Parents take the car for a short trip!
Mumbai -> Igatpuri -> Trimbakeshwar -> Igatpuri -> Mumbai
Last weekend, my parents decided to spend some time in and around Igatpuri. After my pretty safe and sound road trip a couple of weeks ago, they were pretty convinced that they can take the EV for this journey. With that being decided a week in advance, I had enough time to ‘train’ them for EV journeys. They had enough confidence to drive in the city, but I still wanted to explain a bunch of features that were relatively new.
Again, if you’d like to skip the text and dive into the data, here is the spreadsheet.
Status update
ODO : 1774km
Home charger : Not yet installed. Still WIP.
Preparation!
Features
My parents aren’t the most tech junkies, but they are better than or pretty much as good with tech as you can expect educated, city bred 50+ year olds to be. They can operate their social media and games, but googling something is really an unpleasant experience for them.
We had driven WagonR (two different models, yes) for roughly 17 (!) years straight. You can safely assume that we were pretty away from all the new hi-tech that one could see in the cars being manufactured in the last decade or so. So I decided to demonstrate some of the features of the car so that their long drive could be easier.
I started by explaining what cruise control is, and how it can also help them with range anxiety. Basically, if you keep the car at a constant speed, usually on highways, then you can maximise the range that you can extract from the vehicle. They loved the feature and we gave it a try on one of the late nights on the highways in Mumbai.
Post cruise, I decided to go ahead and explain the difference between coasting and using ReGen level 3. I told them that if they wanted to drive the vehicle as an ICE, they could simply put ReGen to level 1 and put the car in sports mode for maximum coasting. I am yet to experiment to find out which of the modes really work well on long highway rides.
Charging
My parents also had never fast charged the car. They had only slow charged it once, at a relative’s place, and that too was done by my cousin. I downloaded Plugshare, TataEZPower and Fortum charging apps on their phone. I explained them how to use Plugshare. We even did a test wherein I asked my parents to find and navigate to a certain charger in town. Once we got there, I explained how a fast charger looks like and what are the various categories of chargers. I also referred to Noise Factory’s Random EV Gyaan series to explain what to do incase a charger is kaput. My parents successfully managed to top up the car for 15 mins at a TataEZ charger and I was convinced that if they needed to fast charge, they’d not panic, and would be able to do it on their own. Theoretically, they would never have to fast charge their car on this route, but all of this was still good information to have.
Their hotel in Igatpuri was kind enough to allow overnight slow charging the car. In order to make it convenient, I got a 2.5sqmm 3 core 50m cable made on a spindle and attached 15A plug point at one end and a socket on the other. I tested it out at my office and the car charged just fine, although at 400V 5A which is roughly 2-2.2kW. It was still a manageable solution and would work for this trip.
Home charger hadn’t been installed yet, so we had to rely on local fast charger to top up the car, if there was ever a need. Here are the chargers currently available on this route.
Realistically, there’s a single fast charger near Kasara, by ChargeZone and there’s a slow charger at Fern hotel in Igatpuri, which wasn’t the destination for my parents and nor does it allow non patrons to charge the car (even for a fee, I guess).
And here is the elevation gain from Mumbai to Igatpuri and Trimbakeshwar.
The journey was going to be in two parts. They’d cover Mumbai - Igatpuri on Day 1, Igatpuri - Trimbakeshwar - Igatpuri on Day 2 and Igatpuri - Mumbai on Day 3.
The elevation gain / loss was ~500m. This meant that they had to not panic when the car would show a lesser estimated range than what they were used to. I referred to some numbers from the previous post and gave a back of the envelope calculation of ~10% loss in range for every 500m climb.
The Drive
There were a total of 5 passengers in the car and the car was fully loaded with luggage. Parents and their friends love a comfortable drive so the AC was on all throughout the trip. They drove the entire route in Normal mode. They felt that Eco mode’s AC was stingy.
In the first leg, there was a lot of traffic on their way out of the city and they took nearly 2h to get beyond Bhiwandi. This meant that their consumption was slightly high during this stretch because the AC would probably take a lot more load than the traffic drive itself.
The drive was pretty smooth for my parents. They were annoyed by the warning signs whenever they crossed the 80 kmph mark. The hotel owner was too kind to let my folks charge the car for free. They took breaks while going and coming back from Igatpuri for lunch. I’d have felt pretty weird if I were eating food and my car wasn’t getting charged at the same time! :D But that’s just me, and Bjorn who says ABC - Always Be Charging.
Closing Thoughts
Non tech people too can drive the EV after a small learning curve. I am yet to send my parents on a trip where they have to fast charge, which will really show whether they can travel anywhere in the country or not.
Very glad to have an extension cable, helps slow charge the car.
5 people are slightly uncomfortable in the back seat for long journeys. 4 is the best count for long trips.
Here is the total summary :
The efficiency of 5 km/kWh is reasonable, giving a real world range of around 250km at full charge. Slightly low, but considering all things, it is acceptable.
The total charge added in this trip was around 58kWh, which is 58 units. The hotel owner didn't charge my parents, but assuming INR 10 / unit, the running cost would be around INR 1.5 / km.
My parents consumed an extra ~50wh/km from my previous long trip. I can attribute that to the AC and car being at full load.
The map was created by Siddharth Agarwal - you can buy him a coffee here.
This piece can be re-published (CC BY-NC-SA) with a line mentioning ‘This was originally published on ExperiencesWithEVs Substack’ and a link back to this page. In case of re-publishing, please alert priyansevs@gmail.com
how did you calculated the elevation from point A to Point B. Can you share that tool details