I just completed my longest road trip on my MG ZS EV. The entire trip was 1210 Kms.
Before I decided to go on this trip, I had convinced myself that I will not be doing any hypermiling/conservative driving as I wanted a Range-Anxiety free drive. I truly believe this post will be useful for fellow Ev users for planning a hassle free road trip.
For the record, the car can easily do 300kms on a single charge if we drive it at 80kms/hr with the AC On.
Attachment 2215186
The route which I preferred to take was the shortest one, starting from Chennai Chengelpet Tindivanam Attur Salem Avinashi Annur Mettupalayam Ooty.
The chargers available for usage en route are
1. Chengelpet Fairfield Marriot Hotel Tata Power 25kw
2. Tindivanam A2B Zeon Charging 50kw
3. Tindivanam Aiswarya Bhavan Relux Electric 25kw
4. Attur, Salem A2B Zeon Charging 50kw
5. Salem Tata showroom Tata Power 25kw
6. Sankari Sree Saravana Bhavan Zeon Charging 50kw
7. IOCL COCO Vadamugam Kangayapalayam Tata Power
8. Avinashi Sree Annapoorna Hotel Zeon Charging 50kw
9. Coimbatore - MG showroom - Tata Power 25kw
10. Coimbatore - TML Tata showroom - Tata Power 25kw
11. Coimbatore - Brookefields mall - Zeon Charging 24kw
12. Mettupalayam Black Thunder VEEV Charger 30kw
13. Ooty Hotel Gem Park Zeon Charging 7kw
I had chosen to use only Zeon Charging stations because of their high reliability. The Tata Power chargers are annoyingly unreliable. I have had 2 bad experiences with Tata power chargers, both of which left me stranded without proper customer care support. Having learnt from my experience as well as fellow EV user experiences, I didnt want to take a risk this time with Tata chargers especially because I was travelling with my kid. Getting stranded on the highways with the family onboard would be a nightmare.
Zeon Chargers are made by ABB, whereas the Tata chargers are made by Exicom and Delta. In my experience, the Exicom made Tata Chargers are the most unreliable ones.
The ABB made Zeon chargers on the other hand have seamless operation and have a good customer support. I had recently purchased the RFID tags for these Zeon chargers, which make the charging experience even more delightful. All we need to do for initiating charge is to plug in the charging gun and flash the RFID tag and the charging starts. Payment is done via the Zeon apps wallet.
I started from my home in Porur, Chennai at 5.15 Am
5.15 AM
Porur, Chennai Battery SOC (State of Charge) 100%
|
|
|
| 110 kms
| (Cruise control 90km/hr and sometimes 100km/hr) AC on
|
|
|
6.42 AM
Tindivanam A2B Coffee break
SOC 62%
Zeon Charging From
62% to 87% in 17 Mins Rs.244
7.07am
|
|
|
| 177 kms
| (Speed mostly of 100 to 120 kmhr) Avg Speed 86kmph
|
|
|
9:15am
Attur, Salem A2B Breakfast
SOC - 9%
Zeon Charging From
9% to 94% in 51 mins Rs.760
10.11am
|
|
|
| 181 kms
| (driving at speeds of 100 to 120kmph with few short stops for restroom & for child)
| Avg speed 69kmph
|
|
|
12.48pm
Avinashi Bye pass Sree Annapoorna hotel Lunch
SOC - 14%
Zeon Charging
14% to 100% in 48min s Rs. 741
1.50pm
|
|
|
| 49 kms
| Avg Speed 40kmph
| This road had a lot of construction work going on, so it took a long time to
| reach Mettupalayam
|
|
|
3.15pm
Mettupalayam Ooty Foothills SOC - 82%
|
|
|
| 51 kms - Uphill
|
|
|
5.05pm Hotel Gem Park Ooty SOC - 42%
The uphill climb takes huge battery consumption at about 1% for 1km. I was driving as I would drive any ICE cars, with some stops for pictures. As expected, when I reached Hotel gem park ooty, I had 42% left.
The entire Chennai to Ooty trip took me 12 hours, which would have been the exact travel time if I had driven an ICE car.
I used the 7kw AC charging by Zeon in Gem Park Hotel to charge up the battery to 100% which took 4hrs and Rs.621.
My next stop was at Destiny Farmstay, Avalanji, which is a 25km drive from ooty. The drive is a combination of uphill, plains and mostly downhill drives which took 8% of my battery in sports mode. I didnt have the need to charge my vehicle there.
However, after speaking to the manager about the possibility of EV charging, they had agreed to allow EV users to use the 15amps plug in their car parking for charging.
While returning, Avalanji to ooty took 10% battery with my SOC being 82%. Ooty to Mettupalayam was a downhill drive which gave me an increase of 13% battery due to regen, SOC was 95% at Mettupalayam. The return was uneventful where I used the same chargers for reaching Chennai.
Cons
Fear of power outage in the charging station.
Extra hours to spend if there was a que at the charging station.
Pros
Smooth vibration less drive
Silent noiseless drive in comparison to ICE cars
And of course, money spent for the Chennai to Ooty trip was Rs.1925 for electricity. If I had taken my Hyundai i10 Automatic, with driving at speeds like this, I would have spent about Rs.5000 minimum.
If I had driven my electric in a more sedate way, I would have had to spend about Rs. 1400 max.