March 23, 2025

Exploring Modern Motorcycle Navigation Apps: What's Missing?

In this episode, host Niels Meersschaert discusses modern motorcycle navigation systems, highlighting their conveniences and limitations. He examines popular app-based routing tools like Rever, Calimoto, and Beeline, focusing on their features, such as twisty road routing. While these apps offer quick route planning and point-of-interest features, they lack critical details like waypoint distances and arrival times. The conversation emphasizes the importance of features that enhance trip planning, drawing comparisons to Garmin's longstanding capabilities and highlighting that despite all the great things about modern motorcycle navigation apps, what’s missing?

Apps mentioned in the show:

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Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

00:53 - App based routing tools

08:39 - Garmin BaseCamp

12:18 - Why this matters

19:23 - Wrap Up

Transcript

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Modern motorcycle nav systems are great, but they still lack features critical for trip planning.

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Throttle and podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. In this episode will dig into some of the features of the modern motorcycle nav systems. We'll look at the long time gold standard of Garmin's base camp and see how most of the best navigation apps out today are still missing features Garmin had for more than a decade prior.

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Finally, we'll examine what the impact of these missing features are. Let's dive in.

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So, I'm going to focus on three of the most popular based routing tools that are available today, there's a few of them.

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And depending upon where you are in the world, you may favor one versus the other. really the cool thing about each of these is because they're based on an app that's running on your phone.

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You can edit your route pretty much anywhere. You could do. A Hey, I'm just kind of go quite quickly just from here to there.

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You can set up a route right on your phone. You don't have to use a computer. It makes it really, really convenient. And while most of them do have a desktop planning component or option, the features that are on them typically don't vary from desktop to your phone. So it's really just you'd have a larger planning surface of a larger screen is the main benefit. In the United States, I'd say Rever tends to be one of the most popular tools that are out there.

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I'm a big fan of Rever. I use it for a lot of my trip planning because it's just got such a phenomenal routing engine. The ability for you to be able to see various, well-regarded roads on the map as you're selecting your path to wherever your destination is. It's just really convenient to be able to almost drag the route over onto them and then find that really great road. So it's a wonderful, wonderful tool. Another one is that sort of a I'd say maybe feature compatible in terms of what you'd find from a Rever perspective, but really very focused on the European market would be Calimoto, another great resource and both I'd say Rever and Calimoto, both have these really cool features where they do almost like a twisty road routing and it lets you where the the application will figure out the best path between point A and point B that's going to find the curviest most fun roads that are out there. So both of these tools are really amazing into to that. Now if you have a Beeline Moto device which is the GPS display device that you might be using onto your motorcycle, you may be using the Beeline app. And the Beeline app is similar in this same regard as Rever and Calimoto. I'd say it is not quite as advanced as either of them insofar as that it's not going to show you some really cool roads. It's not going to necessarily try to give you a rating of how twisty the roads that you've selected are, but it does have a couple of different route options where you could pick either from a fast or a fun route, which you could think of the fun route as being equivalent to the twisty road routing. So they are somewhat similar. But obviously what you can do with Beeline, which is where you can pair it, which is what I personally do, is I may create the route that I'm going to do in Rever I can export that as a GPX and I can load that GPX into the Beeline app. So it really doesn't require you to organize or set up the route within Beeline. But I do want to just highlight that as being one out there. So as I mentioned, twisty routing is one of the major features across pretty much all three of these major apps that are out there thing about the twisty routing, I'd say is it's really perfect for that quick ride when you want to just go somewhere and you want to find some really fun roads to get there because it's so convenient, you just say, Oh, I'm going to go to this place, maybe even going for lunch or something. And then you just want to find the most fun road twisty roads to get there. All three of these apps do a phenomenal job at being able to find exactly that. Now, Rever actually can also support searching for points of information or points of interest. And the thing is that it only shows them on the map.

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It doesn't let you find ones that are along your path or along your route. It's just going to show them on the map.

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Now you can click on any one of them and that'll add it into your route, which is certainly convenient. But one of the things that I find really frustrating in both Rever and in Beeline and I believe the same thing occurs within Calimoto is that there is no indication of the distance between each waypoint in your route. You see the total distance of your whole trip, but it won't tell you, Oh, the distance between your first waypoint and your second waypoint is however long of a distance and however much time.

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It has no indication of that, nor does it give you any sort of an indication of the time when you would arrive from, let's say, your starting point to the third waypoint. So you have no way of knowing. Oh, well, when I hit the third waypoint, I will have been riding for 2 hours or 4 hours. There's no indication and this really makes it very difficult for really grasping what you are trying to do. So let's say that you were trying to figure out like, well, I need to do a fuel stop every hundred miles. I might be able to find that point of interest on the map and be able to select one.

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And I'm going to kind of maybe look like, well, it's kind of in the middle of my whole routes, maybe about 200 miles. So it's kind of a sort of around 100 miles, but it may not be directly in your route. So now you've got a detour from your route to get to it, but you don't really know how long it's going to be, how much distance you're going to actually travel to get to that waypoint. Same, I would say, would go for like a food stop is if I'm looking for that food stop. I can pick and select food stops that are part of that. Certainly in Rever, I can do this, but I have no indication of when I would arrive at it. So let's say I'm doing it all day ride and I want to arrive at a food spot around lunchtime. Well, I have no way to know exactly when I'm going to arrive. So this is one of the things that's a challenge to beeline, being an even more simplistic app in a lot of ways, doesn't even let you search for POIs. If you were to, for example, say, I want to search for fuel or for gas as a generic category, it's not going to do that. It's going to look for something that begins with the name fuel or gas in its name. So you really have to know the specific place that you are looking for. And that's I think the limitation on all three of these apps is you need to know exactly where you're going to in order to select it versus saying, I'm looking for this type of category at a particular range or distance. The last thing that I'll point out is that none of these apps allow you to set a departure time. And this may sound a little sort of pedantic and not being really critical or important, but you don't know, like if you're going to leave, let's say at 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., it's going to make a difference into when you arrive at your destination. Now, if you sit there and you say, well, it says 6 hours of ride time, that I can just do the math myself. And you're right, you can. But if you have waypoints along the way and now you want to delay or wait at each waypoint, maybe you're doing refueling. You say, I'm going to take 15 minutes when I'm refueling and then I'm going to stop for food. I'm going to be there for an hour.

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Well, that's going to add into your time. You can't configure any of that in any of these apps.

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So the way that they really work with the waypoints is it kind of assumes you just kind of ride right past it. There's no time.

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So your duration includes no time at any waypoint. So you've got to now going manually add that in yourself in your head.

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And it can be hard, especially if you have to do multiple stops over the course of the day.

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Let's say you have three or four fuel stops. Well, you're going to have to try to keep that in your head and try to remember all that. So that's that's I think, one of the downsides of some of these apps.

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Now, the reason why I raise those is there is a juxtaposition to what I would consider probably the gold standard of motorcycle routing applications that's been around for a long time, and that is Garmin's base camp. Now, the thing is, base camp can be a bit controversial because if we're honest about it, it is not the most intuitive piece of software out there. It will run onto your computer and a lot of the things that you'd like to do for very simple purposes, it's much, much harder to do. And this is, I think, where those three apps, Beeline, Rever and CaliMoto are awesome is if you just want to go out and go for a quick ride, you can get going insanely fast with any of those three apps.

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With base camp, not so much. But where base camp really, really shines is when you want to do more advanced trip planning. So, for example, if I wanted to search for a point of interest along the route, well, I can actually say look for a fuel stop at about 100 miles or at about, you know, 3 hours in. If I was looking for a food stop, for example. So it allows you to really look for things that are along your route at a specific point. This is super convenient.

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So if you know, you only have, let's say, a 100 mile range on your tank. Really convenient to be able to select that and then search for them every hundred miles. And it can actually be as an interval that you're looking for. So really, really easy when you're planning that long trip.

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The other thing is it allows you to put in dwell time at each waypoint. for example, let's say that if you're refueling on your own, well, maybe you figure I'm going to stop at the gas station, I'm going to refill my tank, maybe I'll go use the restroom, maybe I'll get a drink of water, whatever it is. So I'll be there ten or 15 minutes. But if you're riding with a group, you may need to put in a little bit more time Now, the thing is with if you know in advance how many people are going to be coming with you, you can kind of use a rule of thumb for yourself of, well, how long is that going to be increased? The nice thing is that you can change it right there on that waypoint of how long it's going to be. And you'll see your entire trip duration is going to be updated accordingly. Very, very convenient. The other thing is that it allows you to set a scheduled or planned departure time or a planned arrival time.

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And this way you can kind of figure out like, well, when you need to leave or when you will arrive at your final destination.

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And therefore, you can also see where you're going to arrive at each individual stop. To me, this is the the most useful feature out of all of these is because it allows me to really see how long from that departure in the morning to that arrival at the end point will actually truly be. And then I can adjust the time of when we start or I can adjust the routes to shorten or lengthen as needed to hit whatever I might have. So let's say we want to aim to leave somewhere, maybe 8 a.m., but I want to be at my accommodations wherever I'm staying at the end of the day, no later than, let's

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00 in the evening. Well, if that's the case and I put in all of my stops, I put in all of my duration for my waits, and I'm finding that I'm not going to arrive until 8:00. Well, I got to do something. I have to either trim some stops or I've got to go on a little bit of a faster section of the route in order to accommodate meeting that time that I'm going for or I've got to change when I depart.

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So this allows you to very conveniently adjust that, and this is where it's really critical. So

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I'm going to dive into a couple of examples of why this might matter to you and kind of why I'm sitting here a little bit on my rant. First of why I really wish Rever, CaliMoto and Beeline would add in these kind of features is let's say that you're riding to a hotel a few states away and you want to make sure that you're not going to be there any later than 7 p.m.

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Maybe you're not riding with a group, you're just riding by yourself, but you want to make sure that you're there no later

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00 to be able to check in.

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Well, when do you need to leave?

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You've now figured out with what your route is and the actual distance throughout, and then you've realized you've needed to select all of the fuel stops because you may need more fuel stops if you're doing a very twisty road along the way and maybe have more distance, you need more fuel stops. Well, where are going to fuel stops are going to be where is my food source going to be? And how long of that duration is going to be at each place? I can actually figure this out and very clearly see, oh, I've got to leave at, you know, 10 a.m. or 9 a.m. or 7 a.m., whatever it is very, very simple to do. Now, let's say you're going with a riding group and everyone says that they want to stop to eat lunch around noon to 1:00. Well, you've got this great route planned, but how do you know if there's any lunch spots along your route in that time window? Maybe on some great roads that are in the middle of nowhere and there's no place to eat? Well, you're not going to have any real way to determine that with a Rever or a CaliMoto or anything. Yes, you can see a waypoint or in a point of information or interest on the map, and maybe you can select it and add it to your route. But how far of a diversion is that?

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You know, all these things start to make a difference that you you really need to figure out.

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The other one is, let's say that a member of your group has a really small tank and they need to refill every hundred miles.

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Well, you want to make sure that you then have the duration from when your last refill was to the next one. You want to have it as an interval of every hundred miles. There's not really an easy way to do that because you can't even see the distance between the waypoints on any of those three apps. But in Garmin's base camp, you could now you might sit there and say, Well, you know, what I do is then next time I see a gas station and maybe we're only 40 miles into the trip, I see a gas station and we're just going to refill there. And you say, okay, that makes sense. But they only did 40 miles on it. They needed refill every hundred. Maybe that makes sense. Or you realize, hey, you know that 40th so soon? You know what? We'll find another one. No big deal. Well, turns out that the next one's 80 miles after that one. So it's 120 miles. And your friend pulls over to the side of the road and runs out of gas. So this is the real reason why having that visibility of where the options are along your route and exactly what the distance is between each one really helps when you start thinking about fuel.

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Beyond seeing your total duration for your trip with having those little segments of, Oh, I'm going to spend 15 minutes on a fuel stop. The other thing and I think this is the one that probably is a subtlety that maybe as you're listening to this, you may not exactly see at first glance, but let's say that my trip is going to be fairly long. They may I'm leaving at like five in the morning and I'm going to stop for maybe a and a breakfast. I'm going to stop maybe for multiple fuel stops along the way, and then I'm going to stop for lunch.

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The thing is, each of those stops is going to have a duration, and that duration is going to delay the next time that I arrive at a waypoint. So maybe I had figured, Oh, well, I'm going to leave at this time.

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I'm going to ride X-number of Miles, and that will get me to my lunch spot at noon. But if I had two or three fuel stops in the way. And each of those was 15 minutes, half an hour or whatever it is, maybe have a larger group. It's going to be a delayed that may make your lunch spot. Now, instead of being at noon, it may be two or three in the afternoon. And you've got to now adjust and find a different place to stop that earlier because of all those delays. And that is the big thing that misses when you don't have that ability to include how long you're going to be out of particular waypoint in the Rever in the CalilMoto, in Beeline.

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That lack of ability to sit there really does make it where you can't have that understanding of how much each of those stops is going to change. When you arrive at your next stop. Not, just from a distance perspective, but from a time perspective. Now, if you're the type of rider who rides almost exclusively on highways, most of this probably is not going to sound like this is a real issue because most of the time in a highway, every exit is going to have services like food or fuel. So you pretty much can stop whenever you want. But as we've talked about in some earlier episodes, riding on the highway can be a bit boring.

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It's very straight. You know, you're stuck with all the other traffic. It's not the most exciting, fun roads to do. So if you're interested in doing those fun roads, this is where that lack of having the insights and the details in the routing engine that we had in Garmin base camp for so long, this is where that becomes a bit frustrating, at least for me and why I still find myself in times when I'm planning like a really long trip. I'll still go back into base camp and plan it in base camp and then export it to Rever because I can import GPX in to Rever and into Beeline or into Garmin Zumo or whatever device I happen to be using on that particular trip. I would love if those three apps added in functionality to match what I have in Garmin base camp because they're so much better for the typical like quick planning that I absolutely all the time use them for that and I think quite honestly the routing engine in terms of the twisty routing I find is a bit better in Rever than it would be in base camp.

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It's not terrible, but it's better. And because I have the Rever Pro subscription, I also get the availability of the Butler maps so I can see all of the really cool roads that have been almost like editorially selected as being great motorcycling roads and I can snap my route onto them as I'm putting it together and that's a very convenient thing. I don't have that in base camp, so the way I've come to do it is I kind of have my own list of roads that I've ridden along and marked as really being great, and they're kind of highlighted and then I can snap a new route onto those. So it's kind of my my own personal butler maps, if you will. this is why, like there's there's really great things about the Rever, the CaliMotos, the Beelines, but also some really missing features that we had on Garmin base camp that I would love to see brought in.

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so let's wrap up. We looked at some of the capabilities of today's most popular navigation apps when it comes to trip planning. We also looked at the long time gold standard of Garmin's base camp and some of the features it has for trip planning that none of the other apps have yet. Finally, we looked at why all of this matters for your route planning, and especially on those really long trips where you want to have perhaps a little bit more detail understanding of exactly how long and when you're going to arrive. So you can communicate that, especially in a group ride, it just makes it a lot simpler. my question for you is, which new features would you like to see in your favorite navigation app? Share your thoughts through the text, the show link in the show notes, or leave us a voicemail at throttle and roast dot com slash voicemail. Thanks for listening.

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I'll talk to you next week.

Exploring Modern Motorcycle Navigation Apps: What's Missing?

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