After travelling over 7,500 kilometres on the MG ZS EV Electric car, Sushil Reddy's e-mobility awareness journey reached the final stretch from Jaipur to Mumbai.
Updating us on the final stretch of his journey, Reddy shares:
We have been driving the MG ZS EV on the NH48 highway in Rajasthan and Gujarat using only the DC Fast Chargers as a challenge to understand the ease of use and certain on-ground challenges.
GLIDA has a good network of DC Fast Chargers on this route, either at Petrol pumps, hotels or Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) dealerships. The journey so far has been smooth regarding charging and the online pay-as-you-go payment method (Charge-Thru), but on certain occasions, some on-ground challenges still need to be solved, making it tricky to schedule the journey. It was good to see amenities available at most DC Fast Charging stops — toilets, drinking water, food/tea/coffee, etc. nearby.
The lack of electricity supply and frequent power outages in certain locations on this highway prevented us from charging the EV and delayed our journey schedule. This also led to "traffic" at a charging station with cars waiting in line to charge. On one occasion, the location shown in the mobile app of the charger did not coincide with the actual location, which turned out to be a dead-end road.
On another occasion, my VI sim card had no network signal, so I had to get the hotspot from the local person to start the charging process. Also, the charging station connectivity signal was switching on and off intermittently. Different vehicles behave differently when plugged in into these DC Fast chargers depending on their BMS configuration.
It is essential to have a list of Do's and Don'ts mentioned at a DC Fast Charger, especially for first-time users, since all these stations are uncrewed. Digital literacy is a crucial aspect as well. With ambient temperatures rising at the onset of the summer, a shaded dedicated EV parking at a charging station helps keep the rising temperatures in check.
In Udaipur, we met the hotel team — Regenta Central Udaipur. It was good to see that the hotel installed an AC Charger 7.4 kW in the basement parking area for EVs. This is encouraging since the "Destination Charging" facility will enable further EV travel. On our route to Mumbai, we had similar hotel interactions at Regenta hotels in Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Vapi.
In Baroda, we met students at Parul University, and in Anand, we stopped at AMUL dairy, where we interacted and had a Q&A with the employees.
Click here for part 5.