Built-in EV route planner: which car does it best?

Twice a year my parents drive south. They have no interest in plugging in a phone or comparing apps on a motorway service area. They want to type "Avignon" and let the car handle the rest. Not every electric car sold in Belgium can do that, and some do not even try.

Which electric car plans its charging stops best?

Tesla still has the best built-in planning on the market, with Renault and its integrated Google Maps close behind. Kia, Hyundai and Volkswagen follow with decent systems. At the bottom, the MG4 offers only basic routing and the BYD Dolphin has no planner at all.

A built-in charging route planner is the car's own navigation system working out where to stop, how long to plug in and what state of charge to leave with. It uses data the phone does not have: the real battery level, live consumption, cell temperature, the climb ahead.

Three things are easy to confuse. The built-in planner lives in the car. Apps such as A Better Route Planner or Chargemap live on your phone and appear through CarPlay or Android Auto. Web planners, like Touring's or our own trip planner, are for use before you leave, from the kitchen table. This article is about the first kind.

Read the table this way: the top five let you leave without preparing anything, the bottom two demand a phone and a bit of method.

What happens if the planned charger is occupied when I arrive?

The five systems at the top receive live charger occupancy and suggest an alternative stop while you are still driving, before you leave the motorway. Touring, the Belgian motoring organisation, takes the idea further: it estimates availability at your arrival time from the charger's historical usage, not just its status at the moment of the calculation. That is the difference between "a bay is free now" and "a bay will probably be free in 40 minutes".

Why is a built-in planner better than a phone app?

Because it knows the state of the battery and can act on it. A phone app estimates your consumption from a model. The car measures it, and more importantly it can heat the battery before the stop. No app does that from an iPhone sitting in a cradle.

The gap shows up most in winter. Arriving at a 150 kW charger with a 5 °C battery means charging at 40 to 60 kW for twenty minutes before the power climbs. Arriving with the same battery at 30 °C means taking full power straight away. On a two-stop trip, that difference adds up to three quarters of an hour.

There is an honest catch. Tesla's planner always routes you to Superchargers, even when a 400 kW Fastned sits at the next exit and charges less. That is a commercial choice dressed up as convenience. Renault has no such bias: Google Maps offers whatever chargers are available, all networks included, with the option of filtering for fast charging only.

Which electric cars sold in Belgium have no planner worth the name?

The two best-selling Chinese compacts. The BYD Dolphin has no charging route planner in its navigation. The MG4 has one, but it is rudimentary and does not trigger preconditioning from the destination.

The Dolphin case is documented. When Automobile Propre, the French EV outlet, ran its Supertest over 500 km of motorway, the team split the route into two stops chosen by hand, precisely because the car offers no on-board calculation. The Dolphin does the trip, and does it well, but the driver does the software's job.

Is that a deal-breaker? For a Belgian buyer, honestly, no. A Dolphin at around €30,000 that charges at home every night will see a fast charger two or three times a year. Paying €15,000 more for a better holiday sat-nav is a calculation I would not defend. But you should know it before signing, not discover it on the A31 near Metz.

Does the planner heat the battery before the charger?

On Tesla, Renault, Kia, Hyundai and Volkswagen, yes, automatically. As soon as a fast charger becomes the destination, the car brings the battery up to temperature during the drive. On the MG4 and BYD Dolphin, that link does not exist: navigation does not talk to the thermal system.

Renault describes the mechanism precisely on the Scenic E-Tech and R5 E-Tech: the system works with Google Maps to bring the battery to its ideal temperature before arrival. Kia documents the same logic in its EV Route Planner, presented on the brand's Belgian site, and Hyundai publishes an equivalent page on Hyundai Belgium.

One detail the spec sheets skip: preheating costs energy. Budget 2 to 4 kWh over the last 30 minutes before the stop, roughly fifteen kilometres of range traded for twenty minutes saved at the charger. The maths works on a long trip and fails if you are only stopping for coffee.

How the planners behave on a Brussels–Avignon run

Over the 900 km between Brussels and Avignon via the E411 and the A31, an electric car rated at 500 km WLTP needs two stops, sometimes three in winter. This is the only kind of trip where planner quality genuinely costs you something, in minutes and in nerves.

A Tesla Model Y Long Range, around €47,000 in Belgium, is unbeatable for simplicity here: destination set, two Superchargers announced, charging time estimated to the minute, no account to open along the way. A Scenic E-Tech 87 kWh, from €44,000, matches it using Ionity and Fastned, provided you carry a charging card.

The Volkswagen ID.7 is the frustrating one. Its e-Route Planner, introduced with ID.Software 3.0, accounts for elevation, which few systems do. But it accepts no filters, and it will sometimes propose a charger several kilometres off the motorway or too slow for a proper fast charge, a recurring complaint among owners and one flagged by the specialist press when the system was tested. On a saloon costing more than €50,000, that grates.

My take applies to a Brussels departure heading for the south of France, in June, two people on board, boot full. On a purely Belgian trip the debate does not exist: the country is 300 km end to end, and no domestic run needs a stop if you leave with a full battery.

"A built-in planner gets used two or three times a year by a Belgian driver. It is a holiday criterion, not a daily one. Judging it as though it decides your car is a mistake of perspective."

Should you keep ABRP or Chargemap anyway?

For driving in Belgium, no. For a long trip abroad, yes, as a second opinion. No built-in planner today filters as finely as A Better Route Planner, which factors in weather, road profile and a consumption model per version.

Chargemap gives access to more than 750,000 charging points across Europe and shows availability. Touring adds availability prediction based on historical charger usage. These tools remain complementary, but they no longer replace the car's own system the way they did five years ago.

What if I only drive in Belgium?

Then the question disappears. With a battery charged at home, Brussels–Arlon, Brussels–Ostend or Antwerp–Namur all go through without a stop, winter included, in any EV with 350 km of real-world range. The planner will be a gadget eleven months out of twelve. Look at the boot, the comfort and the price instead, and use our model comparison tool on criteria that matter every day.

What about a used EV from 2021?

Now the question gets serious. Built-in planners from before 2022, Tesla aside, were approximate at best: no live data, no preconditioning, out-of-date charger databases. On a used car of that generation, plan on using an app, and check that the car at least supports Android Auto or CarPlay.

What about a driver who hates screens?

This is the real argument for a good built-in planner. A 70-year-old who sets a destination once and never touches anything again gets a concrete benefit from a Tesla or a Renault with Google built in. For that profile, the gap against an MG4 is measured in peace of mind, not in minutes.

Frequently asked questions