Ford Trip Planner and elevation

[Nolanbro]

Hi everyone!

So I've done some testing with the Ford navigation on a couple of road trips now across the eastern United and I'm pretty sure it does not take into account elevation. I keep getting the message "range revised due to route" which is in line with others, however, it only ever shows up when there is a significant amount of highway driving.

Today I went out to my car and plugged in the address of a local park that has roughly a 1500ft climb to reach the parking lot, and well the Ford nav said it was the same energy used both ways.

I have the car very well calibrated with ABRP with all categories being above 85%. The consumption it came up with is 3.16 mi/kWh, and its SOC on arrival is never off by more than 1 or 2 percent.

On this same route ABRP said arrival at 21% at the park and 6% back at EA. The car said 25% and 10% respectively.

Does anyone know if the enhanced intelligent range hill grade only works on major interstates? The road going to the park is a NYS state road but is a 65mph divided highway. It also never "adjusted" the gom for this route. Only if I put in a destination further than about 60 miles away does it do it.

Ford's wording on the "hill grade" seems very specific as in none of their press material does it say elevation, so is it simply "oh this is a steep mountain pass but we don't know how high it goes so just drop the estimate by 5%" or something else?

I would use ABRP for trips more but its still quite cold in NY this time of year and the battery does need to heat up before a charger and its a pain to switch back and forth between the two.

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[ChasingCoral]

Ford will do navigation twice: once is done immediately in the vehicle. It's calculated by the onboard navigation software. Elevation, wind, temperature, etc. are not included in that calculation.

After you start driving you get that "range revised due to route" that includes all of these various environmental and other parameters. This is calculated by a Ford server. For our Lightning pulling a trailer it also takes trailer parameters into account and does pretty well for the overall route. It is still a bit on the conservative side. With the Lightning's four saved trailers, this gets better the more you drive.

You don't get a good complex model using Apple Maps. Also, Apple Maps does a lousy job of estimating the trailer impact and always estimates less power use than reality, resulting in an overly rosy range forecast.

 

[Nolanbro]

Ah ok I see. When I got the car in Jan it was on really old (6.2 I think) software (currently 23-PU1113-UNX-DC) as it was sitting at the dealer/auction lot for a couple of months. It was really bad with calculating then (probably because the driving style was reset). I'll try it later today and see if driving will cause it to update. I've only seen that message once or twice on a short trip like this, most likely because my commute is really the only "regular" driving I do so GOM is pretty accurate for just that, and there's less than 100ft of elevation change, and that's about 20 miles each way.

Is there a threshold for that server data to get sent for the car, like distance or if a charging stop is required?

I don't have an iPhone but I imagine it's less integrated than Ford Nav is.

Has anyone had experience with it in some more serious climbing (couple thousand feet in short distance period)?

 

[Phil-Springs]

Ah ok I see. When I got the car in Jan it was on really old (6.2 I think) software (currently 23-PU1113-UNX-DC) as it was sitting at the dealer/auction lot for a couple of months. It was really bad with calculating then (probably because the driving style was reset). I'll try it later today and see if driving will cause it to update. I've only seen that message once or twice on a short trip like this, most likely because my commute is really the only "regular" driving I do so GOM is pretty accurate for just that, and there's less than 100ft of elevation change, and that's about 20 miles each way.

Is there a threshold for that server data to get sent for the car, like distance or if a charging stop is required?

I don't have an iPhone but I imagine it's less integrated than Ford Nav is.

Has anyone had experience with it in some more serious climbing (couple thousand feet in short distance period)?

Day ski trip with 3000 ft in 140 miles elevation change. Predicted SOC at destination always off by 10% in the direction you’d expect if it doesn’t take the elevation change into account well. So, if it is trying to adjust for elevation, it does it really poorly.

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