it and get your way but that should be fixed.
I did find two bugs (i'm sure its been discussed already)
When you have a route in your nav system, and somewhere along the way you stop your car (put it in park, this includes stopping at a scheduled SC). When you get back on the road, the Nav has remembered your ultimate destination but it no long displays; Length of time, distance or ETA at the bottom of the route display, also when you push the trip button the route screen is blank as well as the blue route line on the map has disappeared.
2nd glitch: On my way back south it suggested I stop at 2 SC for a 20min hit at both (fine, no issue). I decided to stop at the 1st one and eat lunch. So by the time I got back on the road I was full (265). however the nav still suggested a 20 min hit at the next stop even though it acknowledged I would have 48% battery when I got home, if I did not do the stop. Once I canceled the Nav and reset the destination it gave up on the 2nd SC stop.
no big deal, just some software glitches they need to address.
it does need "way points" and route options. I have had nav systems in my cars since 1999, they all have problems and those problems are all fixable.
I think the main issue is that there is likely a "variance allowance" on the range to provide that level of assurance. Because of this it was a judgement call as to whether or not I followed the guidance - I did not follow it, as the suggested route would have doubled the duration of my trip.
I got home OK - with 4 miles left on the charge --- but I had a backup plan to hit a supercharger about 20 miles from home, in case my battery drained faster than expected.
Its not perfect - but its not completely worthless either --- I'm sure it will get better.
<i>It either routes you to an unnecessary SC stop close to your home or destination, which is sometimes out of the way, or recommends a much larger charge than needed to get to the last stop.
YMMV. I'm planning my first road trip this weekend.
Approaching my destination as recommended by Trip Planner, there is only one SC within 200 miles of my destination. Obviously, I need to charge there going and coming. As well as use a destination charger.
Bottom Line: Trips in SC-sparce territory require charging at every SC along the route. Being in that situation, I envy MS owners who live and drive where there <b>are</b> practical charging options.
I shake my head and mutter when I read "don't sweat", you have no reason to be concerned about charging. Obviously, people who say such things, including Tesla executives, don't face the real trip planning challenges that I face.
It's useless because there are only two stalls in a mall parking garage that appear to be in use by locals while shopping at the stores. All of the adjacent regular parking spaces were also in use so there was no place to park to wait for a charger to free up.
I can easily make the trip by doing a 100% charge in Newark and arrive in Charlottesville with 40 rated miles remaining. I made that trip in both directions last December.
The new software needs a lot of work.
However, the Energy Trip app of 6.1 is terrific! Real time feedback of destination reserve % guides me to change the way I'm driving. I know the average energy used provides the same raw feed back but projecting that usage for the remainder of the trip is extremely useful.
Another app (iOS) that we use is inRoute. Besides allowing layover and departure times to be specified at each stop, it will display the trip's elevation, wind, curvyness, temperature, precipitation, etc. profiles. I find the elevation and wind profiles very useful.
2. it's called RANGE ASSURANCE not SPEED ASSURANCE. If you take a known route expecting to arrive with less than say 20% charge as the OP appears to be doing, the software will probably assume that's beyond the comfort range of mom and pop driver and include a supercharge stop.
But for now, I agree that it causes more anxiety with its constant "drive slowly" messages. I now have two "range anxiety" - the range assurance warnings and my wife!!!
- K