Rivian route planning with charge rates?

[JasonK]

Since I am considering buying my first EV the R2. I was playing arround trying some rout planners. The Better rout planner really sucked in my opinion. It sid not even show a RAN charging station in Elensberg, Wa which I know exists. I also was trying to see the charging rate costs at the different charging options along my route. I fount costs to be very difficult to find. If the app was any good it would show each charging option the Charging speed and the cost. I found with some digging into it I could get some costs listed with the app Plugshare. Is there any other route planning apps that anyone can recommend that they like. Want to test out the different options. Also when traveling where do you find the best charging cost. Some places sure do mark up the cost a lot.

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[Deleted member 30034]

I’ve had three electric cars since 2020. I’ve never worried about costs because I’m convinced that 90% of the time it’s going to be cheaper than gas. And I have never had problems with A Better Route Planner. Perhaps after you’ve had more time to work with it, it will be seen as better. BEVs are better than gas cars in every way. The R2 is going to be excellent. You’ll catch on very quickly.

 

[saguaro]

ABRP and PlugShare are the two best in my opinion, though it definitely depends where in the country you are, in general PlugShare has more up to date cost info, though you should be skeptical of Tesla rates shown as they can be quite off depending on the charger. I’ve found that in general it’s very tough to estimate charging costs with any of the apps, but you’ll get a feel for what different networks charge over time. Freeway chargers equate to very similar to gas prices in my experience, perhaps 10-20% lower depending on the time of year. Level 2 charging (destination) of course is generally orders of magnitude cheaper.

I’ve had various Tesla’s and the r1, and I’ve found my road trip costs are (on average) only about 10% lower than a similar gas car, but my day to day commute costs are about 80% lower. This is a lot of regional Puget sound commuting and many road trips back and forth across Washington on I5.

 

[JasonK]

I tried a another app called Charge hub which I like. It shows some rates and gives links to Teslas website to get rates for each of the Tesla chargers. Tesla is interesting. Some do not allow Non Tesla's. Some have different rates in the off peak hours. Some seem to have a set rate. Some mark up rates much more than others. I think Gharh hub is going to be my go to app for finding rates. At least it seemed to work best for me. I thought Tesla was going to be the most expensive but that is not the case. It can be though. Every place is different.

 

[Mos Eisley]

Since I am considering buying my first EV the R2. I was playing arround trying some rout planners. The Better rout planner really sucked in my opinion. It sid not even show a RAN charging station in Elensberg, Wa which I know exists. I also was trying to see the charging rate costs at the different charging options along my route. I fount costs to be very difficult to find. If the app was any good it would show each charging option the Charging speed and the cost. I found with some digging into it I could get some costs listed with the app Plugshare. Is there any other route planning apps that anyone can recommend that they like. Want to test out the different options. Also when traveling where do you find the best charging cost. Some places sure do mark up the cost a lot.

FYI in case you didn't know, ABRP is now owned by Rivian. Well, maybe better said, they bought the company that created ABRP and integrated/are integrating aspects of it into Rivian's own tech. ABRP still functions as a platform-neutral independent tool as well.

 

[vmi9d3]

I currently drive an EV6, the in car navigation is terrible, the GUI is hard to use and it is way to conservative on telling me I'll arrive at the destination at XX% and need to stop in charge when I've done the drive multiple times and know I don't need to stop. I routinely arrive at my destination +5% greater then the nav tells me. I generally use Plugshare to scope out a route and chargers. I also have to navigate to a charger to get the battery preconditioning to work.

Having said all of this, how good is the Rivian navigation? Is there truly a need to do a lot of preplanning because the native nav isn't accurate or hard to use?

Thanks.

 

[Carscott]

I wrote into rivian and asked them to work with ABRP to make the icons of each charger show the price similar to how google does it for gas stations.

 

[Bullwinkle]

ABRP and PlugShare are the two best in my opinion, though it definitely depends where in the country you are, in general PlugShare has more up to date cost info, though you should be skeptical of Tesla rates shown as they can be quite off depending on the charger. I’ve found that in general it’s very tough to estimate charging costs with any of the apps, but you’ll get a feel for what different networks charge over time. Freeway chargers equate to very similar to gas prices in my experience, perhaps 10-20% lower depending on the time of year. Level 2 charging (destination) of course is generally orders of magnitude cheaper.

I’ve had various Tesla’s and the r1, and I’ve found my road trip costs are (on average) only about 10% lower than a similar gas car, but my day to day commute costs are about 80% lower. This is a lot of regional Puget sound commuting and many road trips back and forth across Washington on I5.

I use ABRP to plan the route and then check the charging stops on Plug Share.

 

[saguaro]

I currently drive an EV6, the in car navigation is terrible, the GUI is hard to use and it is way to conservative on telling me I'll arrive at the destination at XX% and need to stop in charge when I've done the drive multiple times and know I don't need to stop. I routinely arrive at my destination +5% greater then the nav tells me. I generally use Plugshare to scope out a route and chargers. I also have to navigate to a charger to get the battery preconditioning to work.

Having said all of this, how good is the Rivian navigation? Is there truly a need to do a lot of preplanning because the native nav isn't accurate or hard to use?

Thanks.

I usually only use it if going on a really odd route or an area I know is limited in charging options. 95%+ of my road trips I just plug in the destination address and don’t think about it the rest of the trip. Rivian navigation is pretty good.

 

[cusetownusa]

I currently drive an EV6, the in car navigation is terrible, the GUI is hard to use and it is way to conservative on telling me I'll arrive at the destination at XX% and need to stop in charge when I've done the drive multiple times and know I don't need to stop. I routinely arrive at my destination +5% greater then the nav tells me. I generally use Plugshare to scope out a route and chargers. I also have to navigate to a charger to get the battery preconditioning to work.

Having said all of this, how good is the Rivian navigation? Is there truly a need to do a lot of preplanning because the native nav isn't accurate or hard to use?

Thanks.

i own a Tesla and R1S. Tesla does it the best but Rivian is a close second. I have looked into the EV6/EV9 in the past but was a hard no based on the UI, software, route planning etc. hopefully they improve on that.

sometimes I will map out a trip in ABRP just to get an idea of what it will look like but I have never felt it necessary. I will use PlugShare just to see if my destination (hotel/rental) has a place to plug in as this always makes traveling super convenient.

 

[wolfethomas]

Since I am considering buying my first EV the R2. I was playing arround trying some rout planners. The Better rout planner really sucked in my opinion. It sid not even show a RAN charging station in Elensberg, Wa which I know exists. I also was trying to see the charging rate costs at the different charging options along my route. I fount costs to be very difficult to find. If the app was any good it would show each charging option the Charging speed and the cost. I found with some digging into it I could get some costs listed with the app Plugshare. Is there any other route planning apps that anyone can recommend that they like. Want to test out the different options. Also when traveling where do you find the best charging cost. Some places sure do mark up the cost a lot.

Rivian's app does a decent job planning routes with charging stops, but sometimes your needs necessitate further planning. I've found Plugshare to be a great planning tool. It doesn't show cost to charge, but like others have mentioned I've found that paying to charge costs less than buying gas, and if you use a different app like ChargePoint to check prices at nearby charging locations they all come in close to the same cost.

 

[VSG]

The Better rout planner really sucked in my opinion. It sid not even show a RAN charging station in Elensberg, Wa which I know exists. I also was trying to see the charging rate costs at the different charging options along my route. I fount costs to be very difficult to find. If the app was any good it would show each charging option the Charging speed and the cost. I found with some digging into it I could get some costs listed with the app Plugshare.

The Ellensburg RAN has always showed up in ABRP, ever since the day it was turned on. Check your filter and vehicle settings to make sure you've specified the kinds of plugs you can use and the types of chargers you want to see.

For my uses, ABRP is the best I've tried.
My uses being planning road trips, specifically with overnight stops.
It's the "planning" portion that is the most useful, because I can plan charging around the stops and overnights I want to make and the routes I want to take. And I can easily modify a plan to choose a specific charging stop or make a side-trip or take advantage of a free L2 charger at a place I want to stop at. Then I can export the plan - dates, times, stops, chargers, overnights, and expected SoC at each point - for use in other tools / calendars / etc. That lets me track the estimates it made and get a feel for how those estimates differ from actuality (ABRP tends to be a little conservative - you end up with more SoC than it said you would. Which is the correct side to err on ...). Then for future trips you can always tweak the settings based on your experience to give yourself a greater safety margin or to make drive times more accurate etc.

The only downside is the UI organization is not really the best. It looks good enough, but using and finding some of the features is a little counterintuitive.

Costs are difficult for most planning apps because many networks don't have a public API to get their costs in realtime, and those costs will differ by time of day and by whether you have membership on the network etc. Plugshare tends to have more pricing info, but in general you're going to have to use the networks app to get the most accurate and up-to-date pricing information. But if you're on a roadtrip, there's plenty of time for your passenger to check the status and pricing of the next stop, since that will be hours away, and choose a backup option if there is a problem that day.

When traveling, choose hotels/campsites/etc. where you can get a free overnight charge. Depending on how far you're going each day, you can easily get 1/3 of your charging for free this way.

 

[KBabione]

The Rivian is our first EV and we were never worried about rates - depending on where we were going we were more concerned if we'd even find a charger! We did one trip from southeast PA (Lancaster) to northwest PA (Erie) and chargers were spaced roughly 30-45 miles apart and there was NO competition. Opening up the Tesla network improved that considerably, but it's still rare for us to have multiple options when we stop.

So - if you do a lot of charging away from home (I think more than 85% of our charging is from the L2 in our garage), you'll want to get a Tesla membership. It will pay for itself in 1-2 charges a month.

 

[Tejkalra]

I used route in vehical route planner. For some reason it only selects RAN and electrify America only. I have selected all the chargers in the setting. Still it will for some reason use RAN and electrify America with B rating when there is compatible tesla with better rating within Mile. That's annoying.

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