I sent Audi an email back in January after a long road trip after having spoken to Audi Customer Experience first. Audi Customer Experience told me to send the email and I received a pretty generic response via email asking me to send the request to Audi USA and they gave me an Audi address I had not seen before. Anyway, not sure why they did not simply forward the email, I forwarded it myself...and heard nothing, until last week.

My ask was about Audi navigation and the etron's lack of ability to show me anything useful while charging in the etron route planner. For example, What is my target SOC? What charger should I be directed to? Should I stop early to charge if my most range efficient charger is full based on its location or proximity to something, perhaps so that I skip it to relieve overcrowding.

Anyway, the email I received back said that the NAV had recently been updated OTA and that while telemetry was still improving, it is working and that the etron route planner has been updated to have accurate SOC arrival targets and will shortly have SOC charging targets.

Unfortunately I did not have any road trips over Memorial weekend, but I did run a rehearsal trip and was surprised by what I saw. I should say, that now it looks like enough information to be dangerous and too little information to rely upon, but maybe things are improving. And I'll shout from the rooftops again, if in fact this was pushed/enhanced via OTA, then hallelujah

Use the e-tron route planner to make the e-tron determine charging. The car will tell you that you do not have the range and ask you to allow it to recommend charging. Once complete, you can tap on the Checkered flag which displays the arrival time and distance of the first waypoint the computer has determined.

The next screen will show you all of your waypoints and the predicted SOC for arrival at each waypoint. Note that the arrival SOC is written as the left most entry under each charger. The predicted charging time is also there.

You can slide the map over to look at the proposed route and see the arrival SOC's at each stop. It also shows the predicted charging time but NOT the target SOC for departure.

You can then tap on a charger and then hit the information icon and it will display a telemetry page showing you the current status of the chargers (EA only at this time.)

For some strange reason, as soon as the car starts moving the Telemetry page hides itself and then re appears when you stop. Not much good if you are on the highway trying to determine between two chargers.

I tested the telemetry at my local WalMart and it was inaccurate. As I took the photo above there was a taxi in charger 1 using the CHAdeMO and charger 2 was broken. Both were accurately reflected in the EA app. I then called EA and they claimed that Audi is still refining its protocols with requesting EA data and that all EA data is accurate to the minute as evidenced through the Taycan's system. I have not driven a Taycan and cannot comment.

I mentioned that the telemetry data also did not actually correspond to anything that I can see on the charger as a driver and EA claimed that they are getting ready to relabel all of their chargers in order to increase visibility to drivers.

I shot back a few questions to Audi but I have not heard anything back.

So, MAYBE things are looking up on the e-tron routing front. And maybe you '21 and '22 drivers will have better telemetry. But I find this encouraging though not entirely useful or reliable enough to rely upon. But if the e-tron is receiving real data as I am driving and making recommendations to schedule or skip charging based on actual telemetry, that will be great down the road. Especially if we can rely upon the accuracy of this data.



Here is a screen cap of the EA app taken at the same time the telemetry shot was taken in the car above. They are not the same.

 

Thank you for your summary. I'll need to play around with this.

 

Maybe @WetEV can check some of this out on his road trip? :-)

Any chance you can put more than one leg in your etron route planner and then hit the little checker flag on the right and see if it dynamically tracks SOC and allows you to delete a charging stop once you have arrived even if the NAV thinks you have fifty feet? I'll be able to check this stuff out in a few weeks with a beginning of summer road trip, but I think that Wet is out on the road now around the Grand Canyon.

What I'd really like to know is that with this little checkered finish line flag access to the etron route planning page, is there an SOC target anywhere? Right now I can see arrival estimate and estimated charging time. Does the charging time change as you charge? Not as convenient as a target SOC in your charging screen, but I can see an Audi engineer thinking this might work.

 

What year is your e-Tron? Mine is a 2019 and it doesn’t even say Electrify America. Just says 100 kW charging or something vague.

 

Mine is an early '19. To be precise, it says EA on the screens in the etron route planner and once you start drilling into details. There are a few problems once you start drilling down.

1. The information is simply not accurate as to availability.
2. The labels within the MMI telemetry do not contain anything which corresponds to anything physically on the ground. (You can tell the ChaDeMo charger based on voltage and amperage, but that one had a taxi plugged into it while I was there watching and it does not show up on the MMI telemetry. It does show on the EA app.

I only included a few photos, but that last photo of the MMI with the J1772 connectors is a long scroll page with lots of EA pricing data etc.

 

I use the lcfor to access the percentage left on arrival while the car is charging, and as one way to track how the trip is going. Notice that it is just an estimate based on past conditions, and will be low/high if conditions change. Yesterday I left a charge station with the estimated charge at arrival 6% which I knew was wrong as had just lost a stiff headwind to projected light and variable, and there was a bail charger so if didn't look good would be safe alternative.

Charging at https://www.plugshare.com/location/169533
Destination https://www.plugshare.com/location/163282
Bail point showed 18% at destination before passing exit https://www.plugshare.com/location/152945

If conditions don't change this % at destination seems fairly accurate, and a bit conservative.

Charging time seems to be time to 100%.


I don't see the point of entering a plan for more than one stop. Plans are worthless, but planning is valuable.

 

@A4 Phil what is your nav database version after OTA upgrade if you don't mind sharing it? Also, do you have PrimeConnect active to receive OTA updates? Thanks!

 

Some screenshots while charging. The first was taken shortly after the destination was entered. The second when the charge was close to done. I stopped at 20% projected. Notice that the blue "range" line doesn't move dynamically, but the predicted charge percentage at the destination is does change. The time shown seems to be to 18%. Or maybe 20%, and rounded to the nearest minute.

 

@WetEV interesting. I don't think that the blue range ring ever moves dynamically. It does not in the map either if you are watching it and charging at the same time. But I feel like if you saw the arriving SOC change dynamically, that is a "big" discovery and will make a part of the mystery of charging to a target SOC easier. Granted, I typically shoot for 80% or over every time, but if the requirement is 90%, I'd love to be able to see when it hit that threshold on the little e-tron route planner. Nice work Wet. Thank you.

 

I have my Summer trip #1 coming up in a few days. It will be a quickie of only 340 miles, so 680 round trip. I'll be knocking it out in one day. Anyway, I am going to be very deliberate on this trip to really push the Audi Nav and check to see how often the data gets updated during charging sessions.

But one thing that I have noted right away is that my nav is defaulting to an EVgo at a WaWa in Richmond VA over an EA that is two miles closer in Richmond VA. I just find it funny as I have EA selected as my preferred vendor but it consistently choses the EVgo in this particular location. I have used both location in Richmond and the EA has many more charging posts, so it makes me wonder about the whole EA telemetry functionality. But again, I'll be testing that all in a few days. I have finally figured out how to override the Nav's recommendations using the myAudi app. I have the whole route loaded and matching the ABRP route so I am looking to get a better idea of the Audi Nav's margins which I cannot find in the manual anywhere. I know what ABRP's are as you can set them, but I am not sure what the range margins are in the Audi nav for the blue range line etc. I'll probably start a new thread and attempt to capture all data on it. There are six major road trips planned this summer so I should be able to get as much testing as the family can stand.

EA location: Walmart Supercenter, 7901 Brook Rd, Richmond, VA 23227
EVgo Location: Wawa, 5221 Brook Rd, Richmond, VA 23227