Guess-o-meter navigation update is very pessimistic

[detansinn]

I just completed a thousand mile road trip that I had done previously -- prior to the navigation update that was supposed to make the guess-o-meter more accurate. Before the update, sure, yeah, the guess-o-meter was pretty optimistic and I could see how it might get a new EV driver in trouble. Unfortunately, since the update, the needle has moved far in the opposite direction as it's now extremely pessimistic. For example, on one leg of my trip, it suggested that I wouldn't make it to my destination without a charging stop. I turned off the nav, powered through and ignored it. I pulled into my destination with 42% battery -- clearly no intermediate charging stop(s) was/were necessary.

On this trip, I was driving through mountainous West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Lots of regen opportunities or at a minimum, almost no power consumption on the downhills. For the whole 1000 mile trip, almost exclusively highway, I averaged 2.3mi/kWh, which, with almost 7k miles on the odometer, is pretty typical now for me. I don't do the one-pedal driving mode, because it's not efficient for highway miles. I'm sure some current/past Tesla owner may try to counter that point, but I come from the Porsche school of coasting is more efficient, be it EV cars or motorcycles. With more than 50k+ miles into my EV road tripping experience, you're probably not going to change my mind.

Back to topic, is anyone else seeing the same thing?

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[Henry Ford]

You can "coast" using one pedal mode, only the pedal will be somewhere in the middle instead of fully out. With Lightning, any difference in efficiency between driving modes is on the user. I'll go a step further and say the speed you drive on the highway is the determining factor in your efficiency number. What speed do you drive on the highway? I usually set BlueCruise to 78 and see about 2.2 mpkWh on highway trips.

I don't think the navigation is directly tied to range estimate on the instrument screen. I don't do long trips in my truck but when I've plugged a router into the Ford Navigation it seems to want to arrive with a very large buffer. My guess is that it assumes you won't be able to charge when you get there and factors in driving to a public charger after you reach your destination.

 

[ChrisInVegas]

Yes... the GOM cannot be trusted since the last update. I have noticed that using the Ford nav is what really throws everything off.

I received an update the night before a road trip from Vegas to Phoenix (my first road trip) and I was white-knuckling it most of the way, wondering if I would make it. (I made it easily)

I just created a chart to keep with me that calculates range based on my driving.

 

[MM in SouthTX]

You can "coast" using one pedal mode

Shift into neutral some time, and you might change your mind. The Lightning has a lot of mass. Shifting to neutral removes almost all resistance. It's very impressive to see how far the truck will roll in neutral. I think that using regen, i.e. slowing it down to convert some of the potential energy to battery storage, is more efficient than letting it roll, but I might be wrong.

 

[detansinn]

You can "coast" using one pedal mode, only the pedal will be somewhere in the middle instead of fully out. With Lightning, any difference in efficiency between driving modes is on the user. I'll go a step further and say the speed you drive on the highway is the determining factor in your efficiency number. What speed do you drive on the highway? I usually set BlueCruise to 78 and see about 2.2 mpkWh on highway trips.

I don't think the navigation is directly tied to range estimate on the instrument screen. I don't do long trips in my truck but when I've plugged a router into the Ford Navigation it seems to want to arrive with a very large buffer. My guess is that it assumes you won't be able to charge when you get there and factors in driving to a public charger after you reach your destination.

The recent update tied the range to the navigation. It will even let you know that the range was adjusted for the route — words are almost verbatim the Porsche language when it does the same thing.

I navigate to chargers directly that I plan on my route. I bypass the trip planning, because it doesn’t take in consideration secondary issues with charger locations, like broken charges and/or frequent lines. This approach, using the built in navigation, ensures that preconditioning takes place and results in fewer unpleasant surprises.

We own and have owned other EVs. I know that I can slightly depress the accelerator on the one pedal cars, but that’s a nuisance on longer drives. I know that some people love one pedal driving, but I don’t and I will support any automaker that gives me a choice.

 

[detansinn]

Shift into neutral some time, and you might change your mind. The Lightning has a lot of mass. Shifting to neutral removes almost all resistance. It's very impressive to see how far the truck will roll in neutral. I think that using regen, i.e. slowing it down to convert some of the potential energy to battery storage, is more efficient than letting it roll, but I might be wrong.

This 100%. Coasting puts the mass of the EV to work. Porsche showed a whole study on this when they launched the Taycan.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

I just completed a thousand mile road trip that I had done previously -- prior to the navigation update that was supposed to make the guess-o-meter more accurate. Before the update, sure, yeah, the guess-o-meter was pretty optimistic and I could see how it might get a new EV driver in trouble. Unfortunately, since the update, the needle has moved far in the opposite direction as it's now extremely pessimistic. For example, on one leg of my trip, it suggested that I wouldn't make it to my destination without a charging stop. I turned off the nav, powered through and ignored it. I pulled into my destination with 42% battery -- clearly no intermediate charging stop(s) was/were necessary.

On this trip, I was driving through mountainous West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Lots of regen opportunities or at a minimum, almost no power consumption on the downhills. For the whole 1000 mile trip, almost exclusively highway, I averaged 2.3mi/kWh, which, with almost 7k miles on the odometer, is pretty typical now for me. I don't do the one-pedal driving mode, because it's not efficient for highway miles. I'm sure some current/past Tesla owner may try to counter that point, but I come from the Porsche school of coasting is more efficient, be it EV cars or motorcycles. With more than 50k+ miles into my EV road tripping experience, you're probably not going to change my mind.

Back to topic, is anyone else seeing the same thing?

I'm going to help you reinforce this. In the past 2 weeks I've had 4 drives (same routes) of ~550mi/ea way. Each time the Nav wanted me to do 5 charging stops. A drive I knew only needed 1 charging stop - approximately 290 miles away.

The Nav/GoM would show I would arrive 80-90 miles short, but I was arriving at the first charging stop with ~12 miles remaining and my destination with ~6 miles remaining. Saving myself over 2 hours of trip time by ignoring Ford Nav/GoM and going with what I knew. The built in Nav/GoM causes range anxiety for absolutely no reason at all.

 

[ivan256]

I just completed a thousand mile road trip that I had done previously -- prior to the navigation update that was supposed to make the guess-o-meter more accurate. Before the update, sure, yeah, the guess-o-meter was pretty optimistic and I could see how it might get a new EV driver in trouble. Unfortunately, since the update, the needle has moved far in the opposite direction as it's now extremely pessimistic. For example, on one leg of my trip, it suggested that I wouldn't make it to my destination without a charging stop. I turned off the nav, powered through and ignored it. I pulled into my destination with 42% battery -- clearly no intermediate charging stop(s) was/were necessary.

On this trip, I was driving through mountainous West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Lots of regen opportunities or at a minimum, almost no power consumption on the downhills. For the whole 1000 mile trip, almost exclusively highway, I averaged 2.3mi/kWh, which, with almost 7k miles on the odometer, is pretty typical now for me. I don't do the one-pedal driving mode, because it's not efficient for highway miles. I'm sure some current/past Tesla owner may try to counter that point, but I come from the Porsche school of coasting is more efficient, be it EV cars or motorcycles. With more than 50k+ miles into my EV road tripping experience, you're probably not going to change my mind.

Back to topic, is anyone else seeing the same thing?

I don't know that this behavior is particularly new. The nav planning has always been garbage. Maybe it's worse now? On a 200mile round trip into the northern New England charging desert a few months ago it suggested I go 60 miles out of the way down to Springfield MA (120 extra miles added to a 100 mile trip leg) to Level 3 charge on the way home. I ignored it and got home with 28% battery remaining.

The original meter was extremely accurate unless you wildly changed your driving style mid-trip. And we collectively sh*t all over it until Ford changed it. So here we are. IMO they should put the original one back, and make the percent remaining the headline number so that people correctly see "100%" when they charge to 100%.

Or even better, let CarPlay use that screen. Because Ford clearly doesn't know how to use that real estate properly.

 

[Picnics]

I just completed a thousand mile road trip that I had done previously -- prior to the navigation update that was supposed to make the guess-o-meter more accurate. Before the update, sure, yeah, the guess-o-meter was pretty optimistic and I could see how it might get a new EV driver in trouble. Unfortunately, since the update, the needle has moved far in the opposite direction as it's now extremely pessimistic. For example, on one leg of my trip, it suggested that I wouldn't make it to my destination without a charging stop. I turned off the nav, powered through and ignored it. I pulled into my destination with 42% battery -- clearly no intermediate charging stop(s) was/were necessary.

On this trip, I was driving through mountainous West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Lots of regen opportunities or at a minimum, almost no power consumption on the downhills. For the whole 1000 mile trip, almost exclusively highway, I averaged 2.3mi/kWh, which, with almost 7k miles on the odometer, is pretty typical now for me. I don't do the one-pedal driving mode, because it's not efficient for highway miles. I'm sure some current/past Tesla owner may try to counter that point, but I come from the Porsche school of coasting is more efficient, be it EV cars or motorcycles. With more than 50k+ miles into my EV road tripping experience, you're probably not going to change my mind.

Back to topic, is anyone else seeing the same thing?

I’m seeing the same thing this morning. Planned out a trip earlier this week and this morning it was revised with multiple stops and a different route with a much lower unrealistic range. It also happens on our other lighting that was taking a long trip today.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

Or even better, let CarPlay use that screen. Because Ford clearly doesn't know how to use that real estate properly.

What Ford can learn from Rivian is just better calculation. CarPlay/Waze unfortunately won't have charging stops or arrival numbers (I just calculate on my own) and you need ABRP Premium with an OBD II for more accurate information as the base ABRP numbers are also wildly off for the Lightning.

 

[detansinn]

What Ford can learn from Rivian is just better calculation. CarPlay/Waze unfortunately won't have charging stops or arrival numbers (I just calculate on my own) and you need ABRP Premium with an OBD II for more accurate information as the base ABRP numbers are also wildly off for the Lightning.

Sadly, with Rivian acquiring ABRP, I think that the future of support with other automakers is in doubt.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

Sadly, with Rivian acquiring ABRP, I think that the future of support with other automakers is in doubt.

I think they’ll continue supporting other manufactures. That open source support is what made ABRP good, starting with Tesla.

If they pulled it, Rivian would lose access to the thousands of vehicles providing data. By acquiring Rivian they essentially gained access to a volume of software data they wouldn’t otherwise have for another 3-5 years and essentially side access to Teslas data via the folks who are using it side by side.

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