AATISH MISHRA
Aatish runs into issues with EV charging infrastructure
I plugged in, got onto the app, started charging and then… electricity went. Boom. That was it, no charging again
IKNOW, I KNOW WE DID THE WHOLE K2K with the Tata Nexon EV and along the way, we did prove that charging infrastructure is spread all across the country. And it works. But the thing is, sometimes, it just doesn’t.
Last weekend I drove down from Pune to Mumbai to test the Volkswagen Virtus GT Plus MT that you can read about on page 14. I took the Hyundai Ioniq 5 with me. I’ve done Pune-Goa-Pune with the Ioniq so a shorter drive to Mumbai and back would be no biggie, I thought. Confident in the car's long range, and the fact that this route is well electrified, I set off with just over 50 per cent SOC in the battery. The plan? Get to Mumbai, shoot the manual Virtus, top up the Ioniq's battery quickly over lunch and get back to Pune where we have a charger in our office. Sounded stress-free enough. Until it wasn’t.
Getting to Mumbai was peaceful. The highway was empty, the Ioniq 5 was at its comfortable best and we covered ground rapidly. The Virtus? Loved it and the Ioniq did its role of playing support car without trouble. And that’s when the fun started. We were in Kharghar, Navi Mumbai and so I pointed the Ioniq to the one Jio-BP charger in a mall close by. The Jio-BP app showed one charging point was occupied, while the other was available. But when I got there, two cars were plugged in. And imagine my surprise, when there were a whole queue of EVs waiting to charge there. These were all electric cabs. Citroen eC3s and Tata Xpres-Ts, with green and yellow plates, waiting for a quick top up. There was no way I was waiting that long.
So I pointed myself in the direction of Pune, with the next charger enroute for me being right before the ghat section on the Expressway – at the Indian Oil pump adjacent to the massive food court. One plug, that’s it. I prayed that it was unoccupied when I got there. It was. You'd think that would mean problem solved, but no. I plugged in, got onto the app, started charging and then… electricity went. Boom. That was it, no charging again. We waited a full 30 minutes beside the charger before power was back, we could plug in and be on our way. In that time, two Nexon EVs showed up, asked what the problem was, realised they’d have to wait too long to juice up, so they bit the bullet and soldiered on to the next one.
I needed to charge right there because the ghat was an uphill climb that would chew into range and I didn’t want to take a chance. We were already down to less than 90km of range. If electricity hadn’t come, I don’t know how long I’d have been waiting there.
I'd heard horror stories but for the first time, I had first hand experience of public chargers not being up to the mark. This could have probably been avoided if I had topped up to a 100 per cent before leaving. But I didn’t. In an ICE car, this would not have been a problem. But the EV made me reliant on the few points that were available. It’s like the CNG problem all over again – where cars and rickshaws are waiting in long queues to top up, since pumps are few and far between. Except for EVs, waiting is not an option because each car spends 30-45 minutes at a charger.
It is going to be a tricky problem to solve. We’re going to need more charging points as more EVs hit the road. Private companies are investing in infra, but they only do so when it makes financial sense. If cabs are going to be relying on this public infrastructure heavily, that upscaling will need to be even quicker. Meanwhile, I’ve learned my lesson. Don’t be wholly reliant on public infrastructure and leave home with 100 per cent if I’m heading out of the city. ⌧