New user: Feedback after first long trip

[cagusch]

HI all,

I'm relatively new to ABRP and thought I would share my experience after our first longer trip (around 2500 km in 4 European countries). I love the idea of ABRP and wish it worked perfectly, but there were a few things that really bugged me:

• I was using the Android App with Android Auto, updating on April 10th to the then current version. Since that update, I occasionally witnessed the app crashing during the rest of the trip. This is extremely problematic when it happens while driving and you are relying on the navigation instructions. 
• The information displayed on the Android Auto screen is really insufficient. When there are charge stops on the route, I can't see my expected arrival time at destination. I only see the arrival time at the next stop. I also can't see name and location of the next charge stop. Only once I arrive I see how much I have to charge, but this information is important beforehand, as I need to know how long my next break will be (e.g. for lunch plans). When there are several alternatives, it's very hard to impossible to see what the differences are, especially regarding where the charge stops are.
  Ideally, while driving, I would be able to touch the screen somewhere to get detailed info about the next charge stop: map zoomed in to the vicinity, provider name, how much to charge, etc.. If there are several charge stops on the route, I could get the next one displayed by swiping. And at every charge stop detail screen, I would have a button "avoid for this trip", so if I don't like the charger for whatever reason, I can have ABRP recalculate the route without this charger.
• Ferries (and similar things like a car train shuttle in Switzerland) are treated as a stop, so Android Auto will show me the expected SoC at the ferry. That's of no use. It's a river crossing, not a charge stop. Due to this, I can't see the expected SoC at the next charge stop until I have passed the river. I actually reported this is a bug here.
• The route guidance an the car screen is far inferior to Google Maps. Especially in Italian towns it is sometimes extremely difficult to see where exactly to turn. This is quite a problem, as I repeatedly had to switch to Google Maps in order to find my way without making a wrong turn here and there. Then, of course, I can't see all the ABRP information on the SoC etc., so I need to switch back and forth. I'm not sure what the best solution for this would be, as I doubt that the turn-by-turn navigation can ever reach the level of specialized apps like Google Maps or Here. And it would probably not be very wise to dedicate a lot of resources to this, as it's not the main specialty of ABRP. Maybe an optimized Google Maps integration could be a solution? (e.g. a button to switch over to Google Maps for the final few km within city limits)
• This is an important one: Once I was sent to a charger with two stalls, where ABRP wasn't able to show the availability status (displayed as grey). When I arrived at the charger, it turned out the whole charger was defective! This was very problematic, and I was lucky that I could still reach another charger before running empty. Apparently for some chargers, ABRP can display the availability, for others not. I configured to only use chargers with at least 2 stalls, but I can't configure to only use chargers where the availability status is shown. I don't mean to only use charge points that are currently green/available, as I read in the FAQ that this does not make sense. But I want to exclude chargers where ABRP doesn't get the availability status at all, so I can avoid being sent to broken chargers. I added this as a feature request here (if you agree, please upvote
• During the whole trip I noticed that chargers at rest areas are much more convenient than chargers where you have to exit the motorway. Especially in France and Italy, where you have to pay for highway use, taking an exit requires you to stop at a booth, maybe wait in line a little, pay, and then take another ticket when entering the highway again. Even on trips with just one charge stop that only requires charging from 20 to 60%, so where I would be very flexible in choosing my charging location, I can't set a filter to prefer chargers that don't require me to exit the highway. I added this as a feature request as well (here)

 

Hope this feedback helps...

[cagusch]

Looks like I can't edit my post, so I can't fix a wrong link: The feature request for filtering to only use chargers that ABRP know the availability status of is actually this one.