Charging Planner - New Feature

wemct

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2019
Threads
20
Messages
732
Reaction score
1,258
Location
Georgia, USA
Vehicles
'23 Cayenne S Coupe; '22 AMG SL55; Taycan 4S(sold)
Country flag
I am doing another one of my long distance drives from Georgia to Atlanta Connecticut. Today's leg was 400 miles to Raleigh, North Carolina. I noticed that as one of the feature updates, now when you use the Porsche Charging Planner with the factory navigation to select an Electrify America charging station (via the POI > Porsche Charging Service), the EA destination shows the number of available chargers (and it refreshes in real time)

I didn't notice the feature until I was fairly close to my first charger location. I had purposely skipped one of the earlier stops recommended by A Better Route Planner app. Instead I decided to stretch the 1st stop to the Sam's Club at Greenville, South Carolina. When I was about 30 minutes away, I noticed the new feature, but it said 0/7 stations available and was highlighted in red. It caused a bit of panic since I didn't know if that meant that all of them were out of service. In my prior my road trips I have never seen all of the chargers occupied. Plugshare and the EA app didn't shed any more information. When I was about 10 minutes away, the display changed to 2/7 and turned green. I felt much better.

I pulled up to the chargers and sure enough there were other cars there. I found an available 350 kW tower and plugged in without a problem (it peaked above 200kW). It even continued to pull 63kW above 90% SOC. so I let it charge for 29 minutes.

My second stop was at the Walmart in Greensboro, North Carolina. As you can see from the picture, it showed 15/15 chargers available. The first 350kW charger connected, but I was only pulling 39kW at 25% SOC with a preconditioned battery. I decided to try the adjoining 350kW tower. I had to call EA to initiate the charge because the second tower did not appear on the Charging NA app. The EA rep connected me to the tower, and the Taycan pulled 243kW (much better than the 39kW at the adjoining tower). She said she would submit a repair ticket for the slow charger. By the time I left, a Mustang Mach-e was also charging.

I arrived an hour later in Raleigh with 57% SOC (lower than the picture b/c I did some spirited driving during the last 70 miles). I'm staying at the Aloft Raleigh Durham Airport hotel. It has a Tesla Destination Charger and a 32A Clipper Creek charger. Both were available. I'm plugged into the Clipper Creek and charging at a leisurely 6 kW. It will be nice to start with a full battery in the morning for the second leg of the trip.

Porsche Taycan Charging Planner - New Feature 20211022_194119_resized
Sponsored

 
Last edited:

SteveDC

Well-Known Member
First Name
Steve
Joined
Apr 22, 2021
Threads
15
Messages
132
Reaction score
70
Location
Mid-Atlantic
Vehicles
Taycan 4S, 308QV
Country flag
I am doing another one of my long distance drives from Georgia to Atlanta. Today's leg was 400 miles to Raleigh, North Carolina. I noticed that as one of the feature updates, now when you use the Porsche Charging Planner with the factory navigation to select an Electrify America charging station (via the POI > Porsche Charging Service), the EA destination shows the number of available chargers (and it refreshes in real time)

I didn't notice the feature until I was fairly close to my first charger location. I had purposely skipped one of the earlier stops recommended by A Better Route Planner app. Instead I decided to stretch the 1st stop to the Sam's Club at Greenville, South Carolina. When I was about 30 minutes away, I noticed the new feature, but it said 0/7 stations available and was highlighted in red. It caused a bit of panic since I didn't know if that meant that all of them were out of service. In my prior my road trips I have never seen all of the chargers occupied. Plugshare and the EA app didn't shed any more information. When I was about 10 minutes away, the display changed to 2/7 and turned green. I felt much better.

I pulled up to the chargers and sure enough there were other cars there. I found an available 350 kW tower and plugged in without a problem (it peaked above 200kW). It even continued to pull 63kW above 90% SOC. so I let it charge for 29 minutes.

My second stop was at the Walmart in Greensboro, North Carolina. As you can see from the picture, it showed 15/15 chargers available. The first 350kW charger connected, but I was only pulling 39kW at 25% SOC with a preconditioned battery. I decided to try the adjoining 350kW tower. I had to call EA to initiate the charge because the second tower did not appear on the Charging NA app. The EA rep connected me to the tower, and the Taycan pulled 243kW (much better than the 39kW at the adjoining tower). She said she would submit a repair ticket for the slow charger. By the time I left, a Mustang Mach-e was also charging.

I arrived an hour later in Raleigh with 57% SOC (lower than the picture b/c I did some spirited driving during the last 70 miles). I'm staying at the Aloft Raleigh Durham Airport hotel. It has a Tesla Destination Charger and a 32A Clipper Creek charger. Both were available. I'm plugged into the Clipper Creek and charging at a leisurely 6 kW. It will be nice to start with a full battery in the morning for the second leg of the trip.

20211022_194119_resized.jpg
Sounds like a great addition, but you lost me on how you set it up. Usually, when you select a point of interest (POI), the nav system will take you there, as though the POI were your destination, not a stop along the way.
How did you select Raleigh as you destination, but specify Electrify America charging stations along the way? Could you go through the procedure, step-by-step? This new feature would be a big help on my planned long distance trip next month. Thank you. Steve
 
OP
OP
wemct

wemct

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2019
Threads
20
Messages
732
Reaction score
1,258
Location
Georgia, USA
Vehicles
'23 Cayenne S Coupe; '22 AMG SL55; Taycan 4S(sold)
Country flag
Sounds like a great addition, but you lost me on how you set it up. Usually, when you select a point of interest (POI), the nav system will take you there, as though the POI were your destination, not a stop along the way.
How did you select Raleigh as you destination, but specify Electrify America charging stations along the way? Could you go through the procedure, step-by-step? This new feature would be a big help on my planned long distance trip next month. Thank you. Steve
Here is the step by step (it's a bit lengthy)...

I use the following three things to plot out my routes for a road trip:
  1. Porsche Factory Navigation: I input the final destination for the day in the factory navigation (e.g. Aloft Raleigh Durham Airport Hotel). The Porsche Charger Planner does its thing of dropping in charging stops along the way (I ignore most of the charging stops that it plots). For me the main purpose of the factory navigation is to precondition the big battery before arriving at the Electrify America charger (I’ll explain more below) and to give me a rough idea of the ETA and distance to the final destination.
  2. A Better Route Planner app on my cellphone: I input the starting and end destinations for the day in ABRP. I have it filtered to only show EA locations. The ABRP app is fairly conservative in selecting stations. My actual range is usually better than what the app plots as stops. It makes it easy for me to see all of the EA locations along the route. You can probably do a similar thing with the EA app.
  3. Waze: I use Waze for the actual navigation to the next EA location that I want to use (not to navigate to the final destination). One thing that was very useful on this trip was I could type in something like “Electrify America Richmond” and Waze found it in the search result. It made finding the actual EA chargers in the parking lot easier than if you just used a numeric street address (especially if the chargers are located at a large shopping mall and not the typical Walmart parking lot).
From the various EA chargers that ABRP picks/shows along my route for the day, I choose one and input it in Waze. When Waze spits out the distance, I decide if I can make it based on the Taycan’s guess o meter (I actually think it is pretty accurate for me). I like to leave a cushion of at least 20 miles. If I have plenty of range, I will select a farther charger location to see if it is doable based on the Waze calculation and the car’s estimated range. On this trip, I was able to do the first 400 mile leg with two stops (instead of the 3 identified by ABRP). Today’s leg was just shy of 600 miles and I did it with three stops (instead of the 4 identified by ABRP) with 110 miles of range left when I got to Connecticut. I purposely left a ton of range b/c in Connecticut I don’t have access to a residential AC outlet, so I wanted to have some range to drive around for a few days to do errands before heading to the closest EA charger in Connecticut next week. BTW, on this trip I did not use the Range mode at all, and drove at a healthy clip and still did the trip with less stops than my prior trips along the same route.

Now back to the Porsche Factory Navigation. On occasion, the EA charger location plotted by the Porsche Charger Planner matches the one that I input in Waze. If that is the case, I don’t need to do anything else to precondition the big battery. If the one I selected for Waze is not the one selected by the Porsche Nav, then when I’m about 20-40 miles away from the charger, I will go into the Porsche Nav POI > Porsche Charging Service > and find it in the results. I will select it as a stopover. If you don’t use the POI to find it (or if the nav doesn’t populate it itself), the battery will not be preconditioned to the optimal charging temperature (i.e., if you manually type in the address of the EA charger as the stopover or destination – it will not precondition the battery because the nav isn’t smart enough to know that the street address is the location of the EA charger – it just thinks it is an address).

While the car is charging at the EA location, I look at ABRP to choose the next EA charger location based on the range at the end of the charging session and repeat (3) above.

If you watch various Youtube videos, many of EVers will make frequent stops, with short charging sessions at the higher charging rates to ensure a low State of Charge when they arrive at the next charger to keep the higher charging rates. What works for me is slightly different. On this last trip, at 3 of the 5 stops, I pulled 240-257 kW. My philosophy is why waste a great session. I will usually keep plugged in until the speeds start to dip below 100 kW. On this trip on one stop I kept charging past 90% SOC b/c I was still pulling 63kW. What this allows me to do is go further distances between charger locations. I think it works out better sometimes versus spending the extra time it takes to get off the highway, park, and plug in more frequently.

Strangely, today the new feature that I saw yesterday on the nav map (status of the chargers) did not appear for any of today’s EA locations. However, the most annoying thing that occurred was at my last charging stop for the trip. There were two 350kW chargers and a bunch of 150kW chargers. One of the 350kW chargers was offline. A BMW i3 had just plugged into the adjoining working 350kW charger as I arrived. I have no idea why the owner couldn’t use one of the 150kW chargers. I'm pretty sure the little refrigerator on wheels can't even max out on the 150kW charger. The icing on the cake was that he was already at 88% SOC when he plugged in. He proceeded to lock his doors and head into the shopping mall with his family. I bit my lip and didn’t say anything since he was with his family. I was going to use the closest 150kW charger but it was in the process of updating its software. I decided to call EA to ask if they could restart the 350kW charger that was offline. I’m glad I did. The EA rep got it rebooted for me, told me it was a free session, and it peaked at 257kW.

Every time I do this 1000 mile trip, I'm amazed how comfortable the Taycan is for long distance trips, and how quickly 20 minutes passes by the time you go into Walmart to get a snack or drink. And the massage seats are worth every penny.
 
OP
OP
wemct

wemct

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2019
Threads
20
Messages
732
Reaction score
1,258
Location
Georgia, USA
Vehicles
'23 Cayenne S Coupe; '22 AMG SL55; Taycan 4S(sold)
Country flag
You lost me in the first sentence lol
Oops, the trip was from Georgia to Connecticut (corrected). BTW, anyone who lives in the Atlanta area knows that sitting in Atlanta traffic could be the same amount of time as driving to Connecticut :)
 
Last edited:


SteveDC

Well-Known Member
First Name
Steve
Joined
Apr 22, 2021
Threads
15
Messages
132
Reaction score
70
Location
Mid-Atlantic
Vehicles
Taycan 4S, 308QV
Country flag
Here is the step by step (it's a bit lengthy)...

I use the following three things to plot out my routes for a road trip:
  1. Porsche Factory Navigation: I input the final destination for the day in the factory navigation (e.g. Aloft Raleigh Durham Airport Hotel). The Porsche Charger Planner does its thing of dropping in charging stops along the way (I ignore most of the charging stops that it plots). For me the main purpose of the factory navigation is to precondition the big battery before arriving at the Electrify America charger (I’ll explain more below) and to give me a rough idea of the ETA and distance to the final destination.
  2. A Better Route Planner app on my cellphone: I input the starting and end destinations for the day in ABRP. I have it filtered to only show EA locations. The ABRP app is fairly conservative in selecting stations. My actual range is usually better than what the app plots as stops. It makes it easy for me to see all of the EA locations along the route. You can probably do a similar thing with the EA app.
  3. Waze: I use Waze for the actual navigation to the next EA location that I want to use (not to navigate to the final destination). One thing that was very useful on this trip was I could type in something like “Electrify America Richmond” and Waze found it in the search result. It made finding the actual EA chargers in the parking lot easier than if you just used a numeric street address (especially if the chargers are located at a large shopping mall and not the typical Walmart parking lot).
From the various EA chargers that ABRP picks/shows along my route for the day, I choose one and input it in Waze. When Waze spits out the distance, I decide if I can make it based on the Taycan’s guess o meter (I actually think it is pretty accurate for me). I like to leave a cushion of at least 20 miles. If I have plenty of range, I will select a farther charger location to see if it is doable based on the Waze calculation and the car’s estimated range. On this trip, I was able to do the first 400 mile leg with two stops (instead of the 3 identified by ABRP). Today’s leg was just shy of 600 miles and I did it with three stops (instead of the 4 identified by ABRP) with 110 miles of range left when I got to Connecticut. I purposely left a ton of range b/c in Connecticut I don’t have access to a residential AC outlet, so I wanted to have some range to drive around for a few days to do errands before heading to the closest EA charger in Connecticut next week. BTW, on this trip I did not use the Range mode at all, and drove at a healthy clip and still did the trip with less stops than my prior trips along the same route.

Now back to the Porsche Factory Navigation. On occasion, the EA charger location plotted by the Porsche Charger Planner matches the one that I input in Waze. If that is the case, I don’t need to do anything else to precondition the big battery. If the one I selected for Waze is not the one selected by the Porsche Nav, then when I’m about 20-40 miles away from the charger, I will go into the Porsche Nav POI > Porsche Charging Service > and find it in the results. I will select it as a stopover. If you don’t use the POI to find it (or if the nav doesn’t populate it itself), the battery will not be preconditioned to the optimal charging temperature (i.e., if you manually type in the address of the EA charger as the stopover or destination – it will not precondition the battery because the nav isn’t smart enough to know that the street address is the location of the EA charger – it just thinks it is an address).

While the car is charging at the EA location, I look at ABRP to choose the next EA charger location based on the range at the end of the charging session and repeat (3) above.

If you watch various Youtube videos, many of EVers will make frequent stops, with short charging sessions at the higher charging rates to ensure a low State of Charge when they arrive at the next charger to keep the higher charging rates. What works for me is slightly different. On this last trip, at 3 of the 5 stops, I pulled 240-257 kW. My philosophy is why waste a great session. I will usually keep plugged in until the speeds start to dip below 100 kW. On this trip on one stop I kept charging past 90% SOC b/c I was still pulling 63kW. What this allows me to do is go further distances between charger locations. I think it works out better sometimes versus spending the extra time it takes to get off the highway, park, and plug in more frequently.

Strangely, today the new feature that I saw yesterday on the nav map (status of the chargers) did not appear for any of today’s EA locations. However, the most annoying thing that occurred was at my last charging stop for the trip. There were two 350kW chargers and a bunch of 150kW chargers. One of the 350kW chargers was offline. A BMW i3 had just plugged into the adjoining working 350kW charger as I arrived. I have no idea why the owner couldn’t use one of the 150kW chargers. I'm pretty sure the little refrigerator on wheels can't even max out on the 150kW charger. The icing on the cake was that he was already at 88% SOC when he plugged in. He proceeded to lock his doors and head into the shopping mall with his family. I bit my lip and didn’t say anything since he was with his family. I was going to use the closest 150kW charger but it was in the process of updating its software. I decided to call EA to ask if they could restart the 350kW charger that was offline. I’m glad I did. The EA rep got it rebooted for me, told me it was a free session, and it peaked at 257kW.

Every time I do this 1000 mile trip, I'm amazed how comfortable the Taycan is for long distance trips, and how quickly 20 minutes passes by the time you go into Walmart to get a snack or drink. And the massage seats are worth every penny.
Here is the step by step (it's a bit lengthy)...

I use the following three things to plot out my routes for a road trip:
  1. Porsche Factory Navigation: I input the final destination for the day in the factory navigation (e.g. Aloft Raleigh Durham Airport Hotel). The Porsche Charger Planner does its thing of dropping in charging stops along the way (I ignore most of the charging stops that it plots). For me the main purpose of the factory navigation is to precondition the big battery before arriving at the Electrify America charger (I’ll explain more below) and to give me a rough idea of the ETA and distance to the final destination.
  2. A Better Route Planner app on my cellphone: I input the starting and end destinations for the day in ABRP. I have it filtered to only show EA locations. The ABRP app is fairly conservative in selecting stations. My actual range is usually better than what the app plots as stops. It makes it easy for me to see all of the EA locations along the route. You can probably do a similar thing with the EA app.
  3. Waze: I use Waze for the actual navigation to the next EA location that I want to use (not to navigate to the final destination). One thing that was very useful on this trip was I could type in something like “Electrify America Richmond” and Waze found it in the search result. It made finding the actual EA chargers in the parking lot easier than if you just used a numeric street address (especially if the chargers are located at a large shopping mall and not the typical Walmart parking lot).
From the various EA chargers that ABRP picks/shows along my route for the day, I choose one and input it in Waze. When Waze spits out the distance, I decide if I can make it based on the Taycan’s guess o meter (I actually think it is pretty accurate for me). I like to leave a cushion of at least 20 miles. If I have plenty of range, I will select a farther charger location to see if it is doable based on the Waze calculation and the car’s estimated range. On this trip, I was able to do the first 400 mile leg with two stops (instead of the 3 identified by ABRP). Today’s leg was just shy of 600 miles and I did it with three stops (instead of the 4 identified by ABRP) with 110 miles of range left when I got to Connecticut. I purposely left a ton of range b/c in Connecticut I don’t have access to a residential AC outlet, so I wanted to have some range to drive around for a few days to do errands before heading to the closest EA charger in Connecticut next week. BTW, on this trip I did not use the Range mode at all, and drove at a healthy clip and still did the trip with less stops than my prior trips along the same route.

Now back to the Porsche Factory Navigation. On occasion, the EA charger location plotted by the Porsche Charger Planner matches the one that I input in Waze. If that is the case, I don’t need to do anything else to precondition the big battery. If the one I selected for Waze is not the one selected by the Porsche Nav, then when I’m about 20-40 miles away from the charger, I will go into the Porsche Nav POI > Porsche Charging Service > and find it in the results. I will select it as a stopover. If you don’t use the POI to find it (or if the nav doesn’t populate it itself), the battery will not be preconditioned to the optimal charging temperature (i.e., if you manually type in the address of the EA charger as the stopover or destination – it will not precondition the battery because the nav isn’t smart enough to know that the street address is the location of the EA charger – it just thinks it is an address).

While the car is charging at the EA location, I look at ABRP to choose the next EA charger location based on the range at the end of the charging session and repeat (3) above.

If you watch various Youtube videos, many of EVers will make frequent stops, with short charging sessions at the higher charging rates to ensure a low State of Charge when they arrive at the next charger to keep the higher charging rates. What works for me is slightly different. On this last trip, at 3 of the 5 stops, I pulled 240-257 kW. My philosophy is why waste a great session. I will usually keep plugged in until the speeds start to dip below 100 kW. On this trip on one stop I kept charging past 90% SOC b/c I was still pulling 63kW. What this allows me to do is go further distances between charger locations. I think it works out better sometimes versus spending the extra time it takes to get off the highway, park, and plug in more frequently.

Strangely, today the new feature that I saw yesterday on the nav map (status of the chargers) did not appear for any of today’s EA locations. However, the most annoying thing that occurred was at my last charging stop for the trip. There were two 350kW chargers and a bunch of 150kW chargers. One of the 350kW chargers was offline. A BMW i3 had just plugged into the adjoining working 350kW charger as I arrived. I have no idea why the owner couldn’t use one of the 150kW chargers. I'm pretty sure the little refrigerator on wheels can't even max out on the 150kW charger. The icing on the cake was that he was already at 88% SOC when he plugged in. He proceeded to lock his doors and head into the shopping mall with his family. I bit my lip and didn’t say anything since he was with his family. I was going to use the closest 150kW charger but it was in the process of updating its software. I decided to call EA to ask if they could restart the 350kW charger that was offline. I’m glad I did. The EA rep got it rebooted for me, told me it was a free session, and it peaked at 257kW.

Every time I do this 1000 mile trip, I'm amazed how comfortable the Taycan is for long distance trips, and how quickly 20 minutes passes by the time you go into Walmart to get a snack or drink. And the massage seats are worth every penny.
Thank you for taking the time to put down this extended, step by step, reply. it is very helpful. I hope others will find it helpful as well. BTW, I used to teach down that way, in Athens. Bulldog, perhaps? Steve
 

cometguy

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2018
Threads
3
Messages
238
Reaction score
166
Location
New England, USA
Vehicles
2018 Panamera 4 ST E-Hybrid; planned Taycan CT4
Country flag
If you watch various Youtube videos, many of EVers will make frequent stops, with short charging sessions at the higher charging rates to ensure a low State of Charge when they arrive at the next charger to keep the higher charging rates. What works for me is slightly different. On this last trip, at 3 of the 5 stops, I pulled 240-257 kW. My philosophy is why waste a great session. I will usually keep plugged in until the speeds start to dip below 100 kW. On this trip on one stop I kept charging past 90% SOC b/c I was still pulling 63kW. What this allows me to do is go further distances between charger locations. I think it works out better sometimes versus spending the extra time it takes to get off the highway, park, and plug in more frequently.
Yes, this is an important point: many/most EV charging stations are considerably off the driving route (unlike many gas stations which are easy-off, easy-on with respect to expressway diversions), so one can spend almost as much time going out-of-the-way to and from a charging station as actually charging (potentially a big time factor), especially in areas of traffic congestion. And the time taken to figure out which chargers are working properly (and calling EA if necessary, as you indicated below) also makes it worthwhile to try to keep one's charging stops to a minimum and maximize those stops...

Strangely, today the new feature that I saw yesterday on the nav map (status of the chargers) did not appear for any of today’s EA locations. However, the most annoying thing that occurred was at my last charging stop for the trip. There were two 350kW chargers and a bunch of 150kW chargers. One of the 350kW chargers was offline. [. . . ] I decided to call EA to ask if they could restart the 350kW charger that was offline. I’m glad I did. The EA rep got it rebooted for me, told me it was a free session, and it peaked at 257kW.
 

chenner

Well-Known Member
First Name
B.
Joined
Jul 26, 2021
Threads
7
Messages
134
Reaction score
148
Location
Georgia
Vehicles
Taycan 4S
Country flag
One of my only concerns about ordering the Taycan was having to use Electrify America stations. I've watched the YouTube videos and read many reports like yours and it sounds like I'll have to have EA on speed dial and will be speaking to them regularly.

I'm picking up my car in a few weeks and will be driving from North Georgia to Orlando to "break her in".

p.s. last time I charged our Tesla in FairPlay, SC I noticed a couple of CCS chargers there as well so keep that in mind should you need something in a pinch before Greenville
 


DerekS

Well-Known Member
First Name
Derek
Joined
May 25, 2021
Threads
91
Messages
2,024
Reaction score
3,526
Location
Frisco, TX
Vehicles
2023 Taycan GTS
Country flag
I had to call EA to initiate the charge because the second tower did not appear on the Charging NA app.
Why didn't you just turn on Plug-and-charge? I never touch ChargingNA any more.
 
OP
OP
wemct

wemct

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2019
Threads
20
Messages
732
Reaction score
1,258
Location
Georgia, USA
Vehicles
'23 Cayenne S Coupe; '22 AMG SL55; Taycan 4S(sold)
Country flag
2020 Taycans don't have Plug and Charge
Sponsored

 
 




Top