Trip report : 1650 Kms across 3 states in EV

         A voucher from Club Mahindra & the pictures of floating cottages at their Ashtamudi resort motivated enough to book a couple of nights stay there. It was not until 3 months later & a week before the trip that I looked up where Ashtamudi was and how far a drive it was. However, thanks to the MG owners whatsapp group & plugshare app, I was able to plan a drive in my EV with confidence. The most important & impactful tip was to leave Bangalore by 4AM, which reduced the overall commute time and enabled to drive through the traffic clogged Kerala roads early in the evening when I still had energy left. This was my first long trip in nearly 2 months, so motivation was plenty to leave that early in the morning.

In brief :

Places visited: Ashtamudi, Tiruvananthapuram, Kanyakumari, Madurai, Bangalore

Charging stops: Rasipuram, Vadipatti, Rajapalyam, Ashtamudi, Kanyakumari, Madurai, Vadipatti, Rasipuram, Krishnagiri

Total distance: 1650kms     |  Cost of charging: ₹ 6500     |   Toll cost: ₹2000

 

Charging at Marshal E Tech, Kanyakumari

Leg 1 | 700 kms | 3 stops

        We started from Yeshwanthpur by 4:30 AM and made the first stop at Zeon Rasipuram by 8:30AM with 30% SoC left. The 50kW charger was free and so was the restaurant. Charging was as seemless as the delcisiousness of Idli & Pongal at A2B. By the time we savoured our breakfast & finished the filter coffee it was close to an hour and car was at 99%. The next stop was at Zeon 50kW again at Hotel Temple City, Vadipatti. We reached there at 11:40 with 29% SoC left. It got a little uneasy when we rolled in to see another MG charging and a Volvo XC40 waiting. But the unease was quickly resolved when the MG owner said he was done & moved out, and the Volvo owner said he only had to travel 10kms but had to charge in full for future travel. So agreed to let us charge first and that he would wait until we are done. Thanks to Nallasivam for presenting the idea to ask the Volvo owner. We had just eaten breakfast, so spent the 40 minutes of charging time having a 'EV ownership experience' chat with the Volvo owner over lime soda. We rolled out with 90% SoC and headed to Relux at AK Dynasty in Rajapalyam. This stretch was an awesome drive with clear flat road & great view of surrounding mountains throughout the way. Reached AK Dynasty with 54% SoC left, no hiccups with starting charge. Was able to get full 30kW speed, however the restuarant was a fast food chain which we dint prefer for lunch. Thankfully, the restaurant folks were kind enough to let us hang out inside the AC restaurant while charging so that we dont get baked in the 38 degree heat outside. We thanked them with a salad purchase & headed towards Tenkasi where  we stopped for a heavy lunch of rice & sambar on plaintain leaf. The time gained until Tenkasi made up for the next stretch after entering Kerala as it was mostly single lane road and moving but slow traffic. However, it started to rain lightly as we were clibming up the ghat making it a beautiful drive. W finally reached Club Mahindra Ashtamudi after a long drive at around 8:30PM, plugged in the car at their EV buggy charging wall socket, that they kindly provided, and we hit the bed to recharge ourselves for next day.

Leg 2 | 460 kms | 1 stop

        After a lazing & relaxing stay at the resort, it was time to head back home but not without a little deviation. We started from Club Mahindra Ashtamudi early, at 7AM, with 92% SoC and reached Tiruvananthapuram with enough SoC to skip charging there. We finished darshana of Ananthapadhmanabha, had a scumptous breakfast of puttu before heading towards Madurai for an overnight stay. The drive from Tiruvananthapuram to Bangalore was going to be a long one, so we thought of breaking it with an overnight stay at Madurai. However, when we were somewhere close to Nagercoil the road signs tempted us to make a short deviation to Kanyakumari. The Relux charger at Kanyakumari encouraged us to make the unplanned deviation. While at the Relux 30kW charging station we saw they had a private 7kW AC charger too. We took advantage of it to top up from 80% SoC & balance the cells while we made a trip to Vivekananda rock & Bhagavati Temple. Thanks to the balanced SoC, we headed from Kanyakumari and made a non stop drive to Madurai with 16% SoC left and in time for dinner. We stayed overnight and charged up at the 7kW Zeon AC charger at JC Residency in Madurai.

 

Charging at 50kW DC charger at A2B Rasipuram

Leg 3 | 500 kms | 3 stops

        When in Madurai, who can miss visiting & walking in the grand temple. Ofcourse we too did that and started the journey back home at around 9:30AM. The 7kW AC charger had only delivered ~3kW and so the overnight charging had only taken us to 74% by morning. But we started regardless and stopped at the 50kW Zeon charger at Hotel Temple City in Vadipatti. This time though there were no other EVs, lucky us. The breakfast combo was so delicious & filling that we had to counter it with two filter coffees to ensure we dont sleep on the wheel. Started from Vadipatti with 94% SoC and reached Rasipuram in no time, thanks to the clear, wide, traffic-free road. Who would eat within 2 hours of a heavy breakfast? But we wanted to be in AC, so we entered the restuarant and were trying to play around & kill time with one glass of butter milk. The waiter at A2B understood what we were doing and showed us to a set of seating where there was no service. He said we could sit there as long as we wished without blocking tables during the peak hours that was just starting. We charged up from 18% to 74% in 35 minutes and rolled out. Next stop was at Krishnagiri and hour & half later. We reached Krishnagiri with 21% SoC left and charged up to 54% on the 50kW charger, while filling ourselves with a late-light lunch. Heading home from Krishnagiri, we got to enjoy the weekday peak hour traffic of Bangalore and reached home in about 3 hours with 14% SoC left.

Overall a wonderful, stress-free & anxiety-free trip. Thanks to the 50kW Zeon chargers, we dint spend significant amount of time for charging outside of food stops. Both the Relux chargers we got use are placed in highly strategic & crucial points. The staff of Marshal E Tech at Kanyakumari are very friendly and are doing a great job to support EV adoption in the southern most city of our mainland.

Bengaluru to Kodaikanal

        By now it's evident that I love doing long trips with my new EV and I grab every opportunity to do so. With the car being a month old and having completed 2.7K kms already, it was time for the challenge of a much longer drive to Kodaikanal. This entire trip clocked about 1000 kms and charging stops made almost zero difference to the travel time. If you are planning to do a similar trip, ensure to read the route and planning sections along with the tips at the end.

Route:

Onward journey to Kodaikanal

Onward journey:

- Started at 5:30AM and made first stop at 7:15AM at Hotel Surya complex, Krishnagiri. I had 72% SoC left when I reached and charging was not strictly necessary, but I did it to be rounded. The food was good at Sree Saravana Bhavan. In 45 minutes we had finished breakfast and car was at 100%, thanks to the 50kW charger.

- Next was a quick coffee stop at 11AM at Saravana Bhavan, Sankagiri. Charged from 55% to 95% in 35 minutes while having coffee. This too was a 50kW charger.

- Third and a critical stop at Ganpat grand, Palani. Charged from 30% to 42% in 16 minutes. This was at 3:40 PM.

- Reached hotel kodai international at 6pm with only 5% SoC left.

I stayed at LePoshe Kodaikanal. They refused to allow charging. So after deciding never to visit them again, I charged at Zeon 24kW at hotel Kodai international.

Return journey to Bengaluru

Return journey:

- Started from Kodaikanal at 9:30AM with 94% SoC

- First stop at Adyar Anand Bhavan, Rasipuram at 2PM. Had reached with 26% SoC left. Charged to 96% in 56 minutes on the 50kW charger.

- Then did a coffee stop at 5:30pm at Hotel Surya complex, Krishnagiri. Charging was not critically necessary, so decided to use the 24kW charger this time and topped up from 45% to 60% in 22 minutes.

- Reached home with 28% SoC at 10pm after crawling through the Christmas Eve traffic win the city.

Charging at Hotel Surya Complex, Krishnagiri

Planning:

Planning this trip had the inverse problem - the problem of plenty. There are so many charging options along the Bengaluru - Kodaikanal route that I could choose the stops where food was good and also had multiple backups.

After multiple recommendations and discussions in the MG ZS owners WhatsApp group, I had kept two route options : 

Option 1 - Krishnagiri - Salem - Karur - Dindigul - Kodaikanal

Option 2 - Krishnagiri - Salem - Erode - Palani - Kodaikanal 

In both options Zeon 50kW at Hotel Surya complex was the first stop, with Relux 30kW at Hotel Alps residency as backup.

Then in option 1 :

Second stop was 50kW Zeon at Adyar Anand Bhavan, Rasipuram and backup was Zeon 24kW at Omalur which is 20-30 minutes before Rasipuram. Not the ideal backup plan but what was available.

Third stop for a top up was at Zeon 24kW at Subbanna hotel, Karur. Tata 25kW at Kaveri Tata Dindigul, which is 74kms away was first backup and Zeon at hotel temple City which was even further away and 30 minutes deviation was second backup.

Similarly, for option 2:

Second stop was Zeon 50kW at Sankari, with backup as Relux 30kW at Perundurai.

Third top-up stop at Zeon 24kW, in Ganpat grand, Palani without backup.

Given the no backup situation for Palani, the distance from Sankari and ghat climb of Kodai, I started with route option 1 in mind. Moreover, Relux app had a message that there was a maintenance and that charging would not be available that morning. So option 1 seemed ideal 

However, when nearing Salem we realised that we will reach Rasipuram at 11 which is too early for lunch. So, thought of making a lunch stop at Subbanna hotel Karur instead. But that charger was showing offline, so I made a split second plan change to head towards Sankari and then top up at Palani. All of which were showing available. The road was not very great, it went through small towns which cut down the speed and added to commute time.

Some learnings & tips:

1. Have ample amount of charge before starting the ghat climb. Atleast 60% or more. Account for a burn rate of 2km/kWh or less.

2. Route via Palani works better for onward journey, to start the ghat with plenty of charge. But also creates a critical dependency on the only charger at Palani.

3. Starting the return journey with 75% or 80% SoC might be better instead of near full charge. Regen will anyway push it to near full charge by the time of climbing down. Plus, regen 3 will help with breaking while climbing down. Regen doesn't work if battery is full and the vehicle keeps rolling.

Bengaluru to Agumbe - Seethanadi nature camp

Day 12 with the new car, 1K kms completed and first service was already done. We had planned a trip to Mantralaya. That would have been a continued temple run and couple of cousins wanted to go there with family. But that plan had to be changed due to ekadashi. The new destination was Seethanadi nature camp by JLR which is on the other side of Agumbe ghat. This trip was with 4 other cousins who are all ICE owners. So this was kind of an Agni pariksha for my EV on viability.

Route

Route to Agumbe from Bangalore goes via Sringeri, so this trip route turned out highly overlapping with the previous one. Infact we stopped at Sringeri in the morning for breakfast at holla's before continuing to Seethanadi. So, planning charging stops was not difficult as i had already done it last week. The changes from last week was that there was a new Relux charger at Shantigrama and i negotiated slow charging while staying at the JLR.

Onward journey : 

A stop at Relux Shantigrama right after Paakashala was not necessary. But we met another MG at paakashala who were returning from Mangalore, they said the new Relux at Shantigrama was not working. So we stopped to test out and report if there were issues. It was delivering only 20kW. 

Until here the journey was great and at par with a journey in any ICE car. May be a tad bit better on comfort, silence and pickup. The next charging stop brought in the impact to journey time due to EV. 

We had to do the critical stop at Gateway Chikmagalur. At the 24kW charger, going from 45% SOC to 100% took 1 hour and 21 minutes. We chose to take a nap in the car.

The drive through Agumbe ghat was fun and we gained 2% soc. (A seperate post coming up on the ghat topic.) We reached Seethanadi nature camp with 63% soc left.

They were accommodating enough at JLR to let me charge the car. The socket was far (~20ft) but my newly brought extension proved helpful. 63% to 100% SOC on granny charger took from 2pm to 11pm.

Return journey:

After starting from the camp at 100% , we drove through the rugged roads of Kudlu theertha falls and then reached Hariharapura for lunch at 67% SOC. We continued with the destination as Gateway Chikmagalur, but a reassessment during a coffee stop at Khandya cafe showed we could comfortably make it to Shantigrama. That would be a better choice for food.

We reached Sky bird Shantigrama at 12% SOC. But there was some issue with the charger. It would shut off immediately after charging starts and we had to move ahead after a couple of tries. Imagine if Relux wasn't there within a couple of kms distance, Phew!

The thankfulness to Relux soon turned into complaints! Isn't it human nature after all? Food is not great there, smell of grilling meat from Empire was pretty strong plus the charger was only delivering 20kW.

So we plugged out at 35% soc and decided to head to paakashala for dinner. It was 9:15 when we started from Relux and had to reach paakashala within an hour, since it closes at 10:30pm. So that meant a mad rush drive plus banian mode at stretches. We managed to reach Mayura at 2%soc and plugged in there since the 50kW at paakashala was occupied. We walked to paakashala for dinner while the car got charged and then after some negotiations, had the Nexon move to Mayura and we came to paakashala. Nexons can only take a maximum of 29kW, so the 50kW was being under utilised at paakashala until the swap.

We were able to pull in 49kW speed, charged until 95% and headed home. There were 2 Nexons waiting while we were charging at paakashala.