Optimising Your Journey with ABRP and OBD2
Hey, everyone! I’m southbound on Australia’s Hume Highway, travelling at the speed limit of 110km/hour, a couple of hours out of Sydney. I’m in my Kia EV6 and I’ve got ABRP doing my navigation for me, all the way to Torquay in Victoria. ABRP tells me I’m getting close to my first planned charge stop, indicating I’m dropping below 40% battery. To my immediate right, down below the dash, I can see the red, blue and green lights of my OBD2 dongle. It’s plugged in to the OBD port in the fuse panel. The three lights indicate that I’ve got a bluetooth connection with my phone. OBD stands for On Board Diagnostics, while the 2 indicates we’re on version 2.
What’s the purpose of all this you might ask? Why do I need diagnostics? Well my phone is reciving a few different feeds from the OBD2 directly into the ABRP app. The most important of these are the State of Charge (SoC) and the rate at which I’m using my battery charge. These are feeding right in to the trip plan and navigation features of ABRP.
Understanding A Better Route Planner (ABRP)
What I can see on the ABRP screen on my dashboard is a small green lightning symbol at the bottom right, next to my state of charge. This is important, as it indicates that the SoC is coming live from the battery management system in the car. I don’t actually need to look down at the OBD2 dongle itself, but those ligts in my peripheraal vision are reassuring just the same. The ABRP route planner has accurate information related to current SoC and how quickly I’m using it. ABRP can now recommend changes to my plan based on real information.
Do I need to call in for a top up? Can I skip this next charger and make it to the next one safely? Getting below 40% is fine, but going all the way to Yass is risky, especially if get there and find the charger has a fault. Based on my usage rate, I’m keen for a stop in Goulburn. I’m well over 2 hours in and it’s time for a break anyway.
On the bottom left of my ABRP screen I can see there are 4 chargers at the northern end Goulburn. For the last 10 minutes there have been three red and one green, indicating there’s only one free space. That’s just changed and there now appears to be be three free stalls at my intended stop. This is great news, as I know I can plug in here and get myself something to eat. From memory, the coffee isn’t bad and the toilets are usually clean.
ABRP also knows which chargers are busy and I can make some decisions myself based on real data. The bottom number is my projected SoC on arrival. Looking back over to the car’s own SoC reading, I can see that it matches perfectly with what ABRP can see. ABRP can be a little bit buggy sometimes, but if you’ve got an established connection then this figure is accurate.
Connecting the ABRP OBD2 Dongle
To connect, plug the OBD2 dongle in to your car, then open the app and got to the settings. Select your car and choose live data, then connect the dongle via bluetooth in the app. Don’t try pairing the dongle using the phone’s bluetooth interface, it wont work.
If you lose connection, then disconnecting the cable from the phone and restarting the ABRP app completely will usually fix this. If you also use carscanner with your OBD2 dongle, then be sure to completely close the CarScanner app before trying to use ABRP. Specifically if you change in between Bluetooth apps on your phone, ABRP can lose the bluetooth connection. Be sure to close down apps completely and only use one app at a time to connect to your OBD2 bluetooth.
This is the OBD2 Dongle I use in my Kia EV6.
Don't make the mistake I made with my first OBD2 dongle, which was downright flaky. It was cheap unit (about $50), which I later found wasn't on the official ABRP list, despite being recommended on several forums.
Backup Apps – Google Maps and PlugShare
As a backup, I typically use Google Maps as it’s accurate, trustworthy and offers better real-time website traffic updates, such as road hazards and stopped lorries. Web traffic can be disorderly nowadays, so having Google Maps as a back-up is actually valuable. I like Google however if you favor Waze or Apple Maps, those are great options.
I likewise have PlugShare installed on my phone. When I zoom out, it shows all available charge points on the map. Alternatively if I zoom into Goulburn, I can see the Chargefox stations at North Goulburn and South Goulburn. More importantly I can see if they’ve been recently used. I can send out directions to my favourite navigation app from right here, which is really useful if I’m using a new charger that isn’t on ABRP yet, or need an alternative.
For more information on charging see my article on the Basics of Charging
Important note on Battery Preconditioning
When I want to use battery preconditioning, I need to use the in-car navigation. This is the case with almost every EV. I don’t know of any car brand that’s capable of invoking preconditioning using a third party navigation app like ABRP, Google Maps, Waze, etc. All isn’t lost though, I still use ABRP and the OBD2 dongle to plan and track progress, but switch over to the in-car navigation to the waypoint I want to have the battery preconditioned for. This allows the car to get the battery to optimum temperature prior to the next charge station, which speeds up charging, especially on rapid and ultra-rapid chargers in cold weather.
Cost of ABRP
I’ve used ABRP for a while and pay the 50 Euros annual subscription for premium features. You don’t need to do this if you want just the basic features, but to effectively use it with Android Auto or Apple Carplay and get decent functionality, I definitely reccomend it. You can get ABRP here or read my ABRP Review.
