How to use "fast" chargers?

[PaulS]

I'm trying to plan a route where I'm going to be picking up a car, and I have no idea how much charge will be in it. So I've entered 10% as my starting charge, and ticked the "Level 2" box with 3.5kW in the associated box (Is this minimum charge point capacity, or the size of the charger installed on the car?).

What I was expecting was that the router would find somewhere local to get enough charge to get to a rapid charger, but it appears to be ignoring low power chargers and failing. Am I setting it up wrong? Some local chargers exist within a few miles, so I don't know why it isn't using them.

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=6b1b6714-686a-46d3-9a33-a5acb3b38721

[chuq]

Hi Paul,

I just zoomed in really close, found an AC charge point (there was one just south labelled "Ecotricity - Travelodge") and clicked "Add this charger as waypoint".  As to why it didn't try to route through it, I'm not sure.

The 3.5 kW refers to the charger in the car.  I think for the i3 that you selected it would be 7 kW or 11 kW.  Still, that shouldn't affect the routing!

[PaulS]

Yep, that's exactly what I ended up doing. Trouble is that doesn't give me the fastest method of getting back. It'll stop there for a full charge, rather than just the charge necessary to get to the next rapid charger. Really what I'm wanting to calculate is how long I need to be there at the slow charger.

Thanks for the clarification on the "Car Charger" box. Could this not be part of the car database?

Edited September 9, 2019 by PaulS
A bit more detail.

[Jason-ABRP]

28 minutes ago, PaulS said:

Yep, that's exactly what I ended up doing. Trouble is that doesn't give me the fastest method of getting back. It'll stop there for a full charge, rather than just the charge necessary to get to the next rapid charger. Really what I'm wanting to calculate is how long I need to be there at the slow charger.

Thanks for the clarification on the "Car Charger" box. Could this not be part of the car database?

I think the trouble is we don't have a high enough penalty yet for going negative on the plan.  Adding an hour or two to the plan raises the "cost" too high, and it ends up reporting a plan with a negative SoC.  We'll see what we can do to figure that out.

In the meantime, if you set it to charge to full, then figure out how much the next hop uses, you can set the charge-to % on the level 2 waypoint and go from there:

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=ea5d379c-6c8e-4eed-9968-86117bba7e4d

Edited September 9, 2019 by Jason (ABRP)
Added plan with minimized level 2 charge time

[Bo-ABRP]

Thanks for the report, now fixed!

(Technically, the problem is that there are so many level 2 chargers with low power, and sometimes we exclude the best ones too early just because they look much worse than higher power chargers further away.)