After travelling 4,500 kilometres over 34 days in the MG ZS EV Electric car, Sushil Reddy's e-mobility awareness journey has arrived in Siliguri, West Bengal. Now, the trip back to Mumbai from Kaziranga has commenced.
Under the SunPedal Ride initiative, Reddy is traversing over 20 cities, starting from Mumbai and heading to Kaziranga, the northeasternmost point of the journey. Updating us on his ongoing journey he says:
The journey from Shillong to Kaziranga was an interesting case. We started from Shillong with a battery at an 80 per cent state of charge and a dashboard range of 340km on the MG ZS EV. The total map distance between Shillong and Kaziranga is ~260km, with an elevation drop from ~5000ft to ~200ft. Due to regenerative braking in the EV, the battery consumption was equivalent to ~220km. (A gain of ~40km due to ReGen level 3). Technically, the electric motor acts like a generator which converts part of the braking energy into electrical energy. One can think of it as 'electrical braking'.
In Kaziranga, on the NH37 route animal crossing corridor, it was good to see the speed limit strictly enforced for animal safety. Police cars with speed guns and regular speed breakers were ordinary. The silent EVs can be a good case for replacing internal combustion engine-run (ICE) safari vehicles to ensure no animal disturbance [occurs] in their natural habitat. Northeast India has pristine preserved lands which are also national parks like the ones we passed through, including Chakrashila Wildlife Sanctuary and Manas National Park.
We stopped and interacted with hotel teams that support sustainability – for example, the Summit Green Lake Tea Resort in Kaziranga and the Udaan Hotel Clover and Banquet in Siliguri.
In the third week of our journey on the MG ZS EV, we met a lot of students from universities such as IIM Shillong, IIT Guwahati and Notre Dame Academy in Bongaigaon, Assam.
One of the student's queries was about locating charging stations while planning a long-distance route in the electric car. There are many mobile app-based resources for EV route planning. For example, the charge point operator Glida India has a mobile app with a map of all GLIDA Fast charging stations. All the details are on the app as well as steps to follow for charging the car.
More updates will follow on this journey. Click here for part 3.