On board Navigation really that Bad??

[swngdncr]

I've not had an EV before, and now that our truck is built, I need to start digging into this side of things. But, I'm a completely new to this particular area of technology. I had to google wireless carplay to find out what it does and how it works. I don't have an iphone, my husband does. I have an Android phone, so I think I need android auto based solution. Appears that Android auto will work with the Sync 4a which comes with the Lariat.

Hey, there are no stupid questions….we’re all learning here!

Yes, though my understanding is you can’t use Ford’s navigation and CarPlay/Android Auto navigation apps in that way (I haven’t used Ford’s navigation since I got my truck in late July…I’ve never been able to get it to work on my FordPass app).

Before my trips, I use ABRP to help plan my route in conjunction with PlugShare, and then directly export that route from ABRP to Waze.

I use Waze and ABRP simultaneously via Wireless CarPlay during my trips. Waze is my primary Navigation/traffic app and to keep aware of real-time traffic impacts on my route.

I use ABRP to monitor the current SoC of my HVB and their estimation of my SoC upon arrival at my destination aided by live data from my truck via OBDLink CX and the ABRP’s use of live weather, traffic, and trip routing.

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[sotek2345]

Ah, I had to google wireless carplay... I don't have an iphone, my husband does. I have an Android phone, so I don't know if any of this will work for me...

The truck has wireless Android Auto as well, so it all works pretty much the same.

 

[BennyTheBeaver]

FYI, ABRP requires a premium subscription for Android Auto integration as well as other features.

 

[rdr854]

So far, I have had no issue with the Ford navigation. I can tell it where I want to go and it gets me there. I have not yet travelled far enough where I needed to recharge.

I just did a round trip from Washington, DC to Roanoke, VA. Navigation worked well and mapped me to EA charge stations in Woodstock and Staunton, VA.

Unfortunately, EA had just ripped out its charge stations in Staunton just before I arrived. Good thing I charged to 80% in Woodstock. On the way back, the next day, the Staunton site was not available.

 

[hiimisaac]

I was under the impression the BLE OBD wouldn't work with ABRP since it wasn't a vehicle that's listed as working. Has this changed recently? If so, can someone point me in the right direction.

 

[Firestop]

I was under the impression the BLE OBD wouldn't work with ABRP since it wasn't a vehicle that's listed as working. Has this changed recently? If so, can someone point me in the right direction.

https://www.iternio.com/abrp-obd

 

[chillaban]

As a long time Tesla owner coming to the Lightning, honestly my single gripe about the car is the road trip planning experience.

First off: the built in Nav is pretty bad. Around Silicon Valley it picks fairly horrible routes that locals know not to do, like attempted to get on a metered highway during rush hour and not realizing there’s a 10 minute line for the on ramp. Both Google and even Apple Maps come up with better routes.

Next, the charge plans. For one the estimated arrival charges can be grossly off. On my route from Tahoe to SJ it originally predicted a 8% arrival but I ended up with 37%. Sure it’s better than the other way, but this made the difference between whether I wanted to stop to charge or not.

As others have said, it picks kind of nonsense stops including choosing 50kW stations when there’s plenty of alternative 150kW ones. But more concerningly, it picks stations that probably don’t work — including Rivian Adventure stations that AFAIK you can’t even initiate on a Ford. Or the Beatty NV ChargePoint where every PlugShare review says it’s not been working for months. Basically it’s like road tripping on a Tesla in 2013 but worse — everything the car suggests needs to be double or triple checked and even then the plan drastically changes while driving.

We do around 30-40k miles of road tripping per year in our two Teslas. In the recent years Tesla maps deliver pretty high quality routes and we almost never double check them against an app. But most importantly the charge plans are sensible and arrival percentage is never off by more than 3 percent either way.

 

[Firestop]

As a long time Tesla owner coming to the Lightning, honestly my single gripe about the car is the road trip planning experience.

First off: the built in Nav is pretty bad. Around Silicon Valley it picks fairly horrible routes that locals know not to do, like attempted to get on a metered highway during rush hour and not realizing there’s a 10 minute line for the on ramp. Both Google and even Apple Maps come up with better routes.

Next, the charge plans. For one the estimated arrival charges can be grossly off. On my route from Tahoe to SJ it originally predicted a 8% arrival but I ended up with 37%. Sure it’s better than the other way, but this made the difference between whether I wanted to stop to charge or not.

As others have said, it picks kind of nonsense stops including choosing 50kW stations when there’s plenty of alternative 150kW ones. But more concerningly, it picks stations that probably don’t work — including Rivian Adventure stations that AFAIK you can’t even initiate on a Ford. Or the Beatty NV ChargePoint where every PlugShare review says it’s not been working for months. Basically it’s like road tripping on a Tesla in 2013 but worse — everything the car suggests needs to be double or triple checked and even then the plan drastically changes while driving.

We do around 30-40k miles of road tripping per year in our two Teslas. In the recent years Tesla maps deliver pretty high quality routes and we almost never double check them against an app. But most importantly the charge plans are sensible and arrival percentage is never off by more than 3 percent either way.

Yep @Ford Motor Company , tried using the Nav once, never again!

 

[chillaban]

Yep @Ford Motor Company , tried using the Nav once, never again!

Another data point: San Jose to Tahoe in reverse at 100%. Original estimate is 20% remaining. By the time I got to Placerville it had degraded to 8% and still didn’t automatically add any charging stops. I chickened out and charged, but it would have arrived with -5% (lol) if I blindly followed its guidance.

This is really the biggest and only thing that has let me down about the Lightning. The trip planner and navigation is much worse than Tesla. And this is 100% under Ford’s control. I can’t blame Ford for EA stations being unreliable.

The trip planner guess is totally worthless unless you’re driving on a flat road at the speed limit.

 

[hiimisaac]

Another data point: San Jose to Tahoe in reverse at 100%. Original estimate is 20% remaining. By the time I got to Placerville it had degraded to 8% and still didn’t automatically add any charging stops. I chickened out and charged, but it would have arrived with -5% (lol) if I blindly followed its guidance.

This is really the biggest and only thing that has let me down about the Lightning. The trip planner and navigation is much worse than Tesla. And this is 100% under Ford’s control. I can’t blame Ford for EA stations being unreliable.

The trip planner guess is totally worthless unless you’re driving on a flat road at the speed limit.

That's me! I don't mind doing the speed limit at all (east coast). The routes it planned for me for going from NC to PA are pretty standard. And it did fine coming back from VA to NC (I bought it in VA).

I have an OBD2 reader for ABRP and I'll run it concurrently, but I don't think I'm having the same issues everyone else is.

 

[chillaban]

That's me! I don't mind doing the speed limit at all (east coast). The routes it planned for me for going from NC to PA are pretty standard. And it did fine coming back from VA to NC (I bought it in VA).

I have an OBD2 reader for ABRP and I'll run it concurrently, but I don't think I'm having the same issues everyone else is.

Yeah and to be clear, for me, the speed limit wasn't the issue, it was a 7500ft elevation change and the fact that sharp curving mountain roads were bad for efficiency, that wasn't taken into account at all and the trip estimator was off by over 20% of battery percentage points, which is HUGE. I would've been stranded on a mountain in 15 degree weather if I listened to it.

Flat-road planning is super simple and trivial.

ABRP I find has better charging network data but the F-150 Lightning support isn't very accurate for my routes either. Note that in past days, ABRP was more accurate than Tesla's planner but in the last 2 years, I find the Tesla route planner's more accurate. A lot of that is probably thanks to crowdsourced data and maybe there's just not enough Lightnings on the road to do that yet.

 

[Joneii]

I like the ability to plan the route in advance on my phone and send it to the truck, but as others have noted, all mission planning must still be done manually. I use Googlemaps and Plugshare. My range calculations are basic (2 mil/kWh or 1 mil/kWh if towing). These are the basic starting points. I plan my charge stops to get me to the next two chargers if possible (hopefully charge network reliability will improve and this won’t be necessary, but for now I find it prudent although not always possible). Then planned stops are entered into the trip planner. In the vehicle I compare Ford’s selected route with Googlemaps. If they match, I proceed. If they don’t, I investigate. I’ve found Ford’s traffic information to be better and more timely than Google’s, but if the difference in route is not due to traffic, then I’ll trust Google and manually force the Ford navigation to take the Google route. This is a lot of effort and would be nice to see it updated to work. As others have mentioned this is seamless and excellent in our Tesla. The “Charge to XX” numbers are bare minimums in my experience and since I’m typically charging for the stop beyond the next, I don’t use them, but I do reference them to get an idea of what the truck is planning and they would likely have me rolling in on ghost electrons. Making mission planning simple, accurate and trustworthy is essential for widespread EV adoption until there are reliable charging stations every 20 miles. This will also give folks the confidence to charge only as much as necessary. Right now I find it necessary to charge enough to make it to a divert charger if my primary is unavailable.

 

[CRAIGC540]

I have been using Android Auto for navigation. Yesterday I wanted to try Ford nav and set up a 3 stop trip and sent it to the truck. My problem is when I try to zoom in and out I can never get it back to tracking zoomed in again. In Android Auto you can zoom in and out and hit recenter to get you back tracking zoomed, what am I missing? There must be a recenter button. I shut it down and continued with Android Auto.

 

[TaxmanHog]

I have been using Android Auto for navigation. Yesterday I wanted to try Ford nav and set up a 3 stop trip and sent it to the truck. My problem is when I try to zoom in and out I can never get it back to tracking zoomed in again. In Android Auto you can zoom in and out and hit recenter to get you back tracking zoomed, what am I missing? There must be a recenter button. I shut it down and continued with Android Auto.

There are 3 or 4 icons on the left margin of the screen, tap any of them to get different perspectives, one of them will cycle you back to the close in view of the vehicle tracking the immediate vicinity versus the entire view of the route.

 

[Joneii]

Most folks will find a way that makes sense to them for navigation, but another reason to use Ford Nav after 4.3.1 is enroute preconditioning. It works, but not great. I had the opportunity to observe it this weekend. My mobile charger quit charging the truck in the middle of the night at the ski area I use (we tow a camper and park it in the ski area parking lot where they have regular 120v 15a outlets you can use to charge.). Since the nearest DCFC in my direction is Bedford, PA (52 miles from ski area) and we are towing, it is nice to get a bit of charge over the couple of days while we ski. This has worked great in warmer temps, but it seems if the battery temps get too low then the mobile charger on level 1 has trouble pushing juice to the pack. The only way to fix it is to warm the pack back to mid-range temps. To do this you must drive or charge, so I decided to experiment with the preconditioning. The battery temps were about midway between dead center and the minimum permissible temp. I input two charging destinations (a J1772 7.2 kW about 10 miles away in Somerset, PA and the Bedford EA). The navigation recognized both as chargers and said that I could not make it to the EA charger without spending several hours at the slow one. I knew this was wrong because I left the camper at the ski area and the GOM thought I was only going to get 0.8 mil/kWh like the couple hundred miles before. As I drove to the first charger I could see the battery temp coming up, but not much. It was apparent that it wouldn’t reach midrange before I arrived. I tried charging there only because I never used it before. It was a SemaConnect which is in network and I tried connecting through the Ford app. It initiated, but could not charge (maybe for the same reason the mobile charger didn’t work?). I pressed on with my experiment. The battery temps rose slowly and we’re at midrange about 20 miles from the EA station. So, with a data set of 1, it seems the preconditioning requires more than 10 miles and less than 35 in temps between 18 F and 28F. On a side note; I used the voice feedback system in the truck to recommend an update to the battery thermal management software that would allow it to recognize if it has access to level 1 power and use energy to keep the battery at a temp where it can accept any excess power from that source. This would prevent a cold soak to the thermal mass of the pack that prohibits slow charging even later when temps warm up but the pack is still cold. I have no idea if @FordMotorCompany is listening to those messages.

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