Road trip planning help

[SAM]

Just got back from a 1,200 mile road trip from Central NJ to Charlotte, NC and back. I used a combination of A Better Route Planner, Plug Share, and the Electrify America apps to plan the trip.

I agree that PlugShare is easier to use but A Better Route Planner provides more detail. The main problem I had with the apps is getting alternate routes to show (i.e., I wanted to go Route 81 but I kept getting the Route 95 option only). Playing with the settings and recalculating in the A Better Route Planner app got the two route options to show and then I could select them, save and then play with options like the fastest route, fewer stops slider.

Using the Electrify America app was convenient to locate their fast chargers along the various routes and was key to determining how many stations were listed as unavailable at planed stops (although the A Better Route Planner App also shows this info). I used that info to plan alternatives in case planned stops with half the stations or more listed as unavailable turned out to be thumbs down.

I did have a problem at one stop (listed as 2 of 4 stations unavailable) where I could not get any of the stations to work. I called Electrify America and they reset one of the available stations and, after waiting for it to boot back up, it worked. As noted on this forum in other threads, EA has very responsive and helpful customer service.

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[DanBGolf]

A Better Route Planner is pretty great. The best feature is to create the route in the app on your phone and then share it with Google Maps (hit the share button and select Google Maps). Then you can use Car Play or Android Auto in the car with the created route that will include all your charging stops.

Be sure to save the route in ABRP first.

This is an excellent tip! Thanks. I just subscribed to ABRP Premium and also just started playing around with Android Auto. I will definitely use this on my upcoming long trip. Thanks again.

 

[OlyPen]

Just did a road trip using the Ford nav built in and was able to use some of the features well, especially looking for EA chargers on the fly based on actual range and distance to the next charger. It worked surprisingly well in realtime (but not as an advanced planning tool). It recalculated the route and charging needs based on the last charge and current performance and I found the numbers to be pretty close to actual. Just an FYI to be sure to pull the drop down filter and select "dcfast" and "in network" only to eliminate a lot of crap chargers that'll pop up in the search.

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