Extreme Summer Driving through the Gangetic Plains - 2/2

Part two of the massive drive from New Delhi to Kolkata - April 2024

Housekeeping 

I’ve recently released a deep dive of the charging infrastructure report in India. The report will give you a primer on how the states are doing in terms of maintaining the charging infrastructure, along with geographical strengths and weaknesses of CPOs.

I am also working on a second report that delves deeper into this ecosystem and will provide more insights on the top 10 players.

I’ll be speaking at EVReporter’s event on 12 July in Delhi. Please sign up if you’d like to attend.

Additionally, I am planning to produce a short video or a podcast for the Kolkata - Mumbai trip and Mumbai - Delhi. I am looking for someone who can help me craft the story with their editing skills. Please drop me an email on priyansevs@gmail.com if you are interested to collaborate with the project. I have a lot of dash cam clips, some videos and photos from the phone and lots of voice recordings from the trip.

Producing content needs money and I have limited resources. I do not want to take on any sponsors to continue maintaining my independence. The only way for the production to be funded is by the readers. I will figure out the logistics and reach out to you for your support.

As usual, if you’d like to skip the text, you can dive into the data for the Delhi Kolkata trip here.

If you are one for the visuals, check out my pan India charging stations playlist and the Delhi Kolkata playlist on YouTube. Enjoy!

In my previous post, I documented the charging sessions and driving experience from New Delhi to Varanasi on day one. The journey continues from Varanasi to Kolkata on day two.

Let’s go

Image 1 : Route map. Overnight halt at Varanasi, missed to mark that.

Varanasi - Aurangabad (Bihar)

I started from Varanasi at 4:45 am with a full charge. My journey continued eastward. The sky was already turning orange by the time I got to the highway from the hotel, followed by a brisk sunrise. By 7 AM, the sun was shining down harshly.

Varanasi to Kolkata is around 700 kms. There are no reliable chargers in the 300-400 km mark from Varanasi. So, one cannot do a one charging stop between Varanasi and Kolkata. It has to be a two charging stop route. The is a good density of chargers around the 450 - 500 km mark, but that was a distance too much for my car.

There was a working BPCL charger at the 40 km in Chandauli, UP. It did not make sense to stop here. There was a BPCL charger in Aurangabad, Bihar, roughly 180 km from Varanasi. Post that, Plugshare had two chargers from BPCL marked at 80 km (260 km from Varanasi) and another 80 km away (340 km).

Other charger options were in Dhanbad (Jharkhand) - 420 km away or a solitary Tata Power charger in Gaya, 80 km off (40 km one way) from the highway, from Aurangabad, Bihar (180 km from Varanasi). Neither of these back up chargers made sense and I was at the mercy of BPCL on this route.

I hoped for one of the three BPCL chargers to be working on this route. I glanced at the Ionage app to see that the Aurangabad charger was functional. I had hope.

When I was around 60 - 70 km away, the Aurangabad charger on Ionage went offline. I was heartbroken. Numbers started going through my brain, evaluating options to get to Dhanbad safely.

The car’s in app navigation suggested that I would just make it to Dhanbad. On the phone’s Google Maps, I had the navigation to the nearest available charger, i.e. the BPCL charger at Aurangabad. Map My India on my phone was used to quickly navigate from Dhanbad / Aurangabad / Asansol to Kolkata, contemplating how many extra charging stops I would need. Apple Maps had the eventual distance from my location to Kolkata.

It was quite the panic, but all of it could be managed well if someone can develop an Indian ABRP (A Better Route Planner - bought by Rivian now). If you are building one, please write to me at priyansevs@gmail.com !

I reached the Aurangabad charger, hoping that it was offline because someone would have pressed the emergency button. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The charger had no power, but the petrol pump was working. I asked the attendant and they told me that the pump works on solar energy, whereas the charger is connected to the grid. He did not know when the power would be back. Watch this video to know why there was a power cut in the first place. This would never be obvious to a city bloke like me.

I asked him about the next charging stop and he recommended an IOCL charger around 10 km away, towards Patna. I immediately checked the IOCL app and Plugshare. The charger was online. Felt like I was standing at the Juhu beach, in Mumbai, with fresh wind blowing across my face, while it was 40 degrees celsius outside. I hadn’t considered this charger due to poor Plugshare reviews. My last resort would’ve been to charge my car for a couple of hours at a 15A socket, so that I have just enough charge to reach Dhanbad. The other BPCL chargers were also offline and I had no expectations for them to be online anytime soon.

I reached the IOCL petrol pump. The charger was unoccupied. I was joyous. I loaded up the wallet and initiated the charging session. I couldn’t tell if the car had started charging because the Okaya charger was absolutely quiet, unlike other charging stations. The car was sipping juice!

One weird bug with the charger (which had two CCS2 guns) was that you couldn’t select any gun except gun A, if both are available. I wonder how the second car would charge. Maybe it allowed the choice of the second gun after the first gun was busy. Anyway, that wasn’t my concern. To initiate charging on the IOCL app, you have to enter the total units you want to charge your car for. Appropriate balance has to be maintained in the app. 🚩

After charging for 14 mins or 5kWh, there was a power cut. Alas, the power cut followed me from BPCL to IOCL. The pump’s attendant said that I should wait for a few minutes for the power to come back. I followed his advice. Meanwhile, among the multiple map navigation, I assessed that reaching Dhanbad was possible, provided I was extremely efficient, which meant no AC and drafting behind large vehicles for as long as one can.

While doing this mental maths, the electricity was back, and promptly the app showed the charger as available. I connected the gun to the car and waited. The session did not initiate. I was charged INR 20 + taxes as a session fee. It deducted these charges from my wallet. This meant that when reinitiating the charging session, I had to reduce the ‘energy ask’ by 1 unit or add some more money to my wallet. I chose the former and tried reinitiating the session. It failed again. Memories from Davangere in Sept 2022 flashed in front of my eyes.

Image 2 : Vehicle Control Systems Fault at Davanagere, Karnataka, illustrated by Sanika

After a couple of deep breaths, I restarted the process. Luckily, the charging started. This was my first charging session in Bihar. I had never come this far off from Mumbai. I was more than 1700 km away from my home, Mumbai. I just let that sink in.

The petrol pump attendant and I shared some stories. He offered me sweets from the Ram Navmi puja the day before (tikri).

I asked him about having some litti choka (Bihari delicacy) near the petrol pump. The nearest option, unfortunately, was back on the highway, 5 km away. Bikers fueling up at the pump were happy to drop me to the nearest litti chokha road side stall. People are very kind in India. I could not leave my car unattended because there was always a possibility of another electricity cut.

By the time the power went off again, the car had already charged till 98% SoC. It provided me with enough range to cross Dhanbad, Jharkhand to reach Asansol, West Bengal if need be.

P.S.: There’s an Aurangabad in Maharashtra, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.

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Aurangabad - Asansol

Both Dhanbad and Asansol had a bunch of charging options by Tata Power and BPCL. Some of the chargers listed on the BPCL network on PlugShare were not available on Ionage, making it slightly frustrating. Electrifi, too, had a charger, but given the sad state of their chargers in Delhi, I was not particularly confident. Also, one charger - Anand Pure Veg - by ChargeZone is marked near Asansol, West Bengal on PlugShare, whereas it is actually in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra.

If you’ve read the paid report, you’d know ChargeZone’s chargers in West Bengal are only in Kolkata.

Asansol was 300 km from the charger. The city had three options by Tata PEZC, one at the restaurant just off the highway, one in the city in the mall and another at a dealership. The restaurant was my best bet because of the location. I could’ve gone to the mall too if I was planning on spending the night in Asansol. So, the restaurant it was.

I crossed from Bihar to Jharkhand. The border was in a forested area and it was lovely to be surrounded by huge forests.

There was a traffic jam of 6 mins in 110 kilometres towards the charger. This was on a bypass for the town Barhi in Jharkhand. This town is also the getaway to Hazaribagh, a bustling town in Jharkhand. Hazaribagh translates to a thousand gardens.

As I kept getting closer to Barhi, I realized that this wasn’t a 6 min traffic jam at all. I saw something that I had never seen before. I saw trucks just stopped in the middle of the road, with no one in the trucks. Just empty, doors of trucks open, no people, no wind, pin drop silence. Time came to a standstill.

If this was in Bombay, I would’ve found myself in a movie shooting sequence. The hero of the movie is supposed to navigate through the truck maze to find the damsel in distress. Oh Bollywood!

Snapping back to reality, the truck maze was still there. There were some paths just narrow enough for the cars to pass. It was considerate of the truck drivers to leave this space for the 4W and 2W mere mortals.

I started making my way through the maze. Soon enough, I caught up with some other people in their cars, trying to figure out how to get past this jam. Oftentimes I was left with poor choices and any of those could very well determine if I would spend the entirety of my life in this traffic jam. The choice would often be to keep finding new routes through the maze or try going through a pre-discovered route and eventually get stuck in traffic. Decisions would also involve taking the car offroad and driving through a nondescript village, with no clear roads shown in the satellite view of Google Maps, or driving on the other side of the road because so many other people were already doing so. I, of course, joined the herd and started driving on the wrong side. I’ve never driven for this long on the wrong side of the road. The one constant thing going through my mind was that if I got stuck in the jam, I would have to use the AC because it was unbearably hot. And if I did do that, would I have enough charge to get out of this and reach Asansol?

In between all this, I came across a religious procession that decided to take over one part of the partially constructed road. The option was to continue on the partly completed road and meet the religious procession head on, or get to the wrong side of the road and navigate through the incoming cars. It was a 6 lane highway with 3 lanes on each side. Four out of six lanes were blocked by the trucks, the other two lanes were left for 4W, 2W, villagers, bullock carts (wherever the third lane existed). This third lane would often merge with the adjoining dirt road.

The truck drivers were also kind enough to leave enough gap at the crossings to cross from one side of the road to the other. All of this made me think that the truck drivers had been here for an awfully long time. I was really curious to figure out what the blockade was.

After an hour of constant truck-maze-solving and roughly 10 km in, I got to a toll booth. Only one lane was operational here, with no other ways out. The lane was full with cars on both sides of the toll. Another three cars through the toll and our lane too would be jammed.

Squeaking past the trucks, a few cars, including mine, went to the wrong side of the road. All vehicles with more than 2 wheels formed an orderly queue, patiently waiting for the vehicles on the right side of the road to pass by. I was parked behind a military truck. I was glad that I no longer had to navigate this situation and the military would help me out. I waited behind the truck for a good 15 minutes while other cars going in the right direction crawled past us. The bikers gathered next to us, ready to go past us, as soon as they found a couple of inches of space.

After waiting for a bit more, I made my way through the traffic without the help of the military truck. It got to a point where I had to choose whether to stay on the highway among trucks or take the nondescript dirt road that goes into a nearby village. The dirt road with fields on both sides started after a steep decline from the highway. I knew I had to continue the journey. Off, I went on the steep decline. I could see some other vehicles coming my way at the first turn, assuring me that this dirt road will lead somewhere. I was so frustrated with this traffic, I stopped and had a word with the cars coming from the other direction. They assured me that the main road is barely 500 m away and they said that the traffic is not bad on the other side. I told them that they need to be prepared for atleast 10 km of traffic jams and offroading.

I got to the main road. The elevated GT Road highway was perpendicular to a smaller state highway connecting to Hazaribagh. I had to get back on the elevated GT Road again to continue my journey towards Asansol. The road to Hazaribagh was also jammed and getting into the city was not an option for me. I used another bunch of dirt service roads to get to the GT Road highway. My patience had been tested thoroughly. While playing the trucker’s maze game, I spotted an MH yellow plate car. I started speaking in Marathi, to feel a sense of belonging and comfort.

Unfortunately, the guy in the MH car did not speak Marathi and was headed to his home near Asansol. We decided to stick together and literally navigate it together. I passed by Barsot. PlugShare showed a BPCL charger in Barsot, whereas the Ionage app did not. The charging infra report states that 25% chargers were reduced. I always wondered if the chargers were actually removed or just not made visible on the app. In this case, the Barsot BPCL charger was actually present and not shown on Ionage’s app.

It took me 2 hours to find an empty road and to drive on the correct side of the road. The clear roads gave me hope that stressful times do come to an end. On the clear road, I was back at 79 kmph. Smiles were back and the journey to Kolkata continued.

I checked the car’s SoC and the distance left to Dhanbad and Asansol chargers. I was confident to make it to Asansol with the current charge. I quickly checked the distance between Asansol and Kolkata. It was around 220 km, which was easily possible in a single charge. Thus my stop at Asansol was the last one.

I crossed the state borders from Jharkhand to West Bengal and Asansol didn’t seem very far. In West Bengal, it was surprising to see red lights on a national highway. WB govt had also put barricades on the road, which forced the highway to a single lane near intersections. There was no traffic, so it was easy to navigate through.

Asansol - Kolkata

After driving close to 300 km, I reached Asansol with 28% SoC. The Tata PEZC charger was at Hotel Trishul, which promised some delicious lunch. The charger here was a standard Tellus 30kW charger. The charger is located on the highway with no diversions needed, which is great. I needed to charge here for atleast an hour to get to ~90% SoC so that I have some buffer when I reach Kolkata.

I went in to have some paneer chilly with tandoori roti. The food was fresh and they also had a separate air conditioned space in the restaurant. During lunch, I realized that the charging speed had throttled down to 15kW at around 60% SoC. I was getting half the promised speed, which meant that I had to stay longer to get to the desired state of charge.

I encountered these problems yet again on this combination of Tellus charger and Tata PEZC network in Kolkata, where I assume load shouldn’t be an issue. I don’t know yet if it is a car issue or a charger / load issue. If this issue is observed again on a different set of charger hardware, I’ll know.

Getting into any major metro city during the evening is taxing. There was a massive traffic jam, full of trucks and other vehicles alike near Bardhaman. It was no match to what I had faced earlier in the day.

I got closer and closer to the city. I drove over the Hooghly river, and marked an end to my two day long journey.

Summary

Traveling through the eastern part of the country is a challenge, for reasons beyond charging. It is still possible to drive across The Gangetic Plains, which is a massive victory for the charging ecosystem.

Image 3 : Summary

You can find the link to all my road trips on this Google Sheet. You can also use this template to record your trips.

Total kms : 1489

Cost of charging : INR 3610 → Cost per km : INR 2.4 / km

Toll costs : INR 2145

Efficiency : 8.34 km / kWh or ~120 wh / km