Tesla leads the way when it comes to in-car trip planning experience. On road trips, it’s as easy as getting in the car, entering a destination and the trip planner inside the car finds ideal supercharging stops to get you there.
The only catch has been that they had to be Tesla superchargers to appear in the trip planner which can make some trips a bit more challenging.
Now, Tesla has added hundreds of non-Tesla fast charging locations to its trip planner in Australia.
This was first shared by a Tesla and EV enthusiast, 13arm13, on X, after seeing it appear in a Model 3.
Now, many sites from other charge point operators like Chargefox, Evie Networks, BP Pulse and others are starting to appear in Tesla’s in-car navigation system.
Yes! 3rd party chargers are now in the @tesla nav, but it requires the 2024 nav update.
Our Model 3 has the latest nav, the Model X doesn’t, both have 2024.2.2.1 fw pic.twitter.com/FZ3OKjqXPg— ARM (@13arm13arm) February 8, 2024
By selecting the non-Tesla charging station in the trip planner, drivers can navigate to that non-Tesla charging station with ease.
On top of this, the battery pre-conditioning feature which allows for optimum fast-charging sessions has also been verified to work.
This is quite similar to what Tesla vehicles currently do when navigating to a supercharger.
Yes! pic.twitter.com/pOhxYclV6G
— ARM (@13arm13arm) February 8, 2024
In Tesla’s owner manual, Tesla explains the pre-conditioning feature for its trip planning system as:
“By using Trip Planner (if available in your market region) to navigate to a Tesla charging location, [Tesla] Model pre-heats the high voltage Battery to ensure when you arrive at the charger, the temperature of the Battery is optimal and ready to charge. This reduces the amount of time it takes to charge.”
The pricing of the non-Tesla chargers in the trip planners does not appear in the navigation system drop down, but it does show the maximum rated power of non-Tesla superchargers.
For Tesla superchargers, the number of available chargers appears in the pin drop on the trip planner screen. This is also missing for non-Tesla chargers in the first release.
The addition of non-Tesla chargers has been in use in a few countries across the world, including those in Europe. One Reddit user commented on the back of this news by saying: “Has been in Germany for a few years now.”
With over 70,000 Tesla vehicles on Australian roads, the addition of non-Tesla fast-charging locations will make road-tripping easier for many. This could also help ease congestion at supercharger sites during busy holiday periods.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.