I drove from Mathura to Delhi in an MG Windsor. And it showed me India’s real EV landscape

It costs just Rs 3/km to run my EV. But then again, owners of petrol and diesel vehicles wouldn’t find themselves stranded for lack of juice on a desolate highway.

Representational image of electric cars charging | Commons

Do you know about the idiom, a watched pot never boils? Well, let me update that to, “a watched app doesn’t update”. Let me explain.

I was enjoying a cup of coffee at a petrol pump cafe outside Mathura while my MG Windsor was plugged into an EV charging port. I was simultaneously checking the Jio-BP Pulse application to find more stations along the way, but it just wasn’t updating.

Was it a data issue or was something wrong with my phone? Then, the guy behind the counter told me, “Sir, there’s been a power cut.” That was not what I wanted to hear. The Windsor offers a 280 km-range in ‘real world’ conditions.

I had about 55 per cent of charge left, good enough, according to the Windsor’s onboard computer, for around 165 km. The distance to Lajpat Nagar Metro Station in Delhi, where I had to drop my colleague off, was around 150 km. Not enough margin by any stretch of the imagination. Poor road conditions or an ugly traffic jam could leave me stranded. I looked at the cavalcade of vehicles at the petrol and diesel fillers at the same point – tanked up and off in just five minutes.

Sure, my electric car costs me just Rs 3/km to run (accounting for commercial charging rates) compared to the Rs 6-10 it costs the folks in those internal combustion engine vehicles. But then again, they wouldn’t find themselves stranded for lack of juice on a desolate highway.

Since I began writing this column shortly after all this went down – over a coffee at home – the story clearly had a happy ending. The same, perhaps, was true for the family in a Tata Nexon EV that was using the charging gun next to mine. “We’ll reach Agra easily”, they had said, adding that there were “enough charging points” along the way. Truth be told, the Delhi-Agra highway does have several of them.

No place to charge

Using both MG’s eHub and the Statiq app, I found a 60-kilowatt Statiq DC charger at ‘Pappu Asli Dhaba’. The eHub app lets you plan a trip with ideal charging stops, but given my state of mind at the time, I used it just to locate a reliable and fast charger near me.

However, I soon hit another speed bump. The Statiq app had shown the chargers as available when I was approaching, but by the time I reached, both guns at the dhaba were occupied. What did I say about apps not refreshing fast enough?

Long story short, we had to wait for about 10 minutes for a charger to free up and then managed to charge the car for just 20-odd minutes. In the meantime, a few other Windsor EV customers came and went, as did a Tata Tiago EV. I got chatting with the owners, who all seemed very comfortable with their cars. All the vehicles bore Delhi registration numbers, and many owners cited the capital’s flip-flop with pollution guidelines as a reason for their purchase.

None of the cars that I saw boasted massive battery packs with the potential to cover 500 km between, say, Delhi and Kanpur. All of these were affordable, limited range EVs. Maybe one could argue that those driving vehicles with large battery packs wouldn’t need to charge on the highway. But then, one looks at sales figures. The MG Windsor EV has become India’s best-selling electric vehicle in the six months since its launch, selling over 3,000 units every month and cornering 40 per cent of the market. 

As I mentioned earlier, the Windsor’s ‘real-world’ range is around 280 km, driving completely normally with air-conditioning, the infotainment system on, and normal levels of regeneration. You can eke out 10-15 per cent more range in Eco+ mode and by going easy on the comfort features. But who wants to switch-off the AC in 33-degree heat?

While the Windsor is good for a trip from Delhi to Agra, Chandigarh, or Jaipur, you might want to top-up along the way. That is what people were doing at Pappu Asli Dhaba, stopping to enjoy dal makhni and butter naan while charging their cars. The 38-kilowatt-hour battery on a Windsor EV can charge from five to 80 per cent in about 40 minutes with a 60-kilowatt charger. However, keep in mind that when two vehicles use the same charging unit, this charging time increases significantly.

Changing EV infrastructure

This drive to Mathura and back taught me that India is waking up to electric vehicles. It wasn’t just Pappu Dhaba that had chargers – several others in its vicinity had them as well. Moreover, I learned that Google Maps can tell you not only where EV chargers are located on highways but also integrated information on the types of chargers and their speed, as well as the status of their availability.

Sure, there are significant hurdles like the power outage at the first charging point, but consumers are learning to always keep enough energy in an EV. Going out in the real world teaches you a lot more than media drives or events with PowerPoint presentations. I would like to drive down a highway (maybe in a different part of India) in an EV again in a couple of months to see how new vehicles from Hyundai, Mahindra, and Maruti-Suzuki are changing the market.

And by the way, it isn’t as if this only happens with EVs. Last year, when I was driving back from Hanle in Ladakh toward Manali, I assumed, stupidly, that I could fill up later. After the Army camps at Hanle, there were no fuel pumps until our destination at Keylong. Going through high passes such as Nakeela, Baralacha La, and the Spiti Valley meant that I reached Keylong with an indicated range of just 20 km.

But then again, what is a road trip without a bit of adventure?

@kushanmitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)