bZ4X Apple CarPlay implementation of electric vehicle routing (not presently supported)

[Matt Bumstead]

I contacted Toyota via their "Talk to an expert" option at https://www.toyota.co.uk/help-centre/connectivity to enquire about whether or not they had any plans to implement 'electric vehicle routing' for Apple Maps in CarPlay, as described on https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iphc5e3a4b4b/ios. This basically allows the vehicle to share its Battery state of charge (SOC) with CarPlay, so that Apple Maps can then automatically suggest charging stops while driving.

Toyota responded today to say that they have no plans to incorporate this feature on the bZ4X, but they have nevertheless provided the feedback to the relevant teams.

As I drove the bZ4X on a couple of long-distance journeys over the Christmas season, the lack of automatic charge point routing was a bit of a nuisance, as I had to pre-plan my journeys and charge stops based on my own and the car's estimates of its range. While this worked better than I had expected, it would have been far better to be able to rely on the maps navigation to make suggestions at the appropriate points in my journeys.

I must confess that I don't know if the in-built satnav supports a similar feature, although I did notice that it does seem to list suggested chargers when the SOC is less than 15-20%. However, I prefer to use CarPlay.

If you would also like Toyota to implement this feature in a future over-the-air (OTA) software update (assuming it's feasible), then the more of us submit this request, the more likely they are to give it any attention. In my experience, Toyota moves like treacle when it comes to innovating with Android Auto or CarPlay, but perhaps they'll surprise us if enough of us request the feature.

[Malop]

3 hours ago, Matt Bumstead said:

I must confess that I don't know if the in-built satnav supports a similar feature

When I demoed the car in May the sat nav didn’t have this feature, I planned a trip from Nottingham to Glasgow and it didn’t mention anything about SoC on arrival.

So I assumed it wasn’t available.

Returning from Manchester today, selected Home as my destination and the Sat Nav warned me I didn’t have enough charge, recommended adding a charging stop and when I clicked Add gave me a list of charge points along my route. 
Might try it with a more complex route that requires multiple stops as I really like the feature in ABRP where you can leave a charge stop at a set length of time or charge % and it calculates if more stops needed. 

[dab1054]

15 hours ago, Malop said:

Sat Nav warned me I didn’t have enough charge, recommended adding a charging stop and when I clicked Add gave me a list of charge points along my route. 

Yes, I noticed this very useful feature of the Toyota Navigation which pops up with the low range warning- usually when 30-40 miles remaining- and gives an easily accessible list of nearby chargers. Normally, I plan charging stops in advance and use ZapMap and a few other apps like WattsApp and ABRP but these apps do not seem to integrate well with CarPlay (or you have to pay a subscription) so it's difficult to search while driving. Excellent for when you get diverted or delayed from your original route plan .

[Rajavina]

20 hours ago, Malop said:

When I demoed the car in May the sat nav didn’t have this feature, I planned a trip from Nottingham to Glasgow and it didn’t mention anything about SoC on arrival.

So I assumed it wasn’t available.

Returning from Manchester today, selected Home as my destination and the Sat Nav warned me I didn’t have enough charge, recommended adding a charging stop and when I clicked Add gave me a list of charge points along my route. 
Might try it with a more complex route that requires multiple stops as I really like the feature in ABRP where you can leave a charge stop at a set length of time or charge % and it calculates if more stops needed. 

Did the warning to add a charging stop appear straight away or while you were driving. I tried few postcodes beyond the range of the car and it didn't give me any charging suggestions. I have activated charging suggestions in the navigation setting. Can you please let me know how to activate charging suggestions. 

[Malop]

2 hours ago, Rajavina said:

Did the warning to add a charging stop appear straight away or while you were driving

It appeared when I set the destination. I don’t remember doing anything specific to make it appear. Maybe I have a software update?

[bZ4X]

You can also activate range bubble with entegrated sat-nav! 

[Mister Mike]

On 1/3/2023 at 2:29 PM, Matt Bumstead said:

Toyota responded today to say that they have no plans to incorporate this feature on the bZ4X, but they have nevertheless provided the feedback to the relevant teams.

Toyota has very little work to do in order to make EV routing available in CarPlay, as the Toyota software already has all the information it needs to hand. It just needs to make that available to CarPlay, where Apple does all the hard work.

The inbuilt navigator isn't bad; indeed, it's a great improvement over earlier efforts. But I much prefer to use CarPlay for a host of reasons and have it active all the time. I sincerely hope that Toyota gets around to adding this, as it's such an obvious feature to add. I just know in my heart that Apple would make a better job of presenting it to the end user.

[ernieb]

Sounds like a good idea but probably feel that they should concentrate on making the current app, systems more reliable and stable. Based on my limited experience of owning a PHEV for 20 months the app/systems needs considerable work to enable the current options to work reliably or at all.

[lightboxcar]

Completely agree, would be great to have Google Map/Waze etc in Apple Car Play be able to know the SOC for route planning.

However , presumably Toyota will at some point wish to monetize their own built-in SatNav , so perhaps it is not in thier interest to do anything that makes it easier/preferrable to use another app ?

Having said that, from reading the above, it sounds like even the Toyota built in sat nav does not do route planning with charger stops like how the Tesla does , can anyone confirm if that is correct ?