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-   -   Quirky benefits of owning EVs (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/electric-cars/266976-quirky-benefits-owning-evs-3.html)

You can always tweak the assumptions, future changes in policy, your personal use cases, and other factors to fit your conclusion.

Just like there will always be someone out there who argues that their Nokia 1100 makes more sense than switching to a smartphone.

I have driven 25k km on my car, noticed a drop of 0.6kwh in capacity, that's 2% SOC drop. Now extrapolate that one, and you will get 20% drop by 250k km. The car still have 80% capacity, which means you are getting 160km to 180km range after 2.5L km.
The battery cost is arbitrary 8L, is based on some FB or some service guy talking about it. It was 1.5L bump from Prime to equivalent Max, the Max had 10kwh battery capacity more along host of new features, even if we use 1.5L for 10kwh battery, that's 4.5L for Prime battery not 8L.

Are we planning to do a saddle sore on car? what is long distance? isn't EV journey across India enough to say that you can go where ever you want?

I can take you on the remote places one, do you think there are fuel stations in small villages or some hill? sometimes you need to travel 30 to 50km to find one. Now, is it that difficult to find electricity in those remote places?
the only concern here is the time, and when you go to remote place, you don't touch some stone over there and say let's go home to catch our favourite TV show, do we? we stay at that place, you might as well charge.
Now, if you have a IONIQ5 or EV6 then you can use your car to charge the place whereever you go, you can't do that with your fuel car, can you? :D

Probably the silliest thing I've heard since my wife bought a Tiago EV:

"But what if it rains?"

Like, seriously? There are people that imagine a light drizzle and the car will short-circuit and die like a phone being dropped in a swimming pool?

Hilariousrl:

Although I agree to most/all the quirky benefits mentioned above. Something made me realise I'm not ready for EV yet.

I was close to buying a Model Y, but instead opted for a diesel ICE.

Recently, made a trip from my place to Heathrow, London and back; 320kms each way.
The only stop I made was to pick up the relative at the airport ~15minutes. Drove straight for nearly 7 hours

Realised, despite all the mentioned benefits, EVs have a long way to come.

To each their own:-)

This is a useful thread for newbies like me who would like to replace their ICE vehicles with EV. Depending on the type of usage - how much city and how much for long-distance - EV presents some challenges currently. One of the costs that we don't add to these calculations is the cost of time. There are obvious benefits to owning an EV if you are driving around in a city. You can manage time by planning for charging your vehicle when you are idle, into your schedules effectively. But on long drives (cross-country) it still seems like there is an overhead to charging, which may also be fine if you are ok with spending that much more time on the road. For eg. a 10-hr drive (approx 600 kms) in an ICE vehicle can take upto 5-8 hours more in an EV (not the high-end ones). This also means you have to plan the travel more because there are also unknown unknowns that come up. This may not be a deal-breaker for many and EV does make sense in urban areas because of all the "benefits" that people are talking about. The lifetime cost of ownership is also still not clear because it's only theoretical right now and situation is dynamic. Technology will improve, infrastructure will improve and cost may also come down which will all change the equation further.

I have no idea how you have assumed an extra 5 - 8 hours for a 600 KM drive on an EV.

Are you someone who drives for 10 hours without doing the following?

1. Stop for a meal?
2. Bio breaks?
3. Coffee/tea breaks?

As someone who has recently done a 1300 KM drive driving through some remote areas of TN, I can assure you that we EV users are mere mortals and have to do the above. All we do is plan those stops such that the vehicle charges up while we are charging up as well.

The 1300 KM drive had only one charging stop of 20 minutes where we had to spend time waiting for the car to charge, everything else was fitted into our normal routines.

Of course, one must do their own research and understand the charging options available before making blanket calls. Suggest opening plugshare and checking out what charging options exist for your most commonly used routes. I can assure you that you will be surprised

I will give you my version of the story -
I started from Electronic City, Bangalore with ~20% SoC. Idea was to charge at Tata Showroom 1 kilometer away, which upon reaching threw errors and did not let me charge. (Lost - 15 to 20 minutes trying various troubleshooting steps)

Drove to another Tata service center 3-4 kms away and found that access to fast charger was blocked and there was no one available who could move the vehicle. After wasting another 30 mins, I left the place with ~16 - 17% SoC.

Found a KEB FC 6-7 kms away and drove there, installed that charger specific application and loaded some money to find that the charger was not initiating the charge. Wasted another 30 minutes and left the place with ~10-12% SoC.

As a last attempt, drove to Tata showroom at Brookfield without AC and with irritating beeps, fortunately to find a working charger. I reached the place with ~3% SoC. I charged here to 100% SoC. Which took about 1.5 hours.

Idea was to drive towards Mangalore via Hassan and Sakleshpur. Checked availability of 3 Zeon chargers in the route and all 3 were greyed out. Called their customer care to find out that there was a grid problem, and all chargers were unavailable for time being, without ETA for availability.

Only other option I had was to drive via Mysore. With charging stops at Rama Nagara and Mysore. Reached Rama Nagara by lunch time and plugged in the car, initiated charging and walked towards the restaurant to find a SMS stating that charging is stopped! Walked back, re-initiated charging, started walking towards restaurant and again, a SMS popped up saying charging was stopped. This happened 2-3 times and I spent about 30 minutes on call with Zeon customer service to troubleshoot and fix the issue. To my surprise, charger started functioning after some restarts, plug-out-drive 2 mts - reverse - plug in cycles and some frustration! Charged here till 90%, which took about an hour.

Now, checked the charger status at Mall of Mysore and MG Mysore, and both were unavailable. By now, I was a pro and checked for availability of Zeon near Hassan and it was shining green!

Changed my route plan and drove towards Hassan via Melukote. I reached there around 7 PM to find a ZS EV, plugged in few minutes before me!
He charged till 100% which took around 1.5 hours and then I plugged in to charge. My Nexon took about an hour and 20 minutes to get charged to 95%.

From here, it was an uneventful journey to home!. I reached at 1 AM the next day.

A journey of 370-380 kilometers, which generally takes between 7-8 hours in any ICE car, took more than 13-14 hours (deducting 2-3 hours for my work) in my EV.

Summary: There are too many variables for EVs on long drive.

Firstly, so sorry to hear you go through that. Would've been highly frustrating to go through it.

At the outset, agreed that there are multiple variables in EV charging on long distance drives but to say that every trip will take 5 hours extra on a 600 KM distance seems to be stretching it.

Some basic things that some of us frequently driving on highways follow and maybe helpful:

1. Tata power and BPCL are never to be trusted. It's a surprise if they work. Use them as worst case options.

2. Zeon, Jio BP, Chargezone and Fortum can be trusted to an extent in South India but always ensure you have two or three backup chargers in your mind.

3. If chargers support booking, always book especially Tata power if you plan to use them.

4. Always check Plugshare rating for chargers.

5. If possible travel during off peak times.

We are at an extremely early stage when it comes to highway charging of EVs, so early adopter pain is unavoidable.

I agree with you & I think that as of today in India, it is safe to assume that Electric Cars are not suitable for driving outside of a Tier-1 city (and particularly in rural areas), because even if the government or a private agency puts superchargers every 100kms or so, there is no guarantee that all of them will function properly without errors, or that you will get uninterrupted 24/7 power supply in all of those chargers (this is in sharp contrast to how it is in Western countries).

I am staying in Chennai; here within the city there is not much of an issue with power cuts & almost all chargers function properly, so you can comfortably drive an Electric Car within the city. However, the moment you leave the city, it is a different story... In my native town in central Tamil Nadu, the power supply is erratic and the town barely receives 14-16 hrs of electricity per day & in the nearby villages where we go to visit the temples, they hardly get 10 hrs of power in a whole day, which is much worse. Imagine you forgot to charge your Car sufficiently (or you were unable to, due to power cuts) and got stranded in those areas without any charge left in your car, it would be a real nightmare!

I think that, before our Indian government promotes Electric Vehicles as the future of transportation, they really need to improve our power infrastructure (particularly outside of Tier-1 cities) and ensure that all chargers in the country will receive non-stop power supply atleast from 6:00AM to 11:00PM daily. This will (indirectly) require the govt to also provide the same level of power supply to all towns and villages in the vicinity of the chargers.

I think it is going to be a mammoth task, but if our government willingly engages in it, then I predict that in 8-10 years time EV adoption can happen throughout the country.

Another benefit of EV is spillage prevention. Happened thrice with me. Attendant pulled out a little early or through his sheer idiocy spilled fuel. A real pain in butt.

Brother I think you are wrong here. EV are good only for routes with proper EV infrastructure. A remote area where fuel station is 50 kilometres away. I can take ride with someone to get a can of fuel but same is not true for electricity. There are cut that last for hours. It is a big drawback of EV which can’t be ignored. I would have shifted to electric but don’t have enough charging stations on the routes I frequent. Only ones present are hotels. I’m not staying overnight just to charge my car. Day and night difference on north side. Delhi, Chandigarh got abundant charging stations but nearby cities don’t have that much. EV infrastructure is improving but not sufficient enough to break its deal breaker.

LoL
Completely agree.

On a side note I think batteries will last longer than the life of vehicle itself and by the time we will face battery degradation and range reduction our infrastructure will have progressed significantly.

We Indians are always known to extend the purpose and utility of any items they have on hand including the car.

The car manufacturers should not waste time to build cars which are city or highway. it has to be all purpose vehicle.:)

Range anxiety is real with EVs so I wouldn’t say that mileage isn’t a concern. Petrol pumps are still way more common than recharge stations so running out someplace unknown is going to be a headache. No going with a can and bringing back petrol in case of miscalculations.

The real advantage is no worrying about the cost of travel. Especially if you have a solar panel, you are basically getting free fuel. How many times have you put off going someplace for small reasons because you couldn’t justify the cost of fuel? No more stringing small trips together, just go drive whenever you feel like it. That’s freedom.

One more benefit that I realized yesterday when a saw a driver still his ICE car at the traffic signal, that is something that will not happen on a EV.
No more stalling!!!

This advantage is available on ICE automatics, thus not exactly a "quirky" benefit of EV !

My wife and daughter who hate math have suddenly become mathematicians after we got an EV.

Earlier, they would take the bus/metro to go to Helsinki. Now they say, "Either we take two tickets, or you drop us in the car. You know which is cheaper." Can't argue with wife, even less when she's armed with math.