More Granularity in Charging Network Preferences

The current options for charging network preferences are hard to work with and often (for me at least) result in routes that require manual preselection of chargers to get the ones we want.

I think something like this would work better (from high to low preference):

1. Always: the route planning algorithm will use this network in preference to all others as long as a route can be planned. Likes & dislikes of individual stations will be respected. Use case: when you have credits or a substantial discount on a network, or just a strong preference for a network.

2. Strongly Preferred: (the current two thumbs up) preferred when there is a tie (or close to a tie) between Preferred stations.

3. Preferred: (the current one thumb up) preferred when there is a tie (or near tie) between available stations.

4. Avoid: Use to prune list of available stations, use only if all other stations rate lower.

5. Exclude: Do not use even if it means routing will fail. If routing fails due to networks marked as Never tell the user that this happened and offer a “one-time” exception for stations in Excluded networks that would make it possible to create a route. Favoriting a station on an Excluded network causes that station to be ranked as Avoid (so that a route can be generated with that station without manual intervention).

The changes from the current system, as I understand it, are:

• The ability to heavily bias the selection algorithm towards a network or networks to make best use of a network membership or credits (such as those you get with a new car purchase).

• The ability to exclude a network without worrying about being unable to plan a route, since you will be warned if this is why a route could not be found, and to easily make an exception if you want to (without having to edit your network preferences).