what is a route planner and why is it essential?

In an electric car, as soon as journeys exceed the actual range of the vehicle, charging en route becomes necessary. To make travel easier, a route planner is essential. Let’s see together what the different manufacturers offer, and distinguish the good ones from the bad students.

Renault Mégane E-Tech // Source: Frandroid – Renault

If the electric vehicle does not add constraints to daily life, long trips are very different. Indeed, even if the fast charging network has become denser in France and in Europe, it is clear that you always have to plan your trip well to avoid unpleasant surprises.

An essential companion for long journeys is therefore the famous route planner.  With tools such as Route4Me maps route planner, you can plan with confidence, integrate charging breaks and consider the fastest routes to avoid traffic jams and save time.. Some manufacturers offer an on-board system that takes into account the limits of the vehicle, where others appear to be bad students, and leave the drivers on their own. Let’s take a detailed look at the different manufacturers’ proposals, and imagine future developments.

What can I do without an integrated route planner?

Too many vehicles still sold today don’t have a proper route planner. Of course, they have a GPS navigation system that clearly indicates directions, but this is not really enough when you have to travel hundreds of kilometers in an electric car.

In practice, the driver cannot therefore rely solely on the infotainment system of his vehicle, and must use third-party services to find where to charge. Imagine instead: you get behind the wheel of your new Nissan Ariya, Renault Zoe or even MG4, and you enter your destination 500 kilometers away. Except maybe information like what, you will not have enough battery to arrive safely, you will have nothing more.

In these still too numerous cases, planning tools like A Better Route Planner or Chargemap are essential. We also have a file explaining in detail how to tame these tools, so that it is easy to consider long trips aboard your new connected car.

Some manufacturers rely on their side on a companion mobile application to be able to send a destination to the vehicle, such as Kia or Hyundai, but this is far from sufficient. It is only possible to enter one destination and send it to the vehicle, which will not automatically add the charging stops when needed.

Onboard planners still leave something to be desired

Fortunately, some brands stand out, and offer a satisfying experience — though imperfect — to owners. Among these good students, we find Tesla, which takes advantage of its network of Superchargers to best guide the driver, as you can see in the short video below.

Route planning with automatic charging stop additions at Tesla remains unmatched to this day. pic.twitter.com/Shcf4Fba5H

— Bob Jouy (@bobjouy) September 26, 2022

This level of help in planning a route, however, is the bare minimum for it to qualify as sufficient.. Indeed, as soon as we dig a little bit into what Tesla offers on its Model S, Model 3, Model X and Model Y today, we notice significant oversights.

Tesla still has work to do

First of all, the charging stops offered are only offered on the Tesla Supercharger networkwhich requires in most cases to make a detour to be able to load, where Totalenergies, Ionity, Fastned and others are on motorway areas.

Afterwards, it is not possible to customize anything : by default, the on-board system therefore considers that arriving at your destination with less than 20% battery is acceptable. However, in many cases, the first fast charging station can be inaccessible if you arrive with so little battery. The driver must therefore anticipate his movements on the spot to know until what percentage of battery it must charge during the last shutdown to be quiet.

Finally, for many months, Tesla has listed third-party charging stations well, and pre-conditions the battery when one of these chargers has entered the navigation, but the route planner does not take into account the fact that we are going to load at this place! Thus, if you manually enter several Ionity terminals successively separated by 100 kilometers, and the final destination is too far to go there in one go, the on-board system tells you that there is not enough battery to reach the destination, as if the stops at the terminals were only stages without recharging.

Tesla being computers on wheels, we are not immune to a good surprise soon, with improvements on the various points mentioned, but for the moment, another manufacturer is doing much better than the American firm.

Mercedes does better than Tesla has its own game

The best route planner right now is offered by Mercedes, which fixes about all negatives of Tesla’s. It is not only clearly indicated on the screen the time spent charging as well as the battery level before and after charging, but all of this is customizable to your liking.

If you are the adventurous type, you could thus indicate a very low battery level to optimize the time spent charging. You can choose the charging networks you prefer, and all the indications are clear. At the very end of 2022, Mercedes’ route planner will indeed be the market benchmark. We were able to appreciate it at the wheel of the Mercedes EQS, or the Mercedes EQE more recently.

Which functions are important?

By examining in detail the proposals of Tesla and Mercedes, but also tools like A Better Route Planner, we can clear the important elements from the route plannerswhich we would like to see arrive more massively on board electric vehicles today.

First of all, take into consideration the desired battery levels on arrival at each terminal, but also at the final destination is very important. Indeed, some will be comfortable with a few percent of battery remaining before charging, while others will prefer to be more careful, and not arrive below the 20% mark for example.

The terminals offered by the vehicle must take into account its fast charging capacity. It is not useful to offer a Ford Mustang Mach-e to stop for several hours on an 11 kW charging station, when Ionity terminals delivering up to 350 kW are nearby. We deliberately draw the line towards the ridiculous, but these cases are anything but fictitious: it happens in reality, unfortunately.

Mercedes EQS charging on an Ionity terminal // Source: Romain Heuillard for Frandroid

A choice on the networks to be used must be allowedsince the current jungle of recharge cards is such that certain networks will be favored by their ease of use, their geographical location, or because the owners have a subscription at a preferential rate.

Real-time display of terminal availability is essential information, which must be displayed. On busy days, to avoid queuing at a charging station when another is almost empty a few tens of kilometers away, it is essential to see the number of terminals available live. The information already exists, and is visible in the applications of each charging operator, all you have to do is share it so that manufacturers can access it. Similarly, clearly displaying the terminals that are out of service is a necessity.

Finally, display the charging rate directly on the vehicle screen is a little extra that we would like to see happen more massively. For the moment, only Tesla with its network of Superchargers allows you to see this pricing information live.

A future where everything remains to be done

As you can see, there is still a long way to go for all players in electric mobility if they want to offer navigation that is consistent with driver expectations. Electric vehicles are now beginning to be more and more capable of making long journeys, in particular thanks to the increasing density of fast charging stations.

However, with the current constraints and the possibilities allowed by today’s connected vehicles, it is essential to offer a route planner worthy of the name to attract an ever larger clientele. At the dawn of 2023, having to rely on external websites, different mobile applications and other charging cards to go on a trip in an electric car should no longer be acceptable.

It is for this reason that we have taken the decision not to give a score higher than 8/10 to an electric car that does not have a route planner.