My 9th Mumbai Delhi EV Road trip
Different starting conditions, Route options, Overnight destinations, High Speeds, Period Pain
Welcome to another road trip article! Today, I’ll discuss the pros and cons of different Mumbai-to-Delhi routes and why I chose my preferred route. I jot down my experience with destination charging, breaking my own 79 kmph speed rule on expressways, and the experience of traveling with period pain.
This is the 9th time I have driven between these two cities in the MG ZS EV. There are some learnings that I would love to share with the readers.
Before we get to all of it, here are some housekeeping notes.
Housekeeping
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As usual, if you’d like to skip the text, you can dive into the data for the Mumbai Delhi trip here.
Route and Style Selection
My first few trips - June 2022 and December 2022, were through Vadodara (Gujarat) and Udaipur (Rajasthan). All trips since 2022 have been via the Delhi Mumbai Expressway (DME) - Sept 2023, May 2024, July 2024, Oct 2024, Dec 2024.
I began using the DME as sections gradually opened to the public. While the previous route via Vadodara and Udaipur now offers numerous charging options, the DME provides a far superior driving experience. Ideally, there should be high-power charging stations every 50 km on DME to make the journey hassle free. Will the DME live up to its promise of becoming India's ultimate EV highway?
There are two sections of DME that I’ve used regularly - Ratlam (Madhya Pradesh) to Chechat (Rajasthan), Lalsot (Rajasthan) to New Delhi. The Lalsot section is open till Sawai Madhopur (Rajasthan), per my Oct 2024 visit. 500-600 km of DME is open, whereas the rest of 700-800 km is still under development.
If you want to do minimum number of charging stops, travel via the shortest route and charge as fast as possible, then I’ve narrowed down the 60kW wave for you. It needs three full charges with an average charging time of ninety minutes to go from single digit SoC to full 100%. The second charging stop is usually the night halt. These stops are Dhule (Maharashtra), Ratlam and Sawai Madhopur.
For this trip, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to take shorter breaks and not wait for too long at a charger. This was easily doable if a route had multiple reliable charging options. NH48 in Gujarat has around 173 fast charging points covering almost 500 km. The top 4 CPOs - Tata PEZC, Jio BP Pulse, BPCL and ChargeZone, on NH48 in Gujarat constitute almost half the charging points. Of which, under 15% chargers are not working for Tata PEZC, Jio BP and ChargeZone.
Similarly the highways in Rajasthan have another 200 fast charging points, counting both available options NH48 and NH58. All of this makes the route a lot more attractive with multiple charging options.
The entire DME, or the National Expressway 4 (NE4) has only 32 fast charging points that are operational.
I had one more option, AB Road from Mumbai to Agra (Uttar Pradesh) via Indore (Madhya Pradesh), formerly known as Agra Bombay road. This has seen some new ChargeZone / Gentari setups and I have been wanting to do this route for over half of a year now. There’s ofcourse BPCL and some other operators on this route, but with ChargeZone, I could be reasonably assured of working hardware.
I observed the route for a few days and saw that chargers were sometimes unavailable during the day at atleast two out of four ChargeZone chargers. There weren’t any Airbnbs or Hotels on booking.com offering EV charging in Guna (Madhya Pradesh) or around that area, making it further less attractive.
Road quality took preference over charging infrastructure. My recency bias with known hardware on a known route also led me to choose Mumbai - Dhule - Ratlam - Kota - Delhi route despite it having fewer charging options.
Let’s go!
Mumbai - Nashik
Unlike my usual trips, this trip had a different start. The car wasn’t 100% charged. Instead of leaving super early in the morning, I left in the evening. I was picking up my partner in Panvel (Maharashtra) before heading up towards Delhi.
The overnight stops planned were Nashik (Maharashtra) and around Kota (Rajasthan). This meant that we would do around 200 km on the first day, 750 km on the next day and 500 km on the final day.
I had taken a similar approach in my Dec 2022, non DME, Mumbai - Delhi trip with two overnight stops at Vadodara and Jaipur.
Mumbai to Nashik is around 170 km with an incline of 600 meters. There are plenty of chargers in Nashik, so you don’t need to charge en route. I chose to stay in an Airbnb with EV charging by Mr. Manchanda. The charger was a standard Exicom 7kW unit for his Mahindra XUV4OO. There were four properties on Airbnb in Nashik providing EV charging on my preferred dates. Mr Manchanda’s house was perfect as it was just a couple of minutes from the expressway exit. It makes a great pitstop for travellers like us.
He charged me INR 16 per kWh for 45kWh of energy. By next morning, the car was ready at 100%. It saved me precious driving time the next day. Did you know, of all slow chargers, 22% are installed at a hotel and ~53% of chargers have a hotel within 250 metres from the charger. To know which hotel brands, groups, CPOs are leading this race, check out EVInfraBI.
Nashik - Ratlam
We left at around 5:30 am the next day. It was around 7-8 degrees C (45 degrees F). Thankfully I didn’t have to drive in fog like conditions. It made the drive a lot less anxiety inducing and more enjoyable.
From Nashik to Ratlam, there were four places where I could get charging :
Dhule - reliable charging options
Julwaniya (Madhya Pradesh) and Dhar (Madhya Pradesh) - few options never tried before
Ratlam - two previously used charging options. It was mandatory to charge in Ratlam before heading to Kota for the night stop.
There are two reliable chargers in Dhule : 60kW ChargeZone at Hotel Topline and 80kW Hotel New Nalanda by EVPump. I’ve charged at the EV Pump charger a few times and didn’t really like the food at the nearby hotel. The hotel functions more like a bar cum restaurant and opens by 11am - 12 noon. I tried Hotel Topline this time and loved it. It had clean washrooms, good service and good food. I would recommend stopping at Hotel Topline if food is a priority.
At Dhule, we met a filmmaker who was traveling from Bengaluru - Goa - Mumbai - Udaipur - north Rajasthan - Delhi - Mumbai in his amazing Hyundai Ioniq 5. We shared some charging stories over plates of dosa for breakfast. I hope to be able to do such long trips in my car one day!
Julwaniya, located about 130 km from Dhule, has a ChargeZone charger along with options from BPCL and HPCL. There’s also a charger by NikolEV in Shirpur, off the highway. Public Sector Utility (PSU) chargers tend to be less reliable than most private CPOs.
The route goes via Dhar (Madhya Pradesh) to Ratlam. Julwania to Dhar is approximately 110 km. And Dhar to Ratlam is around 90 km. There is a JioBP on the highway towards Indore, at a hotel. Near Dhar, there are three chargers, one each by JioBP, HPCL and BPCL. There are three chargers in Ratlam, of which the fastest is ChargeZone’s 60kW charger at Hotel Kanha International.
A less preferred alternative to ChargeZone’s Ratlam charger is ChargeZone’s 60kW charger in Mandsaur (Madhya Pradesh), 30 km away from Ratlam. The charger is offline during certain parts of the day and I have managed to charge here once.
Dhule to Ratlam is 340 km and I have done it in a single charge multiple times before. The charger hardware might be reliable, but if there is no power, then the CPO can’t do much, except try out some ideas mentioned in this article.
Ratlam’s charger was offline when I checked after finishing the charging session at Hotel Topline in Dhule. Julwaniya was online and we decided to take a short coffee break here while the car charged. The top up here allowed me to drive freely and leave me with enough range to get to Mandsaur if needed.
In Ratlam, Shree Kanha International by ChargeZone is a regular charging stop for me. The food and the rooms are good value for money. I wanted to stick to the ChargeZone network on this stretch because the wallet was loaded with credits and autocharge was seamless to use. Show up, park, connect and forget.
Ratlam - Kota
Like Guna, Kota also lacks overnight slow chargers. However, it offers plenty of budget-friendly accommodation options, including one conveniently located next to a fast charger where I’ve successfully charged before.
The charging options post Ratlam towards Kota are scarce. There are none on the Expressway. Kota too has only 30kW options in the city as of October 2024. Xobolt installed a 60kW charger in Radhika Resort, right next to a Tata Charger. I had charged at this Tata charger during my Sept 2023 trip. There’s a 60kW outside of Kota by Jio BP, at Talera, before Bundi, which I had used in October 2024.
To get to Kota, we had to get off the Delhi Mumbai Expressway at Chechat (Rajasthan). Kota city is around 70 km from this exit. From a ten lane expressway, it suddenly becomes a single lane road passing through a small village. One has to be very careful and slow while driving an SUV sized car through those roads. After getting past the village, there’s a double lane road. This road sees a lot of truck traffic from both sides. It also passes through a dense forest reserve - Mukandara Forest Reserve. There’s also a very narrow bridge railway crossing with an immediate sharp 90 degree turn making it extremely difficult for trucks to cross. All in all, it needs a lot more energy and focus to get through this patch before getting back on a highway. There’s a chance of getting stuck in traffic for a good thirty minutes on this route. It is best advised to cover this stretch during daylight as there are no lights on the road.
While we go through this minor trouble, the construction of Delhi Mumbai Expressway through this protected region is harming the wildlife in the forest at scales we cannot imagine. Here’s some reading on the destruction we are causing in that neighbourhood.
The four lane road starts from a village called Dobara (Rajasthan). Kota is 50 km from Dobara and it takes one hour to get there. From Kota, we took the bypass towards Bundi and reached the JioBP charger at Talera.
Given the ease of autocharge on ChargeZone, I wanted to try the same with JioBP too. To set up autocharge on JioBP, you need to connect the car to a JioBP charger and scan a QR code from the mobile app. It seems that they then pair the login credentials with the car’s VIN. I waited for a few minutes for it to register my car, but it failed. I tried multiple times, but with no success. I started charging using the regular way through the app. The user experience for me was not great. I am aware of a few people who have managed to get autocharge working for them on JioBP.
ChargeZone had spoiled me. If I remember correctly, I never had to do any of the QR scanning on ChargeZone. All I had to do was enter the car’s license plate number and I was all set. Do you know why this is the case? Comment below please.
We stayed at Dhanwa Resort, right next to the JioBP petrol pump with the JioBP charger. The resort had clean rooms at an affordable price. It looked like the property was new. By the time we settled in, freshened up, the car was fully charged at the JioBP charger. It was slightly annoying to walk to the fast charger in the cold, plug out the car and park in the hotel parking lot. This could’ve been avoided if the hotel had a 7kW slow charger.
Frequent stops for charging made it feel lighter than two long driving stops with occasional stretching breaks. I had been charging from ~50% to ~100% at these charging stops. Ideally I would like to move down further on the curve, charge from 10% to 65% and then move to the next charger. The charging speeds are higher at lower state of charge as seen in the charging curve below.
Period Pain
My partner has traveled with me a few times in the car. But this was one of the first times when she got her periods on a road trip. Doing such long journeys on periods can be pretty painful. Every pothole, every bump sends waves of pain through the lower abdomen. Luckily, we spent a chunk of our time on the expressway, making it slightly better for her. While expressways are a boon, it can also make one anxious with limited density of washrooms and service exits. The throbbing backache can make the most comfortable car seat feel like torture. Even with air conditioning, it can make you break into cold sweats. Next time when traveling with your partner, I recommend you take modern expressways to make their life slightly more comfortable, especially if the flow is lighter.
Kota - Dausa
From Kota, I had options to either charge at the lavish Oberoi Vanyavilas property in Sawai Madhopur or in Dausa. Sawai Madhopur is around 150 km from Talera, Kota and Dausa is around 250 km. The total distance from Talera, Kota to New Delhi is approximately 500 km.
It made sense to stop the journey in between at Dausa and not at Sawai Madhopur. I would have stopped at both chargers if there was no detour involved. The chargers in both Sawai Madhopur and Dausa are atleast 10 km away from the Delhi Mumbai Expressway. I would have to wait to charge till 100% before heading to Delhi.
But Priyans, there are chargers on the Delhi Mumbai Expressway. Why did you not plan your stops around those?
Indian Oil and Volttic have two chargers each on the expressway. There are other chargers by HPCL and BPCL too. I’ve charged previously at Indian Oil in Oct 2024. The IOCL app wasn’t working for me on iOS, so I couldn’t plan to charge there. The idea of having no backup chargers is slightly scary when you are on the expressway. I guess I just have to risk it a few times to start relying on Expressway chargers.
When you are not on the expressway, it is easier for someone to come and help you. Expressways feel soulless and lonely with help always far away. Maybe one day, I will change my thinking about it and start relying on expressway chargers.
In Dausa, there are two chargers within walking distance. One is by Statiq and the other by Xobolt. I like to call them Jodi chargers. Jodi, in Hindi, means pairs. These chargers are within 500 meters of each other and are oftentimes working. You can always go to the other one if your first choice is occupied or busy. EVInfraBI users will be the first ones to find out trends, patterns and opportunities for such Jodi chargers.
One hour before our scheduled charging stop in Dausa, I checked both apps to see the charger status. Statiq was down and Xobolt was available. I navigated to Xobolt’s charger. These chargers are around 10 km from DME exit. I checked Xobolt again while exiting. The charger was available and one car was already charging.
I’ve observed that, in Rajasthan, at sites with LT connection and no transformer, I do not get the complete 60kW, but closer to 44kW. When sharing with someone, this would further drop down to 22kW.
While navigating to Xobolt, I was on the lookout for the Statiq’s charger. Within 500m of reaching my destination, I could see from the road that the Statiq charger was online. I stopped and decided to take a chance. The parking was cramped, Xobolt has much better parking management. While I was initiating to charge via the app, I was immediately blocked by a car parked behind me.
The five guys in the car parked behind us were really curious and watched on as I initiated charging. They had the usual bunch of questions about the range, charging infra, road trips, etc. They were going on a trip in their ICE car from Delhi to somewhere in Rajasthan.
The stop was a breakfast and a bathroom break. It charged the car more than enough for me to reach Delhi.
For the entire breakfast, the guys sitting on an adjacent table discussed the practicality of EVs among themselves. They would pop in on our table to ask us questions and we would happily answer those. They finished breakfast at the same time as us and we both left towards our respective destinations.
If you drive an EV, what sort of questions have people asked you?
Speeding
Regular readers of this blog and followers on X would know that I like to keep my speed limit locked at 79 kmph, even on expressways. This time, I wanted to try something different and see what happens if I travel at 100 kmph and at the speed limit of 120 kmph. I did this over certain sections of the expressway, from Lalsot to Dausa and Dausa to Delhi. The wind was negligible. Back of the envelope calculations suggest that I would get around 270 kms range at 100 kmph and around 200 kms at 120 kmph. More accurate numbers can be calculated when someone drives from 100% to close to 0% at these speeds after correcting for distance errors and measuring the battery capacity correctly.
I don’t see any benefit of driving at higher speeds, given the sparse charging and road infrastructure on modern expressways in India. Would love to know your thoughts!
Conclusions
I reached New Delhi by afternoon on the final day with 12% SoC. The overall experience of taking two night halts instead of one made the trip pretty relaxed.
Total distance - 1468 km (~912 miles)
Cost of charging - INR 3519 (~US$41)
Total kWh consumed - 217 kWh
Toll costs - INR 2514 (~US$29)
Running cost per km - INR 2.4 / km (~US$0.045/mile)
P.S. : The lower efficiency in the later section of the trip is due to speeding at various times on the Expressway.
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Text, data and editing - Priyans Murarka
Maps - Siddharth Agarwal
With a mileage of 20kmpl, I think petrol costs 5.2₹/km which when compared to paid battery replacement after 8 years is more worthy and less hassle of worrying about fuel. Plus save the food and accommodation charges for unnecessary stops.