[Car Fan]

Originally Posted by Hawk4

Yes, Kona is very efficient and even when compared to MG it is 10% more efficient. During my recent drive of 300km, I got 9.2km/kw which translates to 350km range with 85-95km speed, ac always on with 4 people on board.

Did you check what is the speed of charging with 60kw charger? So far i've charged only at 30 kw charger and the charging speed is 28kw maximum. At this speed Kona took 30 minutes for 11.5 units. So with 60kw it should take only 30-35minutes for 20 units.

I had a meeting so my driver charged the car and I wasn’t able to check the actual kW delivered by the charger. The Statiq app told me that it took 59 minutes. I charged it to 100% and after 80% it usually throttles the charging speed. Did you also charge to 100%?

[Hawk4]

Originally Posted by Car Fan

I had a meeting so my driver charged the car and I wasn’t able to check the actual kW delivered by the charger. The Statiq app told me that it took 59 minutes. I charged it to 100% and after 80% it usually throttles the charging speed. Did you also charge to 100%?

Ok, then that makes sense. Irrespective of fast charger speed the charging rate comes down to 12-14kw after 80% and 7kw after 90% charge. Thats why i set the charging limit to 80% in Kona settings for DC fast charging. I thought it is waste of time charging above 80% with fast chargers and paying more per unit unless we need the 100% for the journey ahead.

[sumannandy]

I went to Bangalore - Hyderabad - Nizamabad and back. Lion charger works well, eve if the charger is offline their support is excellent and would help you out with offline charging. Unfortunately, TATA support is unable to resolve and if the charger goes offline they would recommend calling RSA or moving to another charger.

100 kms from Bangalore, Lion charger works but at 15KW due to power issues. 200 kms from Bagalore, Exotika AC charger works well. No DC charger. New fast chargers have come up from TATA power, there was one getting installed in KFC, and two more in IOC, but cannot confirm if it works. Blue moon Tata charger may or may not work. It worked while going but did not work while returning. Kurnool Tata charger works well, it is actually in the opposite side of the highway at Renault showroom. From Kurnool to Hyderabad there are multiple fast chargers.

[oakpr]

I recently did a Pune-Bangalore-Pune round trip in 2022 MG ZS EV. While I have the full log of charging sessions and cost etc., here I will instead focus on my key observations and learnings from this drive.

Key Learnings (aka notes for trip planning)

• MG ZS EV is a competent highway machine. Even with driving constantly at 100-110, you can expect very respectable 320 km range on full charge.
• I decided to plan my charging stops at 250km, keeping another 70km range in hand because I was traveling with family. Didn’t want to take undue risks by leaving it very late
• Don’t waste time in DC charging above 90%. It easily adds 30-45 extra minutes to your break, with not much extra range in return. Plus this wait gets extremely annoying to family members who are used to quick petrol top-up until now

Good Stuff

• There is a decent spread of charging network and range anxiety is non-existent
• Restaurants have figured out this game that a charger and safe parking can be a differentiator. Soon we’ll see more chargers in highway restaurants, even before the PSU petrol pump chains roll out their proposed network.
• LFP batteries can gracefully handle back-to-back DC charging sessions. I did total 9 consecutive fast charging sessions with no perceptible drop in range anytime. No warnings / suggestions from the car asking for slow charge either.
• Maharashtra leg has excellent (and still developing) charging network. It’s fast reaching the petrol/diesel maturity where I can just go to next charger if current one is busy - just like petrol pumps
• Zeon is using ABB chargers which I found to be most reliable, albeit slow at 22Kw or 25Kw. Tata chargers are good too
• Big to Gogate Plaza in Belagavi and Log9 Fortum station in Bengaluru. This is what future stations should be like! They have multiple charging points, covered parking, access to washrooms and food options nearby.
• Stated countless times for EVs, but worth repeating at every chance. Very smooth and quiet drive, with negligible NVH translating significantly reduced fatigue. This, coming from someone driving Toyota Corolla petrol automatic which was no slouch in NVH department.

Stuff that needs improvement over time

• Every single charger required 2-4 attempts to start charging successfully. Always count on it. If you manage in single try, buy a lottery ticket because today is your lucky day!
• Charger reliability is a major concern. It compounds when you don’t have another one in reasonable distance.
• 25Kw charging speed feels very slow. Even those advertised as 60Kw chargers will drop to 30Kw speed when two cars are charging at once. It’s adequate for Tata cars with lower peak charging rate - but for ZS EV and future cars capable of charging faster than 60Kw, this network feels very “first generation”. I won’t be surprised if this will soon get relegated as back-up chargers.
• Charger population is still more dense in cities than highways. Until that changes, be prepared to navigate through city traffic for visit in-and-out to your charger. You’ll lose that mental momentum of long-distance cruising.
• 250km breaks are adequate and good for safe driving, but for those of us earlier used to 500km stretches of calm driving will find repetitive breaks annoying - especially in last legs of the trip
• Karnataka leg of the journey needs further improvement in charging infra. It’s sparse for now, with 1-2 chargers at precise spread of 200km. And if someone is using the charger when you reach, good luck!

Bad Experiences ...and then there were few outliers where charging experience was plain bad.

Jio BP charger at Davanagere

• A different ZS EV was charging alone and at rapid pace.
• Another Nexon EV arrives and starts charging using second gun.
• For some reason, at that moment first charger goes kaput and ZS EV stops charging. Multiple attempts and calls to customer care yield no results.
• Everyone is apprehensive to restart the whole charging station. For all we know, it could stop both chargers working and next one is not in reasonable distance.
• So now everyone is waiting. First the Nexon charges to 100% (at much lower rate by design). Then the first ZS EV charges to 100%; and then my turn to top up. Total 4 hours spent at the station, with not even a tea stall or food joint nearby
• More cars keep arriving in the meantime and keep joining the queue, so nobody is prepared to attempt a full restart of the station!

Shell charger at Old Madra road in Bangalore

• Big promise of high speed charging at 120Kw. Will be 60Kw even if two cars charge at once. Well separated and ring fenced area, away from petrol stations.
• We reach there, plug in and charging does not start. We're used to it by now so we attempt 4 times.
• Then we call customer care, who tell us it's a hardware problem and someone had already reported it 30 min back. Ticket is raised and hardware team will solve it earliest by tomorrow.
• I ask them why the app doesn't show it offline, because I could have avoided a 45 min drive to the place. They say app doesn't have any such feature to mark stations as down from backend!!
• We left and charged at nearby Tata charger at much slower rate of 25Kw. Total 90 min wasted, plus another 60 min for actual charging.

Jio BP charger at Kolhapur

• I am alone at this station, I plug in and it starts charging at full 60Kw speed. Voila!! I'm happy and go to nearby restaurant 200m away.
• Another Tigor EV arrives while my charging was on. Couldn’t get his charging to start.
• He calls customer care - who simply advise to restart the station by pressing emergency off switch!! Never occurred to them that another charging session was on at the time!
• I get notification in app, and come running (full sprint 200m). I first restart my own charging session, but this time only at 30Kw speed. Damn!
• Then I help the fellow owner, and still can't get his charging to start after 5-6 attempts. He's disappointed and leaves for another charger 2km away. He successfully charged it there, but we both lost time due to this.

All in all, a happy tale and big confidence booster when I prepare for next long drive. Let me know if anyone wants a detailed log of charging stations, costs and times, will be happy to share.

[HappyRider]

Thanks for a useful write up.

As another BHPian mentioned in another thread, while probably are getting over range anxiety we now have a new anxiety called Charger reliability anxiety. I guess as the usage goes up, demand on CPOs to maintain the chargers properly will increase and they will pull up their socks. Till then, let's keep the pressure up.

[wocanak]

I tried DC fast charging for the first time on my Nexon EV Max at a 60KW Fortrum charger in Nexus Mall Whitefield. Starting the charging went reasonably okay, had to try couple of times to remove the gun from the charger, it took more force than I imagined. Otherwise it went well and started charging from around 51% at close to 24 KW.

I did some quick shopping and came back in around 40 mins it had hit 91%. My intentions was to just test fast charging while in that area, so I wanted to stop and clicked on that app. It has no effect, there was a cancel button on the touch screen but that was asking for OTP via RFID card. Then I called the support help line, they tried to stop from the backend and failed. Then he asked me to press the emergency stop button and that also had no effect. The call center person said, he will escalate and someone will call me back. By this time it had hit 98% and as I was waiting for the call back at 99% charging stopped saying vehicle error/command on the charger. But there was no error or warning on the car dashboard, it just indicated connected but not charging. Then I tried pulling the gun, it felt stuck, then I remembered using a bit force while removing the gun from the charger. It did come out after that. The vehicle started normally with no warning/errors. But I am left wondering if it stopped normally and whether it will start charging next time. And I never got any call back from Fortum, maybe the saw the charger status. I released the emergency stop button and is went back to ready state.

If anyone has faced this, please let me know if there is any other way to stop and whether you had any issues charging next time.

Well mostly we have trouble getting it to charge, now we can add stopping as well.

[sumannandy]

Originally Posted by wocanak

I tried DC fast charging for the first time on my Nexon EV Max at a 60KW Fortrum charger in Nexus Mall Whitefield. Starting the charging went reasonably okay, had to try couple of times to remove the gun from the charger, it took more force than I imagined. Otherwise it went well and started charging from around 51% at close to 24 KW.

I did some quick shopping and came back in around 40 mins it had hit 91%. My intentions was to just test fast charging while in that area, so I wanted to stop and clicked on that app. It has no effect, there was a cancel button on the touch screen but that was asking for OTP via RFID card. Then I called the support help line, they tried to stop from the backend and failed. Then he asked me to press the emergency stop button and that also had no effect. The call center person said, he will escalate and someone will call me back. By this time it had hit 98% and as I was waiting for the call back at 99% charging stopped saying vehicle error/command on the charger. But there was no error or warning on the car dashboard, it just indicated connected but not charging. Then I tried pulling the gun, it felt stuck, then I remembered using a bit force while removing the gun from the charger. It did come out after that. The vehicle started normally with no warning/errors. But I am left wondering if it stopped normally and whether it will start charging next time. And I never got any call back from Fortum, maybe the saw the charger status. I released the emergency stop button and is went back to ready state.

If anyone has faced this, please let me know if there is any other way to stop and whether you had any issues charging next time.

Well mostly we have trouble getting it to charge, now we can add stopping as well.

Fortrum is usually very good. Please use your app to start charging and stop charging. Unlikely you will face any issues. You also need to pay your last bill to start charging. Subsequently you should get an option to pay the bill after charging is completed with your credit card etc. This is better than other providers as you do not need to recharge any wallet.

[wocanak]

Originally Posted by sumannandy

Fortrum is usually very good. Please use your app to start charging and stop charging. Unlikely you will face any issues. You also need to pay your last bill to start charging. Subsequently you should get an option to pay the bill after charging is completed with your credit card etc. This is better than other providers as you do not need to recharge any wallet.

First thing I did to stop was to click on the big stop button in the app, but it had no effect. After I started charging the app had gone to background and closed. When I opened it again it detected the on going charging session and offered "Ignore" and "Stop" buttons upon opening, that's where I clicked on stop.

Agree with the convenience of starting the charging with some minimum amount and then just paying the remaining. I had put 250 to start, total came to ~450 and I could pay the balance later, so no issues there.

The only problem was stop didn't work. It was lucky that in ~15 mins it hit 99% and somehow stopped (hopefully normally). If had started with lower SOC I might have had to wait much longer.

[GeeTee TSI]

Originally Posted by oakpr

I recently did a Pune-Bangalore-Pune round trip in 2022 MG ZS EV. While I have the full log of charging sessions and cost etc., here I will instead focus on my key observations and learnings from this drive.

A crisp, practical account which made for a very informative read. My cursory observations revealed DC fast charging costs to be roughly a third of petrol costs in a car delivering highway FE, would be keen to know some statistics from your trip.

Secondly, does the EV customer know the availability or uptime ratings of various charge post operators in order to avoid poor ones for better options?

[HappyRider]

Originally Posted by GeeTee TSI

Secondly, does the EV customer know the availability or uptime ratings of various charge post operators in order to avoid poor ones for better options?

For now only data available would be user reviews on plugshare. We, as early adopters will have to help each other and write a review on plugshare every time we use a commercial charger.

[oakpr]

Originally Posted by GeeTee TSI

A crisp, practical account which made for a very informative read. My cursory observations revealed DC fast charging costs to be roughly a third of petrol costs in a car delivering highway FE, would be keen to know some statistics from your trip.

Secondly, does the EV customer know the availability or uptime ratings of various charge post operators in order to avoid poor ones for better options?

Average cost of public DC charging is ~23 Rs per unit (including 18% GST). Jio BP is on higher side while Tata is on lower side.

This translates to Rs 3.76 per km in my trip, which was 40% of my earlier petrol cost (Corolla used to be 12kmpl in same trip at price of Rs 108 = Rs 9 per km).

Here is a summary of my numbers:

• 1906 = Total distance traveled (KM)
• 7168 = Total charging cost (Rs)
• 314 = Total units consumed (KWh)

For your second question, PlugShare is the only option as HappyRider correctly said. It's a community driven platform, so hard to know real-time availability. All apps are proprietary by charging networks. I seriously doubt they'll open such feature for users to report uptime / downtime. Could be damaging for their brand (), but could have been seriously useful like in my experience with Shell.

I have no such hopes in short term, but I'm optimistic that UPI-style disruption is just around the corner in this charging network space. Payments via each app is a big pain currently, so I hope someone will integrate and unify that aspect too.

[adrena]

Originally Posted by oakpr

I recently did a Pune-Bangalore-Pune round trip in 2022 MG ZS EV. While I have the full log of charging sessions and cost etc., here I will instead focus on my key observations and learnings from this drive.

All in all, a happy tale and big confidence booster when I prepare for next long drive. Let me know if anyone wants a detailed log of charging stations, costs and times, will be happy to share.

This is a great account of the trip for me. I'm planning a Mumbai - Bangalore - Mumbai trip in my early 2020 ZS ev. I'm not worried about Mumbai - Pune - Mumbai leg as I've done many times before. Pune - Bangalore - Pune log will be great. In whatever format you can share. It'll be great if you could share the log. Will help tremendously.

[HappyRider]

Originally Posted by oakpr

I have no such hopes in short term, but I'm optimistic that UPI-style disruption is just around the corner in this charging network space. Payments via each app is a big pain currently, so I hope someone will integrate and unify that aspect too.

There is a company called Ionage. They currently are working as software solution provider for BPCL charge stations. One of their reps is on TS and AP whatsapp group. He was mentioning that their company is working with all CPOs to bring them to one platform. Not sure when it will materialize.

[oakpr]

Originally Posted by adrena

This is a great account of the trip for me. I'm planning a Mumbai - Bangalore - Mumbai trip in my early 2020 ZS ev. I'm not worried about Mumbai - Pune - Mumbai leg as I've done many times before. Pune - Bangalore - Pune log will be great. In whatever format you can share. It'll be great if you could share the log. Will help tremendously.

Sure thing, please see attached. All rates are excluding 18% GST (but factored into total charging cost).

You can ignore a few of them within Bangalore city, that was my runabout and also making sure that I start return journey with nearly full charge.

I highly recommend using Trip Planner feature of PlugShare app.

Hope this helps.

[ADI7YAK]

Did Pune-Belgaum-Pune roadtrip a few days ago, here is my experience and total cost for the trip.

Started off with 100% as usual and first stop was decided to be Jio-BP Walwa which is a 60kW unit. Charging started immediately without issues and topped up 11.75 units in a little over 15 minutes.



Next stop, Gogte Plaza (Fairfield by Marriott) Belgaum. Reached with around 20% juice left in the battery and us humans needed a top up too. Charger is 30kW and not 60kW as shown on the app, but no worries since the charger is located within Marriott premises and there is a good restaurant, Spice Blends just alongside the charger. Plenty time for the car to charge till we ate. Nice restaurant by the way!





After adding 21 units in ~50 minutes we headed out to our destination which turned out to be some 35-40km East of Belgaum on Bagalkote road. We were not expecting this and it also meant adding one more charging stop on the way back, at Jio-BP Hebbal. This one is a speedy 60kW unit and we only stopped for 15 minutes to add ~10 units. (Sorry I forgot to click pictures here!)

After charging we left for our next stop, Jio-BP Walwa again but we realized there is a 30kW E-Fill Charger at DY Patil Mall Kolhapur right next to one of my favourite restaurants in town! We decided it was worth taking a detour and go into the city for some lip smacking food. Fortunately, an MG ZS (also MH12) was just done with it's charging when I arrived and my car was plugged in. Side note, I strongly advice against charging beyond 80% as it takes far longer and causes inconvenience to other users. Charged for 50 minutes up to ~80% here, enough for us to get back home while we had our dinner.





Here is the summery of the trip. A whopping ₹2300 including charging and toll for 790km! What made this trip so comfortable is being able to couple charging
and lunch/dinner together. Every charging infrastructure provider should prioritize installing DC chargers at restaurants.