I love when Matt Haughey posts lengthy entries like this one.
He’s right; ABRP is an incredible app for electrical vehicle owners. It’s now owned by Rivian, and it can read my car’s battery data directly via the Internet. But if you’re using ABRP with a non-Rivian, follow Matt’s advice.
Everyone on reddit says ABRP (A Better Route Planner) is the best EV route planning app so I downloaded it and paid for a pro account and tried it on my first trip back to Oregon from Texas last December. I found it was not as good as the built-in VW nav because it had no idea what the live battery status was. It would wildly overestimate how far I could get between stops, and frequently gave bad advice on where to stop for a charge. It stressed me out and I nearly ran the car down to 0%, so I stopped using it.
For this trip, I wanted to give the app another try because it was tedious to use half a dozen different map and charger apps to figure out where I should stop while headed down to LA. On the plus side, I learned while researching ABRP that it could be greatly improved with the addition of a bluetooth OBD port connector, which lets the car talk to my phone, giving the app the ability to always know exactly how much battery I had left in real-time.