A Better Routeplanner (ABRP) Reviews

by Zeke And Crowly

Don’t make the same stupid mistake that I did by purchasing an annual license only to find the software does not work and is just as much a fail as the absolutely non existent customer support. Almost every entry leads to a “We could not calculate your plan.” This is with default settings and simple trips. Forget about round trips, then I get all kinds of error codes. ABetterRouteplannerABRP is currently not functional.

And, of course, when my criticism is public, there is an immediate developer response which actually makes no sense whatsoever if you read it. Try getting something helpful in terms of real assistance if you ask them through support channels though as there is nothing but crickets. And forget about any refund for annual memberships.

by Peetzakilla

I don’t know how ABetterRouteplannerABRP makes decisions but it’s supposed “routes” are nuts.
For instance, if I ask it for a route for a Chevy Bolt from Pheonix, AZ to Montrose, CO it wants to route me all the way North to Rte 70, which then requires another 60 minutes to get South to Montrose. Worse yet, this route has distances so close to max range that ABetterRouteplannerABRP has me going 3 hours with the warning “Fo not exceed 45mph”! If I try to “force” a more logical route through NM and Cortez, CO, it then wants sends me on a completely pointless trip West from Cortez just to charge enough to get… back to Cortez…
If I put Durango as an intermediate stop instead, it does the same, except it wants to send me East to Pagosa Springs, to charge just enough to get back to Durango.
An app that just showed charging stations would be much preferable to this pointless “trips just to charge to get back where you started” game.

by Nelson Ned

As others mention, the core route planning feature works ok sometimes but then every “bug fix” update should really be relabeled as a “break existing feature” update. Like for example the latest update broke the route planning completely and uninstalling and reinstalling ABetterRouteplannerABRP didn’t help. A few months ago they broke the routing using L2 chargers. It came back but it’s sporadic and buggy and certain routes that worked just fine with L2 charging before are now completely broken. Anyway, you’d think that they’d be tripping over themselves to make ABetterRouteplannerABRP usable enough for me to pay the subscription but I think the developer needs to get their house in order and at least be transparent about why features are broken or removed.

Also their support forums are a ghost town. So no recourse there either.

by Eb-one

It takes forever just to figure out how to input starting point and destination. It’s been that way for a long time and I always thought ABetterRouteplannerABRP/web app would end up being great and that it was only a poor user interface because they were just getting started. But it’s been this way for years now and i fear they aren’t going to make it any better…

I’m still rooting for them but I wonder if the car manufacturers will have surpassed them by the time they get their interface fixed.

by Tjsean

I was excited to have a great planning website in app form. Instead we got a clunky UX that’s not as useful as the website was and very frustrating to use. I’ve found most of the old features except “take a long break here” thats important if you’re looking to extend a charge at a specific location for say lunch. The route is impossible to edit and clunky to view in this new app. To add insult to injury you can no longer access the old website on mobile. The king of the route planners is dead to me now.

Here’s hoping for another big update. I do realize this is a one person development, who doesn’t use iOS, but it’s time to hire some help or sell the api to a company who can finish what you started. The site was awesome, ABetterRouteplannerABRP is underwhelming and unusable in comparison.

by Johhnnny

A good app but the interface could be so much better. I accidentally set a destination address as home and there is no obvious way to change it back other than uninstalling and reinstalling ABetterRouteplannerABRP . Start typing an address and you can’t go back. No back button. No undo button. On the web I get more than one route option, on ABetterRouteplannerABRP just one. Every time you open ABetterRouteplannerABRP it recalculates your last route even when you try to stop it. Deleting prior searches seems impossible.

by SoccerGal3018

I do personally like the route optimization strategy to minimize trip time, rather than stops. More frequent but shorter stops end up saving time on long trips.

But ABetterRouteplannerABRP can get itself into a state where it crashes on startup, and the only solution is to delete and reinstall. I did that twice on my last trip.

When live monitoring the car at a charging stop, if you switch away from ABetterRouteplannerABRP , it is likely to get very confused when you return to it. It will have lost the plan it had been following and will tell you that the current plan is not viable, but offer 0 alternatives. If you clear the plan and create new one from current position, it will often crash and not be restartable.

by LegoZ81

I am not sure how big this company is but the idea and basically simple mentation is amazing pretty much every part of ABetterRouteplannerABRP however is a bit glitchy which is extremely disappointing. I upgraded to premium in order to unlock CarPlay, which I did at the yearly rate due to the better deal but now, same day I already regret it. The speed limit when it’s shown is shown in kilometers an hour not miles per hour as the application is set ABetterRouteplannerABRP does not consistently show on screen your next turn. I struggle to be able to find a way to choose a different route.

by EricPerrone

Noticed that UI is slow in scrolling and some functions seem to freeze. Also I have my fonts set to larger size and I think this might cause issues with being able to click some commands as maybe they are getting hidden behind other screen elements. It’s either that or ABetterRouteplannerABRP was not responding.

The route planning is good stuff, assuming ABetterRouteplannerABRP functioning side will get better.

by Mdriftda

So ABetterRouteplannerABRP does help you plan for your trip it allows you to set an average speed and plot charging based on that which is nice for those of us who don’t want to go 65 in an 80 zone to make it to the next charger. ABetterRouteplannerABRP has a few problems, I’ve noticed when data is limited ABetterRouteplannerABRP malfunctions, it doesn’t properly forecast the remaining battery percentage when you go below the minimum set threshold and if you set it below where you would like the battery to be at the next charger it will plot it to that percentage. What ends up happening is when you go below let’s say 25% where I set it to it then says you won’t make it and you will arrive with negative 600% battery. I think if they changed it to minimum charge preference instead of minimum charge theshold that calculation wouldn’t fail. It also crashes when left open on the map for a long time too.

Overall this is a nice trip planner, not sure if premium is worth it based on the limited app stability and calculation performance in real time. The stability issues had me using the Tesla nav and not ABetterRouteplannerABRP on my return trip.

by Exhoumed

Planning a non-Tesla trip from SFO to ORD just to learn ABetterRouteplannerABRP and to compare my car to a Tesla for the trip. The table of results gives a nice estimate of costs, time spent, and charge levels. But at two stops in CO, the cost was given in euro. I struggled a bit to find a way to export the tabular results to a spreadsheet because in the iPad version, the share function wasn’t there. The tabular results present most of the data you’d want except cost per kWh. Details about charging stations are provided in a click through.

by Tcmman

When planning a road trip, this is my first stop.

While the Tesla app is useful while you’re driving, it’s not really available in trying to plan a trip and while not in the car.

A secondary bonus of ABetterRouteplannerABRP is that it prioritizes the lesser amount of time spent charging, versus the number of stops. The Tesla app, on the other hand, prioritizes less frequent stopping, but with more time at each charging station.

I generally follow ABRs advice since I’d rather save a few minutes of total charging time in a road trip but pull off of the road a bit more. Plus this gives me the opportunity to stretch the legs and use the bathroom with slightly greater frequency.

ABetterRouteplannerABRP has a strange interface, though and one that takes some getting used to.

I highly recommend ABetterRouteplannerABRP.

by Byte Mie

I've loved, used, and referred the website for years now. Nice to see an app. It took a couple minutes to get past crashing immediately when picking settings, but then after I selected a car it worked fine. What took a few more minutes was discovering preferences were not under the settings menu but instead reached via the top left icon. I was able to log in and pull up saved routes but it failed to calculate a solution for a saved 10 waypoint route. Simpler routes no problem.

It would be nice to have an iPad version. Zooming the iPhone version always looks clunky. I'm not sure of the advantages to using ABetterRouteplannerABRP vs the website direct from my iPad.

by B_schwind

I have been using their website for a while now, and the route planning is extremely accurate. I’m excited to see it in app form.

Use this route planner to better plan your road trips. It’ll adjust for environmental conditions (temperature, road conditions, driving style, elevation) much more accurately than Tesla’s in-car navigation. Be sure to adjust your max speed, temperature, and driving efficiency references for yourself.

Your goal should be to arrive at each supercharger with as little charge as possible, because the battery charges more quickly at its lower charge states. This might mean slightly more stops than the default navigation, but much less overall time charging during the entire road trip (stopping twice as often and charging from 10%-50% is still much faster than stopping half as much and charging from 10%-90%).

Safe travels!

by J Schuman

We find ABRP indispensable for planning our long distance trips. In particular we appreciate being able to evaluate and choose among alternate routes and being able to add CHAdeMO chargers to the mix. We usually start on the desktop or laptop at home and then revise as we travel on the M3’s web browser while we’re charging. The iOS app allows us to revise when we’re out of the car on longer breaks. The UI is a bit quirky and awkward on an iPhone, but all the essential functionality is there.

by Majorgearhead

Once all dialed in ABetterRouteplannerABRP is nearly spot on accurate for my Chevy Bolt. I use the premium subscription and love that it takes into account weather and wind when making calculations.

Recently the developer added CarPlay support and it is actually pretty great. It seems like the devs work really really hard at making this work properly and be a super useful app.

Bottom line, if you drive an EV you need ABetterRouteplannerABRP. It can take the range anxiety out of a cross country trip.

by Daogier

We went on a two-week road trip in our Tesla 3 with 3 bikes on the back and were concerned about range and I am SO HAPPY we used ABetterRouteplannerABRP. It was MUCH more accurate than the Tesla map. Tesla does fine when the weather is average and you don’t have a rack or extra luggage, but we were driving through some areas with few chargers and couldn’t just “guess”. This worked really well and made the trip a great success.

by Xmasboy

Not sure why so much hate. I find this very useful. I especially like that I can enter my car and then indicate to only use EA chargers (because it’s free with my car).

I don’t use the routing within ABetterRouteplannerABRP because I prefer Waze. However the actual charge locations are always correct and the range calculations are useful and accurate.

Once I find my charge location I import to Waze which is super easy to do.

by JE/JE

VERY highly recommended! This is a marvelous app. While the stock Tesla in-car navigation system is great, abetterrouteplanner is an order of magnitude improvement and makes trip planning a pleasure. The wealth of data that this application synthesizes virtually eliminates any vestige of “range anxiety” that I still had after over a year of Tesla ownership. Among many other features, the ability to select various route options, such as “avoid highways” is extraordinarily welcome, especially since the native Tesla navigation system does not allow such fine tuning. The basic version of ABetterRouteplannerABRP is great and highly functional but the premium version is well worth it. I would also stress that while it has a few minor glitches (virtually inevitable with a complex application) the developer is so conscientious and so dedicated that I have no doubt that it will continue to improve. The developer has plans to execute a video tutorial, which will be a real plus. If every app developer had his attitude the virtual world would be a far better place!

by Slickvic621

Not sure why ABetterRouteplannerABRP isn’t rated much higher - wife and I own a Tesla, and believe it or not, even though Tesla’s have been around for quite a while now, there’s still not a great trip planner with travel times, etc. if you want to plan your ‘return’ trip (Tesla’s in-car system is great for the ‘to’ trip, but even that gets limited if you want to plan multiple stops…it won’t do it). Enter ABetterRouteplannerABRP to save the day - no other app or site I’ve used does this well, but this one does. Enter your car, it’s range, to/from, multiple stops, etc., and ABetterRouteplannerABRP can handle it. I haven’t seen any other be able to do it. Thanks, devs.

by Dave_C999

A resource every EV driver should utilize. Eerily accurate if you take the time to configure all the settings. So I was really looking forward to using the iOS app, but it crashes constantly (11 Pro Max running iOS 13.3). Opens, but every time I try to get into the settings ABetterRouteplannerABRP crashes. Tried restarting phone, deleting and reinstalling...nothing works. Useless in its current form.

by Cabarius

This is a great site and ABetterRouteplannerABRP would be awesome if they had the following

- it is almost criminal to not be universal
- I don't care how much better the metric system is, ABetterRouteplannerABRP should read the system locale/region and choose the appropriate units.
- Changing from metric to imperial is bugged and doesn't change to miles

by Don In FL

Shortly after launching ABetterRouteplannerABRP , it displays the prompt for accessing location, but disappears without any error. Checking the task switcher reveals ABRP still running, but nothing works, just closes the primary display again. However, ABetterRouteplannerABRP does see to run OK on my iPhone SE with same iOS version.

On the iPhone, I cannot switch between km/miles & C/F, but can plan a route. ABetterRouteplannerABRP is obviously in need of additional development.

by CheckwDavid

I use the ABRP on my mobile browser regularly and it is GREAT. However, ABetterRouteplannerABRP feels unusable in its present form:
- the keyboard often covers up tappable text such as previous destinations.
- icons and text are crammed at the bottom and partially cut off.
- planned route is displayed much less efficiently compared with table on web and you must choose between seeing the route details or the map by sliding the card up and down.
- tapping on Superchargers provides no useful info or the ability to link to charger website.

All in all, this feels both rushed and developed in an IDE that tries to spit out generic apps for any OS rather than being native.

by Rockrimmon

As others have noted the UI is very clumsy. ABetterRouteplannerABRP does not appear to support changing from metric to Imperial measurements (miles and Fahrenheit). When I pull up the details on a charging stop there is no address listed. Perhaps after some updates this will be more useful, but very limited usability as of now.

by The_jamie_harvey

Excited to use ABetterRouteplannerABRP but it does not offer the imperial > metric switching function which would be required for most North Americans. I look forward to it’s progress as it evolves and will adjust my rating as I am able to make more use of it.

by CrashyMakesMeStabby

Good first attempt. Pretty complete. The Region under Preferences always defaults back to Europe even though I’ve selected North America multiple times. How do I get this to stick?

by Ojaber91

I like ABetterRouteplannerABRP but it’s still buggy.
Especially if I go back and forth between ABetterRouteplannerABRP and the website.
The “reference consumption” and “temperature” keeps getting messed up when using imperial units.

by Left Seat Warmer

ABetterRouteplannerABRP is a must have, assuming it is anything like their website.

Not too invasive, super customizable, great planning tool for just about every EV in every country in any weather conditions/driving style you can imagine.

As Bjorn would say... it’s good sheeeet!

by Whydoihavesuchacommonname

So great to finally have an app, their website is top notch! Have only played with ABetterRouteplannerABRP a little but looks like a great resource for any EV driver out there.

by Blue Hawk

So happy ABRP finally has an app now. Their trip planning has saved me time and again from bad situations by helping me plan for headwinds, cold temperatures, extra weight, and variable speeds.

by BooyaShakah

Elon has said no waypoints...

Tesla offers a “Share destination to my Tesla” option, which allows an address to automatically be put into the car’s navigation system...

Could ABetterRouteplannerABRP automatically “Share [the next waypoint] destination to my Tesla” upon arriving at a previous waypoint?

This would essentially make your app an automated waypoint manager for the Tesla nav system!

by TWDubs

So glad this finally hit iOS. Thanks for all the hard work on the site and now this!