News

MG ZS EV: Real-world range on Indian highways

11th October 2021, 12:43 by Rahul Nagaraj

The entire road trip took me 12 hours to complete in my electric car, which would be the exact travel time if I had driven a petrol/diesel car.

BHPian docelectric2020 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

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 300 km on a single charge if we drive it at 80 km/h with the AC On.

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:

Chengelpet – Fairfield Marriot Hotel – Tata Power 25kw
Tindivanam – A2B – Zeon Charging 50kw
Tindivanam – Aiswarya Bhavan – Relux Electric 25kw
Attur, Salem – A2B – Zeon Charging 50kw
Salem – Tata showroom – Tata Power – 25kw
Sankari – Sree Saravana Bhavan – Zeon Charging 50kw
IOCL COCO – Vadamugam Kangayapalayam – Tata Power
Avinashi – Sree Annapoorna Hotel – Zeon Charging 50kw
Coimbatore - MG showroom - Tata Power 25kw
Coimbatore - TML Tata showroom - Tata Power 25kw
Coimbatore - Brookefields mall - Zeon Charging 24kw
Mettupalayam – Black Thunder – VEEV Charger – 30kw
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 didn’t 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 on board 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 a seamless operation and have 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 app’s wallet.

I started from my home in Porur, Chennai at 5.15 a.m.

5.15 AM

Porur, Chennai

Battery SOC (State of Charge) – 100%

110 km

(Cruise control 90 km/h and sometimes 100 km/h) AC on

6.42 AM

Tindivanam – A2B – Coffee break

SOC – 62%

Zeon Charging – From 62% to 87% in 17 Mins – Rs.244

7.07 am

177 km

(Speed mostly of 100 to 120 km/h) Avg Speed – 86kmph

9:15 am

Attur, Salem – A2B – Breakfast

SOC - 9%

Zeon Charging – From 9% to 94% in 51 mins – Rs.760

10.11 am

181 km

(driving at speeds of 100 to 120 km/h with few short stops for restroom & for child)

Avg speed – 69 km/h

12.48 pm

Avinashi Bye pass – Sree Annapoorna hotel – Lunch

SOC - 14%

Zeon Charging – 14% to 100% in 48min s– Rs. 741

1.50 pm

49 km

Avg Speed – 40km/h

This road had a lot of construction work going on, so it took a long time to

reach Mettupalayam

3.15 pm

Mettupalayam – Ooty Foothills

SOC - 82%

51 km - Uphill

5.05 pm

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 7 kw 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 didn’t 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 queue 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 car in a more sedate way, I would have had to spend about Rs. 1400 max.

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.

View Forum Discussion