I Dream of Electric Trip

– Blogs

Skepticism

Like most people around, despite jumping in on the EV bandwagon, I was skeptical of the infra for long distance trips. Thus I bought a cheap car with not so long range. Sufficient for city usage but fairly short for intercity travel.

Reality

In 6 months I have covered 7500 km with the Tiago EV MR, which include trips to Goa, Mangalore, Mysore, Yercaud, Anchetty, Coorg(Pollibetta). I have had a couple of edgy moments, yes but have managed to make it through with a little bit of planning.

Learnings

Sharing some of my learnings that others can use as guidelines.

Vehicle Range

Vehicle range is definitely a very first thing you’d want to check while buying.

City Use: 150-250 km

150 km+ on a single charge is pretty much the baseline these days. For city usage, 150-250 km range is sufficient enough to get you by for a week atleast and not be worried by an occassional trip to the further end of the city or even a nearby getaway.

Typical Use: 300-400 km

Most EVs today fall in this range. This is a practical range to be able to comfortably do vacations and road trips. In a typical case you’d be taking a pitstop every 200-250 km and most charging stations typically have a restaurant or a cafe around.

Enthusiast: 400-500 km

IMO, 400-450 is the max range you need. The marginal utility kicks in after that. Practically you have very little use of range beyond 450 km. And beyond 500+ is more vanity and edge case. If you really need it, you’ll know it.

Tips

Charging Speed

This is often an underlooked area while picking a EV. And it matters.

Regular Charging

There are typically 3 levels of regular charging 3.3kW, 7.2kW and 11.2kW. You’ll usually find 11.2kW only in high end cars and is not regularly supported in most households either. These are good for daily charging and recommended to be the primary charging mechanism for long term battery health.

Fast Charging

DC fast charging is what you need when travelling out of station or desperately need to top up the charge on your vehicle quickly. These charging stations typically range from 30kW to 120kW. There are a few charging stations that support beyond 120kW and very few cars that do either.

Things to Watch Out

There are city cars like most models of MG Comet that only support regular charging. Making intercity trips is practically impossible unless you absolutely have distances within the range and have the time to wait for slow charging, typically 8-9 hours. Tiago EV maxes out around 17-18kW, typically taking about 1:15 hours to go from 20-100%. This is fairly reasonable but comes with a catch which will be discussed in the next point. If you regularly do outstation travels, you definitely want a car that can be topped up within an hour.

Battery Cooling

This is an important aspect that one needs to factor in. With Tiago EV, charging the car within an hour every 150 km is not so bad but if I have to charge it for more than 3 times a day, the battery overheats as there is no external battery cooling mechanism. This car wasn’t designed for regular long travel. You’ll need to let it sit idle for some time after 2nd charge onwards, if you plan to charge for 3rd time that day. Charging the car for the 4th time in a day isn’t possible unless you’re driving really rash and unoptimally. If so, please review and reconsider what car you need. If you will do regular fast charging, do review all the 3 points - range, charging speed and battery cooling technology.

Regeneration

The coolest stuff about EV is how we can harness the braking power to regenerate the battery. In a long, winding descent this leads to battery getting charged while you are covering the distance. Mind blowing indeed. It makes up for the extra charge lost while climbling up the hill and gives you an additional leeway while pushing forward while on the way down. Use it sensibly and you’ll love the free power.

Route Planning

Route planning is still an important aspect of EV road trips. The charging grid is decent, atleast within 150-600 km range of Bangalore. But it isn’t anything like petrol/diesel availability. I primarily rely on Google Maps to show me EV charging stops on my route. It does a decent job but the charger info falls short or is sometimes sketchy, not showing a charger that it knows about. In which case, I do fall back on Tata IRA.ev app, it has excellent charger info. There is also a tool called ABRP, which is supposed to do a great job with this but somehow it hasn’t come naturally to me. Looks like intertia. :-) Here’s a list of chargers that I have maintained on Google Maps https://maps.app.goo.gl/cPq8VuwKvCkyn9zy5. Works for me, but if you find the other options above working better for you, they definitely have a richer data and will surely be updated better.

Charging Apps

There are dozens of charging provider, with their own app and wallet. This is definitely a big pain point waiting to get addressed. I have read about a solution that is in the works where UPI will solve this issue. I’ll be waiting for it and hoping it provides a usable interface. But for now I have a folder full of charging apps with untracked amount of balance in different apps. Ouch! My first preference is to look for Statiq or Shell chargers. In my not so scientific and maybe biased opinion, they have best quality infrastructure and app. Statiq has good availability, Shell is often found at their petrol bunks but recently I saw it at Hyundai showroom in Mysore. Similarly I saw a couple of Tata chargers at non-tata EV showrooms around Mangalore. Interesting times ahead but presently it’s fairly frustrating. If you are looking for a cheaper option in Karnataka, look around for BESCOM charging stations.