Bombay - Bengaluru and back! (Sort of) - Part 1/2

I drive the MG ZS EV from Mumbai to Bengaluru and back. My car broke down on the return trip. Part 1 covers the trip, Part 2 will cover the experience with MG

Hello and welcome back to another trip report. This time I drove down to Bengaluru and back (sort of). The journey is ~1000 km each way. Typically Bjørn does a 1000km ride  in under 10 hours in Norway. However, it took me two days to cover this distance from Mumbai to Bengaluru, while driving alone.

While returning from Bengaluru, my car broke down at a fast charger. I’ve split the experience into two articles. This first part covers the trip until the breakdown and the second part will be focused on the car breakdown. It will include my experience with MG’s RSA (Roadside Assistance) service & other learnings from the episode.

As usual, if you’d like to skip the text and dive into the data, here’s the link. TLDR learnings mentioned at the end of the post.

Housekeeping

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• ExpWithEVs is launching a new podcast! Do suggest people I should be speaking to via comments or DMs on social media. No, Elon Musk ain’t an option.

The planning

I wasn’t worried about charging on this route. The route till Kolhapur (~376km from Mumbai) has chargers at roughly every 50km. Beyond that the chargers are less in number and are concentrated in smaller cities and towns like Belagavi, Hubbali, Davanagere, Chitradurga, Hiriyur and Tumkaru before you enter Bengaluru district. Typical distance between these chargers is roughly 100kms.

Fig 1 : Positions of chargers along the route from Mumbai to Bengaluru. Image courtesy - Plugshare

So I was pretty sure to not be anxious about chargers on this entire route. Thus, I decided to optimise for time instead of being forced to charge at certain locations, as experienced in my earlier drive to Bhopal.

Fig 2 : Elevation chart. Image courtesy - Plugshare

Bengaluru is at an elevation of roughly 920m asl while Mumbai is at sea level. Of the 920m, 600m is the elevation difference between Mumbai and Pune itself. The remaining 300m elevation gain is gradual from Pune to Bengaluru. This also meant that there won’t really be a time wherein I would have to worry about the sudden elevation gain throughout the trip.

While planning, I couldn’t locate any 7.2kW slow charging options for an overnight halt between Hubli and Davanagere, which would have allowed me to charge my car overnight. That would’ve been an ideal pitstop on this route. There are two 7.2kW chargers in Davanagere, however, they are in a showroom and you can charge your car only during the showroom’s operating hours. 

Given the above points, I did the following :

• Mumbai - Davanagere (~700kms) on Day 1 with overnight stay in Davanagere

• Davanagere - Bengaluru (~350kms) on Day 2

Let’s go!

Fig 3 : Here’s a quick summary of my charging stops

Mumbai - Pune

I left home at around 4 am to beat the city traffic in both Mumbai and Pune. The ride to Pune was fantastic, and I encountered a good deal of fog, which is a monsoon specialty in the Western Ghats. Getting out of the city this early is usually helpful as the roads are empty and life is somewhat at a standstill, even if for a brief period. I was excited to travel to Bengaluru. Doing a road trip down South was long overdue after my trips to North and Central India.

I had decided to top up at Fortum's 50kW charger in Pune, primarily because I didn’t want to stop and charge in between on the Pune-Kolhapur route. Although the charger is on the other side of the road, I didn’t mind using it because it was a 50kW unit. There were a couple of other chargers on the same side of the road - namely Garve Motors, Tathwade, Pune , goEGO charger at Balewadi and Crystal Kia Tata power charger. The Garve Motors charger was only 25-30kW. The goEGO charger was 60kW and the Kia Tata Power charger was 150kW. I had no inclination to use the 25-30kW chargers, because I’d have to anyway rely on them later during my trip. The 150kW charger seemed like an overkill because my car could only charge at maximum 1C rate (1C = the entire battery can be charged from 0-100% in one hour, for 2C, it would mean charging in half hour). Thus occupying an extremely fast charger was out of the question and paying more wouldn’t help me anyway. I already had an account with Fortum along with its RFID key. Plus, Fortum doesn’t ask me to load up my wallet prior to charging, and takes only the money that is due. With goEGO, I’d have to top up my wallet and remember to use it later too.

Given that I was already heading to Bengaluru, relying on Fortum made more sense. There are many Fortum chargers in Bengaluru. However, if I am not constrained with choice, or if I am not constrained with time, or if their network is slightly bigger, I’d definitely like to give goEGO a try.

The charging started flawlessly and given that it was early morning (around 6:30-7am), there wasn’t anyone at the charger or the showroom. The security guard was kind enough to allow me to use the MG showroom to freshen up. The Fortum charger has various kinds of data that is interesting to look at. You can check the firmware version of the software that is on board, previous charging sessions - including how long the car was charged and what were the SoCs.

Fig 4 : Fortum’s 50kW Delta charger

I observed that most of the cars typically do a complete top up ~ sub 90% before departing from the charger. From the limited sample size available in the screenshot, one could estimate that there were 4 TigorEVs and 2 Nexons (Max), in the last 24h. Assuming that some of these cars might have been planning a drive from Pune to Mumbai, the Tigors and Nexons would find the Fortum charger optimally placed as the cars need a full charge to make this trip.

Interested in reading about the drive between Mumbai - Pune? Here’s a link to my Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai trip in an MG.

Fig 5 : Seating at Fortum’s charger

The charging station had decent covered seating for passengers, however, the place sorely lacked a dustbin. Hopefully this will get rectified soon. Fortum doesn’t have a wallet system and they collect payment only after the charging session is over, which is a great thing in my opinion. One doesn’t have to keep any balance amount in the wallet, which takes care of at least one problem with the charging apps that I described in my last post.

Pune - Belagavi

Starting from Mumbai, it is easy to exit Maharashtra on a single charge top up, if driving Northwards or towards Central India, but I wanted to test the theory of doing this while driving Southwards.

I did a complete top up at Pune, so that I could test this theory. If there was a need to bail out, I had enough chargers between Pune and Kolhapur, on both sides of the road, to do a quick top up.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to. I did cut it close, and had to draft behind a big tempo for the last couple of kilometres just as a precautionary measure. Along with drafting, I was also hypermiling (hypermile - accelerate quickly and then charge up the battery by slowing down). In case the charger I was aiming for wasn’t working or for any unfavourable eventuality, it would’ve been good to have some range left. I would recommend you try this only in tight situations and not regularly

Fig 6 : Me drafting behind the truck

MG stops showing the range in the instrument cluster (behind the steering wheel) when the battery dips below 5%. However, for some reason, it shows the range in the infotainment unit (tablet type display). I managed to pull in at 2% SoC with 6km range left, before putting the car to charge. I felt great relief at having crossed Maharashtra and driven over 340kms on a single charge from Pune.

I put in the car to charge at Fairfeld by Marriott, Gogte Plaza, Belagavi. The plaza has great 24 x 7 restaurants, along with solar panels all over. There’s additional joy when you know that your car is possibly being powered by renewable energy and the guilt of driving the car on ‘dirty’ power goes down. I had little over an hour to have my lunch break and get ready for my next stop, which would be near Davanagere. I had some amazing Mangalorean food at the restaurant at Gogte Plaza.

Fig 7 : Awesome Mangalorean food at Gogte Plaza, Belagavi

After filling up my tummy and my car’s tummy, with around 80% charge, I made my way further into Karnataka. I had decided to stop overnight at Davanagere and continue my journey towards Bengaluru the next day. Mumbai to Davanagere was around 730kms which did mean a lot of driving.

The last leg of the journey is usually always critical and feels the longest. However, the roads in Karnataka were much better than in Maharashtra and it was pleasant and less exhausting to drive.

After Belagavi, the next immediate charger was in Hubbali and I wanted to avoid that charger because it was in the city and not on the highway itself. Thus it didn’t make sense to stop there, especially when I didn’t need the charge. There was another upcoming 60kW (tempting) charger by JioBP at Ranebennur, however PlugShare comments said that the charger wasn’t operational yet. It wasn’t available on the JioBP app either.

With ~79% SoC at Belagavi, I had enough range to even go beyond Davanagere to Chitradurga, which had a Zeon 24kW charger. However, that would be an additional 60kms drive, which would’ve meant at least one more hour on the road. I decided against it and relied on Tata Power’s 25kW charger at Adishakti Motors, Davanagere. I was in no hurry, so I let the car charge upto 99% at the Tata Power charger and headed to rest for the night.

Davanagere - Bengaluru

From Davanagere, I had to head straight to Electronic City(E City) in Bengaluru for some work. After a good night’s rest, I left Davanagere by 7 am. As per Google maps, I would be in ECity by noon or 1pm, which worked great for me. The roads, as usual, were fantastic and I kept making my way down south. I had more than enough charge to not take a pitstop, which is always a great feeling.

I was elated to see the signs showing ‘Welcome to Bengaluru rural district’. Driving down to Bengaluru and further down south to Kodaikanal is a personal challenge which I have been wanting to overcome for quite some time now. I couldn’t manage to go to Kodaikanal this time around, but it is definitely on the list.

Navigation took me through NICE road to get to E City, thereby saving at least 2hours that would have been spent in the horrible Bengaluru traffic. Driving on NICE road felt amazing and the toll is worth the time saved. I reached E City with little to no hassle and put the car to charge at another Fortum 50kW charger.

I had reached Bengaluru with around 16% SoC. I had enough range to get to Domlur, my next meeting point, but I didn’t know if I could slow charge the car at my destination. Also, I had a packed few days ahead of me and didn’t want to go to a city based fast charger to top up my car. I charged the car to 88% which would’ve been more than sufficient for my in-city driving over the next few days.

Bengaluru local

I drove the car quite a bit in Bengaluru and absolutely hated the traffic. I pretty much crisscrossed the city for a few meetings and also managed to sneak in a short drive to The Big Banyan Vineyard which is roughly 40-50kms one way drive, for a leisurely weekend drive.

By the end of the trip, my SoC was around 14%. On the last day, prior to heading back to Mumbai, I decided to slow charge the car overnight. I got an opportunity to slow charge by dropping an extension cable from the 2nd floor. I always carry my 2.5 sq mm - 40m extension cable in the car. It is useful to slow charge the car whenever you stay overnight and if you have access to a 15A socket. Plus, it is always good to have at least one slow charge session after multiple fast charging sessions. However, with BYD’s blade batteries, that is not necessarily true and you could, theoretically, keep fast charging your cars.

Return leg!

Fig 8 : Return leg of the trip.

Bengaluru - Tumkuru

I had enough juice to get out of the city and take my first stop at Tumkuru. I had timed my departure from Bengaluru such that the first charging break would coincide with my breakfast break, the second charging break should coincide with my lunch break and I should be at the destination to stay overnight after that, thereby not wasting any time during any of the charging sessions.

I finally got the opportunity to use the Zeon charging network at Hotel Sri Nandujeswara near Tumkuru. I had already bought Zeon’s RFID key and had loaded some money in the wallet in anticipation of my Kodaikanal trip, whenever it would’ve happened. I parked my car and saw a Tata Nexon with the charger plugged in. Nervousness and anxiety crept in because frankly I don’t like waiting :D . Luckily, as I parked my car and stepped out, I realised that the charger was available and the gun was ‘free’ to remove. I removed and plugged it in my car, tapped my RFID and boom, the car started charging. I tried looking for the Nexon owner, to let them know that this has happened. Obviously the charging gun cannot be removed while the car is being charged. There could only be two possibilities - either the car is fully charged or the charging session is over.

With the car charging nicely at 24kW, I headed to the nearby restaurant for some amazing idly, vada and filter coffee for breakfast. The Nexon owner had left by the time I came out to check upon them. I finished my breakfast and hung around for a bit. As soon as I had started the session, I had received a message on WhatsApp by Zeon, which was great. They pointed me to an MG owner’s pan India WhatsApp group, which I was happy to join.

Zeon charging works only if you have loaded money onto the wallet. However, the charging automatically stops when the wallet balance turns negative. This provides a not so friendly user experience for those who may not want to maintain balance in the wallet. Thus it is important for charging apps to move beyond wallets and adopt a simpler solution.

Another MG owner popped by. Mr. Anil was travelling with his family in his newly purchased white car. He was headed to a nearby valley and wanted to top up for only 5-10 mins. I decided to stop charging because I had more than enough range, with buffer, to go to the Davanagere Tata charger. I taught him how to check in on PlugShare and helped start the charging session for him. It was the first time he was fast charging his car. It is always a delightful experience to fast charge, and you could see it.

Davanagere

With these positive vibes, I started out from the Zeon charger and headed straight to Davanagere. It was around 200kms and I decided to do it in a single go. Given that I had travelled on that route, I knew that the roads were amazing and I didn’t have to worry about the roads as such.

Unfortunately, this is where my car broke down. What followed was an adventure (and harassment) I wasn’t prepared for. A long documentation and rant is due in part 2, subscribe to the blog for that update.

Learnings from the trip :

You can find the detailed sheet here.

• 600kms per day per driver seems to be the upper comfortable limit for highway driving.

• India is huge. You could literally spend an entire day driving in the same state. (Yes, I’ve come to this conclusion earlier too, but man, it still surprises me)

• The efficiency was slightly poor, given that I had to reach an incline of ~950m. The efficiency could become much better if I was able to do the return journey too.

This piece can be re-published (CC BY-NC-SA) with a line mentioning ‘This was originally published on ExpWithEVs Substack’ and a link back to this page. In case of re-publishing, please alert priyansevs@gmail.com

Text and data - Priyans

Graphics and editing - Siddharth Agarwal