A Better Routeplanner (ABRP‪)‬ 4+

I’ve tried the free premium for one month. Unfortunately I think this period was to short for me to decide if this app is worth the premium fee. For short trips I find this app to much of a struggle to use, and I didn’t make enough long trips to decide on its usefulness. End of October I plan a long trip (1000+ km) so if there’s a way to try premium again then that would be much appreciated. 😋

Anyway… I’ve had some problems with CarPlay too: first time it worked flawlessly but on my 220km return trip CarPlay was just very buggy. GPS lagging behind and jumping in steps of several hundreds of meters and the gps would even completely stop if the screen of my phone went black.

The user interface is imho not very intuitive and I find it hard to use. Especially for short trips. The selection of available charging passes is also far from complete. I use MobilityPlus pass from my employer when in Belgium and have to use my own passes when in foreign countries. Would be nice if there is a way to specify this.

For the rest: I like the look of the navigation screen in CarPlay. And the app has a lot of potential and for the moment is probably the best one can get but isn’t just there yet… So I’m in dubio for the premium fee because most of my trips are short and I find the app not user friendly enough for those.

Should be essential for all EV drivers. However even the premium version is a real nightmare to use. I guess those people have never made any user test.

I’ve tried this app a couple of times on trips in the last 12 months. The app improved quite a bit lately, looks somewhat fresh, but still favors complexity and detail over ease of use. Swapping out one charging place with another was very frustrating. Clicking “replace” just didn’t work.

But it all falls down when using it to navigate (with or without CarPlay). First of all, given any complex on/off ramp situation (with multiple splits) it will just fail to direct you to the proper route.
The final nail in the coffin for me was when it just replaces the next charging location for no good reason. I was on route and the charging spot had 10 of 12 free spots. I had 40% left on the dash, 30’ to go to the planned charging / resting point. It was 11:30 and we were getting hungry and looking forward to a rest. Out of the blue, it switches to another charging location. This one is 1.5h away and it informs me to slow to less than 100km/h with an expected charge of 0%. I panic. WTF is going on? Luckily I have ACC and Lane assist. I kill the app. Restart the route. Same proposed charging point. 1,5h away. My blood boils. This fricking app strikes again. Nothing to be done. It can’t be convinced to pick another charging location.

I think to myself what did I do wrong, did I miss a turn? I didn’t. Are there no other locations left? So I open up Apple Maps (which was running in the background, because I don’t trust ABRPs navigation. Click “Add stop”, “Charging location” and it shows me 5 stops close by. I pick the first one, 4km away, I was so angry I just had to stop and take a rest. The location had everything, fast chargers, restaurant, restrooms and some trees with shade.

You failed me too many times ABRP. Goodbye.