Uday planned the charging stops using the app, contacted his relationship manager to check if the charging stations are working – they have a way to check the status of each charging station, including stats like what car is connected, charging status, etc.
BHPian ph03n!x recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
There is No Motivation like Negative Motivation.
What does a Torque Head with a spanking new car do when the roads open up?
Drive, but of course.
The Torque Head am talking about is one who took delivery of his car in March ’20, barely couple of weeks before the mother of all lockdowns kicked in. His pent up urge resulted in a conversation that went something like this –
Him: Dude, up for a long drive?
Me: No man, I can’t get out now. What is the plan?
Him: Am planning to do a Hyderabad – Vizag drive…
Me: Huh? Are you crazy? How will you even do that?
Him: Thence lies the adventure right?!! A no agenda, for-the-heck-of-it drive…
Hyd – Vizag is ~700 KM one-way, and the Torque Head am talking about would have done this trip a zillion times. So why is it a crazy idea now? Because, this is the car we are talking about:
And this is the Torque Head we are talking about:
Meet my friend, Uday Kiran. We’re buddies from college, and this is the story of how Uday did a 1,400 KM round trip in a EV, and how it was.
But before that, a prelude on the car itself. I had posted about it in the Nexon EV thread earlier – he took delivery of his Nexon EV XZ+ on the 7th of March, 2020, one of the first Nexons to be delivered to its owner. Tata was planning for group deliveries at that time around the 14th/ 15th March, but we got it delivered earlier – didn’t want a new car lying around in the yard. Plans of exploring the roads in the EV went into the back burner soon after, and the car had clocked about just about 6000 KM in one year of owning it.
Fast forward to Sunday, the 7th of March, 2021 –
Him: Dude, up for a long drive?
And this conversation was followed by a bunch of research, charging stations, cost, time, etc. A sample of the conversation:
This banter went on for a while, with me telling him not to get adventurous, stick to using the EV for what it is – an excellent city car.
But then, there is no motivation like negative motivation now, is there?
So our man went full swing, checked in to his dealership to ensure the car is in top shape for the drive as well as inquire about the charging points enroute. The tentative date for this drive is set as Thursday, the 11th of March.
When you are starting a seemingly impossible journey, and are motivated enough to do it, things start falling into place – doesn’t it? I mean, the longest Nexon EV road trip I heard about was a 1,300 KM trip from Jaipur to the Indo-Pak border, and the vlogger has traveled a bit on the Nexon EV before venturing into a long journey. My friend, on the other hand, has been using the Nexon EV strictly as a city car. He wants to get to the roads, and do the trip for the heck of it. Bad idea, I kept telling him.
But things started falling into place when his Tata dealer called him the next day. Sir, Tata is interested in accompanying you – shoot a video of the journey, experiences with the car, etc. Would you be interested? Well, they are not sponsoring him, they will probably be from the marketing team – so if something goes wrong, they may not be able to give him immediate technical help. But why not? He was about to drive alone (I couldn’t join him), and he will at least have company!
With things falling in place, he started off on Friday, the 12th of March – 5:30 AM.
The folks from Tata Motors accompanied him from Hyderabad to Vijayawada, and another team from Vijayawada to Rajahmundry, where he halted for the night.
The Wh/ KM is cumulative:
The trip took him 14 hours of driving time – this is about 5 to 6 hours more than it would have in a ICE car. As it was getting late, he halted overnight in Rajahmundry, met a few friends and chilled out. It was a no-agenda/ no-time-constraint drive, he was doing it at a leisurely pace – he maintained 80 km/h for most part, and there were some bad roads after Vijayawada, slowing his progress a bit more.
Starting off with 100% charge from home, he paid about Rs. 785 for the fast chargers on the way – the estimate is about Rs. 1.20 to Rs. 1.30 per KM for his usual usage.
Tata Motors made the onward journey as a short video.
His return journey was a solo drive for 14 hours straight, tracing back the same route.
With an average speed of ~50 km/h, driving long distances with an EV, while possible, will definitely need planning – and patience. The average km/h will be 50% to 60% slower than an ICE car, due to the longer time to “top-up” the battery, and because you better drive at 80 km/h or less if you want to extend the DTE by that much.
Will I do it? Some of my road trips are point A to point B – but others are about the journey itself, not the destination – and if I am in an exploratory mode for a road trip, why not? EVs have an eerily unsettling refinement, mad torque from get go, and zero tailpipe emission! The economical running is the icing on the cake.
The range anxiety, while his journey would have allayed his, I would still say that it is one big negative for EV. Hey, there is no motivation like negative motivation! So watch this space for road trips like this – ones where I won’t let Uday have all the fun .
So that is what I want to say with this mini-travelogue – that EVs have arrived, and will only get better from now on. Buy your last ICE cars, and keep ’em running until there is no dino-oil in the world, for they are gonna be dinosaurs soon themselves, and BEV/ HEV will replace them sooner than you think! For a normal road trip, I take a 45 min halt every 3 hours roughly. If an EV gives me 250 km to 300 km of real-life running, without castrating to 80 km/h or No-AC ridiculousness, and can top-up within 45 minutes (that is my average break time) to 100%, I will comfortably take an EV next!
Before signing-off, let me explicitly call out – Uday did not receive any sort of compensation or benefit from Tata Motors for doing this trip. They shot the video with his views and opinions on the car – that’s about it.
Uday is not on Team-BHP, but if there any questions someone has, I can always ask him and post it back here – do let me know!
Let me explain how he went about the whole charging planning.
Tata Power has a EZ Charge App that helps locate charging stations. Tata also assigns a relationship manager for Nexon EV customers.
Uday planned the charging stops using the app, contacted his relationship manager to check if the charging stations are working – they have a way to check the status of each charging station, including stats like what car is connected, charging status, etc. and the relationship manager confirmed that all the charging stops selected by Uday works. There is also a WhatsApp group that Uday is a part of, which has quite a few Nexon EV owners – this is from the rides/ engagement forums for Nexon EV that Tata has been conducting, and they have discussions around the charging infrastructure.
I had given the data with the battery percentage after each stop. Here are some charging times, and observations from each of them:
First stop – Suryapet: The charge from 44% to 100% took less than 30 minutes, was seamless.
Second stop – Vijayawada: Charging abruptly stopped a few times, and he did not notice this the first time. When it happened again, he took help from his relationship manager, and hit the red reset button on the charger. This one caused a delay, and 25% to 100% took about an hour because he did not notice that charging had stopped the first time, until later.
Third stop – Rajahmundry: This one had issues in starting charging. Again, relationship manager helped. Uday tried unplugging and replugging the charger – didn’t help. He then turned on the car, turned it off, locked it and tried again – worked seamlessly after.
All the chargers are unmanned chargers, and relationship managers can monitor them remotely.
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