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EV journey and plug-in planner?

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#65 ·
StinkyPete said:
This is everything that I had hoped the Zap-Map route-planner was going to be when I first read about it. I was disappointed with the way the way the Zap-Map one worked and thought to myself "why can't they implement a route-planner that does x", with "x" being everything that this route-planner does!

It gives you a range radius for the starting point (and each subsequent suggested charge-point), and then allows you to select and/or deselect the chargers that you would prefer, and with each selected charger, you get another range radius so that you can then pick the next charger. Perfect!
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I have been working on an online tool to help plan long distance trips

https://www.mevcharge.com

This webapp has two modes of calculating suggested stopping locations to charge up along the route. The simple mode uses a fixed specified range for the car model. The enhanced calculation mode takes into account vehicle spec (e.g. weight, starting state of charge) and environmental factors e.g. wind, road speed, elevation, temperatures.

Where the ev’s battery is predicted to have gone down to around 30%, the map will display a cluster of charging points which you can select as waypoints. For the following leg of the trip, the tool makes the assumption that the ev has been charged to 80%, which is normal for a quick charge up en-route. Filtering is also available based on network providers, connector types and charging modes.

There are plans to develop more functionalities such as notifications etc. The webapp version works on any browser that supports JavaScript including browser on mobile phones. iOS version is in development. Currently supports UK and US only. Charge points data for UK is from Department for Transport, which may not be as up to date. However, I heard that there is going to be a new project to provide better data.

Any suggestions, request for features and help spreading the site would be most welcome.
 
#69 · (Edited)
I'm finding a big problem nowadays with these route planners, which is that with a Kona with 265 miles of range, I tend to run out of coffee and human energy before my battery runs out of electrons. So I just charge up when I feel tired: planning ahead simply doesn't work. Example: today I charged four times on a 320 mile route, roughly once every 90 minutes, due to fatigue: last time I did this journey I only charged twice.
I didn't need all these charges: I just sipped and had a break. Things have moved on.
By the way two of these charges were on Ecotricity, (and both worked fine despite all the bad press) one on CPS and one on Polar: the choice is getting much wider nowadays.
 
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#70 ·
Scally said:
I'm finding a big problem nowadays with these route planners, which is that with a Kona with 265 miles of range, I tend to run out of coffee and human energy before my battery runs out of electrons. So I just charge up when I feel tired: planning ahead simply doesn't work. Example: today I charged four times on a 320 mile route, roughly once every 90 minutes, due to fatigue: last time I did this journey I only charged twice.
I didn't need all these charges: I just sipped and had a break. Things have moved on.
By the way two of these charges were on Ecotricity, (and both worked fine despite all the bad press) one on CPS and one on Polar: the choice is getting much wider nowadays.
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Hi Scally. Thanks for that. When you are stopping for a break do you just want a coffee? Or is there any other way you would prefer to spend your time?
 
#71 ·
Scally said:
I'm finding a big problem nowadays with these route planners, which is that with a Kona with 265 miles of range, I tend to run out of coffee and human energy before my battery runs out of electrons. So I just charge up when I feel tired: planning ahead simply doesn't work. Example: today I charged four times on a 320 mile route, roughly once every 90 minutes, due to fatigue: last time I did this journey I only charged twice.
I didn't need all these charges: I just sipped and had a break. Things have moved on.
By the way two of these charges were on Ecotricity, (and both worked fine despite all the bad press) one on CPS and one on Polar: the choice is getting much wider nowadays.
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Seems like a good thing, EVs will finally have come of age when you need a route planner to the same extent for an EV as an ICE, eg not at all.
 
#72 ·
Parking Eagle said:
Hi Scally. Thanks for that. When you are stopping for a break do you just want a coffee? Or is there any other way you would prefer to spend your time?
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A meal. Toilets. a coffee, shopping, wifi access for email: sometimes walk the dog (so chargers near dog-walking parks are another feature!)
 
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#73 ·
AnotherJoe said:
Seems like a good thing, EVs will finally have come of age when you need a route planner to the same extent for an EV as an ICE, eg not at all.
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I think it has already happened once cars get over 250 miles range, charging becomes almost irrelevant. Its having that big reserve that makes range anxiety a thing of the past. But I'm not a worrier anyway.
 
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#74 ·
I agree. My Soul EV can go further than I would ever want to without a good break now, so it’s not an issue. What IS useful is choosing when to recharge so I use the excellent route planner in Zap-Map - coloured chargers so I know which are rapid etc.
 
#75 ·
Scally said:
I think it has already happened once cars get over 250 miles range, charging becomes almost irrelevant. Its having that big reserve that makes range anxiety a thing of the past. But I'm not a worrier anyway.
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we need an ‘evenbetterrouteplanner.com’ where you put in your age, whether you have a dog, how often you need to check facebook and it works out stops for coffee, loo etc. Oh and charging. Bonus is it’ll also work for ICE drivers :)
 
#76 ·
ok so trying Zap-map and ABRP, neither seem to let me adjust the actual route - only chargers/range etc. Eg travelling from Windsor up to Leicester I wanted to compare M1 and M40 routes (M1 seems to have issues with northbound chargers and I’d struggle to get back to northampton on the way back in one go), but both apps seem to just go ‘on you’re going on the M1 then’ - Zap map lets me choose between two options but neither of those are M40.

Any apps/sites let me do that? I guess I can manually use zap map to check around the route I normally take
 
#77 ·
Mrklaw said:
ok so trying Zap-map and ABRP, neither seem to let me adjust the actual route - only chargers/range etc. Eg travelling from Windsor up to Leicester I wanted to compare M1 and M40 routes (M1 seems to have issues with northbound chargers and I’d struggle to get back to northampton on the way back in one go), but both apps seem to just go ‘on you’re going on the M1 then’ - Zap map lets me choose between two options but neither of those are M40.

Any apps/sites let me do that? I guess I can manually use zap map to check around the route I normally take
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I've found that when I'm being given a route I know is wrong I put a via on to force it to select a route I know is best.
 
#79 ·
Is the ZapMap route planner totally broken at present? I can't get it to do anything sensible. Running it under Chrome I put in a route with 3 points in the UK, press Find Route, and it show me a map of somewhere in the US. In FireFox it gave me Service Unavailable, then when I refreshed the page it gave a route but ignored one of my waypoints. If I try to put in a circular route with 2 waypoints - which is the trip I actually need to plan - the it won't display a route at all.
 
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