How I charged my MG ZS EV during my Chennai-Hyderabad road trip – EQ Mag

Our hotel front desk did not even know there was an EV charger in their premises! We only found out because of Plugshare. This shows how rare EVs are!

BHPian Chrome6Boy recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

We went on a drive to Hyderabad from Chennai and back for a 2 day sightseeing trip. It was a great overall experience with some hiccups.

Let me preface this by saying I don’t enjoy driving in a manner to extract the maximum range, I like accelerating quickly and hate keeping an eye on consumption.

We left at 5 AM from Chennai ECR, so we had to traverse the entire city from South to North before hitting the Chennai – Kolkata highway. I was given very good advice by members speedmiester and Rada about highway charging which I tried to follow.

We were extra conservative with the charging stops for a few reasons. Mainly we wanted to ensure no range anxiety or hyper milling as this was a family trip which was also aimed at testing and understanding our 2022 MG ZS EV Exclusive’s capabilities. We used the Android Plugshare app for reliable reviews and easy location finding.

We planned to stop and charge 3 times on our way to Hyderabad and 3 times back to Chennai. First stop was at Kritunga Restaurant which was 164 kms away. This station was occupied when we reached and had to wait an hour before we got to our turn. The person who was charging before me mentioned he couldn’t charge on this station the previous night as there were power issues. In fact there was a power cut even when he was charging:

The car showed a remaining charge close to 180 kms and so we did a quick charge for ten minutes and left with a remaining range of 240 kms. However as I pulled out I noticed the range shown was different when the car was running and different when it was charging. The new remaining range was still 210 so we decided to keep going. As we were driving to Ravi Priya Mall.

This is when range anxiety set it, the difference between our destination’s distance and the range shown keeps decreasing! It was finally 3% remaining in our battery with the remaining range being shown as “—” when we reached the charging station. We had to resort to driving without using the air conditioner in 30 degree weather driving at around 65 Kmph in ECO mode. Believe me, the experience was less than ideal.

Luckily for us the station was working and unoccupied. It was a 50 kW Zeon fast charger and we could charge it 95% in close to an hour and set off towards our next destination. Vivera Hotel which was 245 kms away. We had a range of about 300 kms so it was a relaxed trip there.

The Tata charger was not operational but there was a Lion charger available right next to it and charged at 24 kW. We took our time and filled it to a range of 150 kms and left for Hyderabad which was only 91 kms.

Next couple of days was sightseeing in Hyderabad which was a very pretty city. We took cabs / autos everywhere as we didn’t want to drive in Old City traffic.

Salar Jung museum was really amazing:

Our hotel had a 24 kW Joule Point charger so we charged to 90% before we left.

We left 7:30 AM from our hotel in Hyderabad back home and we tried to do the same thing as the trip a couple of days before but in reverse. The Vivera and the Ravi Priya stops went according to plan. We tried to keep 60 kms extra range before leaving. Our last planned stop in Kritunga was a little scary because the charger was non operational. The next charger at ICOL was also not working.

However we easily managed to reach Comfort Inn Tada. This was listed as a Relux charging station but did not show up on their app. Once we reached the place the security guard informed us that the hotel had decided to end their relationship with Relux and were charging privately. It was a 60kWh charger and was super fast. They charged us Rs. 25 including GST which was similar to all other providers.

We charged it to 50% and left for home and comfortably reached. Below is the accumulated trip info.

We plugged in the car in the 16 A charger at home and gave it time to slowly climb to 100%, it did feel good to be home.

Some conclusions drawn from this drive:

• EV charging infrastructure is rapidly expanding.
• With good planning and some good luck decent distances can be covered on major national highways.
• Total cost at Rs 25 per kW was about Rs. 4975.
• The acceleration, quietness and lack of vibration makes for a very comfortable ride.
• EVs on the highway are extremely rare so despite driving over the holiday weekend only one charger was occupied.
• Our hotel front desk did not even know there was an EV charger in their premises! We only found out because of Plugshare. This shows how rare EVs are!

This will hopefully be one of many more road trips in the ZS EV.

Source: team-bhp