Porsche Charging Planner Adventures

[RunningOnSolar]

After several long road trips primarily using the Porsche Charging Planner, I advise certain cautions. This is certainly true in the Midwest US and on longer road trips, especially. As stated previously, it is probably better to use ABRP do a tentative plan before leaving. The more pre-planned charging stop options you have the better.

Probably a universal truth is target a minimum of 20% for intermediate stops. Using 10% is almost sure to give you anxiety. I was routed to several charging stations that simply did not work and for a variety of reasons. Here are examples that I experienced recently.:

1. Blink/SemaConnect did not recognize my car and refused to charge it. I downloaded the mobile app and while Taycan and several Porsche PHEVs were available, the Macan was not.
2. Routed to a beautiful Pilot Flying J location in Findlay Ohio. Only problem was that it was still under construction.
3. I drove around the Yark Ford dealeriship searching for the chargers in vain. I guessed they were Blink chargers anyway and gave up. Widening my search with the planner finally gave me an EVGo location with meager amenities around it, but it worked.

Also, I was given straight wrong ETA estimates for plans with multiple charging stops. These estimates tended to get far worse over time.

There are issues both in the quality and vetting of the data used by the charging planner and the estimates that it gives. You can work around these, but be forewarned If you plan to count on the charging planner. At this stage it is still vital to keep many options including carrying a mobile charger.

Sponsored

 

[CandianPorsche83]

Yikes! Thanks for the note!

I think some of the more seasoned road trippers have also cautioned on using the Porsche planner as the primarily source of route planner.

 

[dbsb3233]

I always plan my own charging. Starting with the EA map. That usually covers most trips all by itself.

 

[mbocmrkb]

Had no problems whatsoever with a recent 2k mile road trip to Europe. It was scarily accurate in is estimations on when to stop/charge.

 

[RunningOnSolar]

Had no problems whatsoever with a recent 2k mile road trip to Europe. It was scarily accurate in is estimations on when to stop/charge.

I’ve also had multiple experiences where charging planner has worked very well. Typically with fewer charging stops, though. I also think some road construction was causing the estimates to continue getting worse as the conditions on the route kept changing.

Having spent many years developing and maintaining industrial software, I know the real world is not kind to our software algorithms and respect that Porsche took on this challenge.

I will update this post if I see better behavior. I have another long trip in my near future.

 

[vanjwilson]

After several long road trips primarily using the Porsche Charging Planner, I advise certain cautions. This is certainly true in the Midwest US and on longer road trips, especially. As stated previously, it is probably better to use ABRP do a tentative plan before leaving. The more pre-planned charging stop options you have the better.

Probably a universal truth is target a minimum of 20% for intermediate stops. Using 10% is almost sure to give you anxiety. I was routed to several charging stations that simply did not work and for a variety of reasons. Here are examples that I experienced recently.:

1. Blink/SemaConnect did not recognize my car and refused to charge it. I downloaded the mobile app and while Taycan and several Porsche PHEVs were available, the Macan was not.
2. Routed to a beautiful Pilot Flying J location in Findlay Ohio. Only problem was that it was still under construction.
3. I drove around the Yark Ford dealeriship searching for the chargers in vain. I guessed they were Blink chargers anyway and gave up. Widening my search with the planner finally gave me an EVGo location with meager amenities around it, but it worked.

Also, I was given straight wrong ETA estimates for plans with multiple charging stops. These estimates tended to get far worse over time.

There are issues both in the quality and vetting of the data used by the charging planner and the estimates that it gives. You can work around these, but be forewarned If you plan to count on the charging planner. At this stage it is still vital to keep many options including carrying a mobile charger.

Sorry to hear about these troubles with the in-car charging planner. I've been very lucky so far, after I took delivery of my Macan at the end of March 2025. I haven't done too many long trips with it, mostly within my state or at most a couple of states away. I usually only need a couple of charges each way. I did have pretty good luck with the Porsche planner on the one long trip I took, but even I would double-check non-EA stations with PlugShare.

I did take a lot of road trips with my Model Y over 4 years of ownership. Even with Tesla charger planning, I would vet my routes with ABRP. I eventually got a CCS adapter for the Tesla, which opened up a lot of off-the-beaten path routes,. Even then, I would verify with PlugShare before I would trust a non-Tesla station I hoped to use. That's worth doing with the Macan as well.

I, too, have had bad experience with Blink and SemaConnect networks. Even EA tends to be more reliable. I have only ever tried charging at one dealership, which turned out well, but I've heard lots of horror stories, so I would never rely on dealership chargers.

Maybe we will have access to the Tesla network soon. It won't be a silver bullet, but it will give us a lot more options and redundancy.

 

[sor]

Having no experience with the car, when you say Porsche charging planner is this a special app? Because the native Google maps planning on android automotive is pretty brilliant, and I’d expect the same on the AA based Porsche, but maybe they’ve messed with it.

 

[W1NGE]

Having no experience with the car, when you say Porsche charging planner is this a special app? Because the native Google maps planning on android automotive is pretty brilliant, and I’d expect the same on the AA based Porsche, but maybe they’ve messed with it.

It's not a standalone app but built into the My Porsche App and PCM.

Part of the Porsche Connect services.

Controls preconditioning of the battery when a charging location is set as the destination or stopover.

When enabled, adding a destination into NAV on the PCM will automatically enable it.

Works well in my experience.

 

[RunningOnSolar]

There are a lot of good reasons to use the charging planner including preconditioning and working well with the HUD (If you have it). But having extra capacity (such as 20%) at an intermediate charging stop and being skeptical of some of the recommendations is good practice. This is especially true if they aren’t EA or other highly reputable charging providers. Even better is to plan ahead and specifically choose stations that ABRP or PlugShare trusts.

I also appreciate that @vanjwilson is looking forward to Tesla Super Charger network access. My original understanding is that we would all have access to Porsche approved NACS adapters by now. However, that’s not worthwhile if you can’t count on plugging in and having your car successfully charged. If that is delaying the rollout, that’s fine.

I’m confident that the road trip experience is going to improve. My original post is there to hopefully provide our community ways to avoid charging mishaps and frustration as much as possible. There have been some other great posts also.

 

[sor]

Ok, yeah on other Android Automotive systems I’ve used all of that is just handled through the native Google maps and has been quite good at estimating time and range.

I normally don’t bother with the native navigation, preconditioning has made minimal difference. I guess it is good we have options.

 

[W1NGE]

Ok, yeah on other Android Automotive systems I’ve used all of that is just handled through the native Google maps and has been quite good at estimating time and range.

I normally don’t bother with the native navigation, preconditioning has made minimal difference. I guess it is good we have options.

Have you been through a winter yet when needing to DC charge?

AC charging requires no preconditioning. Charging Planning will only invoke preconditioning if target EVSE is DC 50kW or higher.

 

[dbsb3233]

Ok, yeah on other Android Automotive systems I’ve used all of that is just handled through the native Google maps and has been quite good at estimating time and range.

I normally don’t bother with the native navigation, preconditioning has made minimal difference. I guess it is good we have options.

Porsche needs to update it's software for AA integration though. About a year ago (maybe 2 now) Google added a great feature to AA to show the arrival SOC%. But it takes a software update by the car manufacture to enable (since it needs access to the SOC% from the car). I was surprised and disappointed the Macan doesn't have it. It took me about a year for my Mach-E to finally get the update and was thrilled when I finally got it.

Has anyone EVER gotten a Macan OTA software update? Do they even exist? How do we know if the dealer has one for us?

 

[Michael J]

I am relatively new to this. I tried the Porsche Charging Planner and found it underestimated the charge needed to reach the destination, by quite a bit (like it was about 30% low). I'm wondering if this could be due to elevation gain in my route - does the app take into account elevation gain?

 

[PrudentOcean]

It is supposed to consider elevation changes, weather, and current traffic conditions.

 

[tmrqs]

I am relatively new to this. I tried the Porsche Charging Planner and found it underestimated the charge needed to reach the destination, by quite a bit (like it was about 30% low). I'm wondering if this could be due to elevation gain in my route - does the app take into account elevation gain?

It is supposed to consider elevation changes, weather, and current traffic conditions.

Agreed!

It doesn’t however predict how one will be driving the car. If you’re going 65mph (or quite a bit more) while climbing, and/or there’s a strong headwind, the range will melt very quickly.

Sponsored