After 48 days and over 7500 kilometres on the MG ZS EV Electric car, Sushil Reddy's e-mobility awareness journey has reached Jaipur, Rajasthan.
Under the SunPedal Ride initiative, Reddy is traversing over 20 cities. So far, he has covered Mumbai, Assam's Kaziranga and Jaipur. Updating us on his ongoing journey, he says:
The Lucknow-to-Agra journey had peak range anxiety. With 95 per cent battery in Lucknow, we reached Agra with only 1 per cent battery left in the EV after covering 370 kilometres with air conditioning switched off. A couple of fast charging stations on this route were not working due to power outages and an under-voltage situation, which made us further anxious. We had to do a hyper-mile for the final 30 kilometres to make it to Agra without a fully discharged battery.
Hypermiling is a technique to drive an EV to maximise the range—the driving tips are to be gentle with the accelerator and brake pedals, reduce the speed and keep the AC switched off. Even with a 1 per cent battery, the dashboard range in the EV showed 5 kilometres.
In Gurugram, the CPO GLIDA team met to discuss and share feedback about the journey experiences so far. GLIDA is increasing India's DC Fast Charging network to enable more EV journeys by reducing range anxiety. For the final leg from Delhi to Mumbai, we will use the GLIDA Fast Chargers and give feedback about the experience. We also met the Exicom team and shared our experiences with them.
We found many hotels interested in installing EV charging stations or had already installed them. Hotels are key stakeholders in encouraging electric vehicle journeys among travellers, and it was good to see their positive outlook.
More updates will follow on this journey. Click here for part 4.
