Ive owned my EV since 2020, ordered in 2019 but held up due to the big sneeze. One of my favourite things about the EV ecosystem is the amount of data available and how you can really use your iphone or android mobile as a satnav or analysis tool for trips for work or something. Ive used Tronity which links to your car via the mobile data connection but unfortunately they are not doing anything for my EV anymore as its a little old.

ABRP is an EV map system which takes into account lots of different data than a normal apple maps or google maps carplay trip. Nearly every built in sat nav should be disregarded as Carplay smashes all of them and there is a debate going on wether car manufacturers even need to put in their own awful satnav systems as nobody uses them anymore. ABRP has live traffic and weather and a whole range of tools like live charger data so you can skip along to the next one, but my favourite one is elevation data. If you get the app and plan a route you can press the route on the screen to bring up the height profile of your trip. This is important because you can save a huge amount of energy by taking a flatter or slower route, or you can plan a charge to take account of a mountain which will inevitably catch many out as they adjust driving habits for their electric drivetrains. Driving through the peak district as I do often can be an amazing experience but you have to take weather and height changes into account if youre on the end of your battery.

You can also get a ODB analytics dongle for most EVs, and connect it to ABRP. Its possible through this plug to recode your led lights, car noises, adjust functions and so on but it gives you better data. If you watch Bjorn Nyland videos he uses various tools. The main point is you cant do this with apple maps!

I think its an essential app.

  • @wewbull
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    9 months ago

    I think it peaked about 5 years ago. Honestly, I rarely load it now. I find the estimates are far too conservative, 20-30% off. The routes it comes up with are often annoying and it’s difficult to tweak them. When driving, it’s recalculating all the time - losing which target I have asked it to go by.

    I’ve even had it decide I’ve arrived at my charger and I’m now navigating away from it because the charger wasn’t easy to find and I was driving around. Well now it’s really difficult!

    So infuriating to use, especially the driving experience. Now I’ll just preload charger locations from zap map into Waze.