Mumbai Pune and back in a single charge on MG ZS EV!
Spoiler alert : Yeah, it can go on a single charge, and more! Massive rains, AC on
This is one of the shorter road trips I’ve wanted to document and I finally got the opportunity to!
A short trip also means a shorter blog.
I have had to do Mumbai Pune Mumbai trips quite a few times in my WagonR. My WagonR could do it on a single fuel tank. I had been keen to try and test out whether an EV could do the same on a single charge.
Mumbai has a bunch of satellite cities nearby where one may have to do day trips to - like - Pune, Nasik, Surat / Vapi. And most of the ICE cars are able to do it without refuelling.
Let’s go!
It was a Sunday afternoon start for me from around BKC, Mumbai. The weather was great with little to no signs of rain. I started with 100% charge and my route was BKC - Vashi - Juinagar - Expressway to Pune.
I had the AC switched on for roughly 85% of the trip. Getting out of the city these days takes over an hour and half in flowing traffic. Shows how big our megapolis is getting.
Here are the rules that I tried to abide by with >95% of the time :
Speed should always be under 80kmph, even on the expressway
Use cruise control for as long as you can
Let cruise control handle regen for you. Outside of that drive like you’d drive your ICE car
No hypermiling
No sudden bursts of acceleration
I reached Aundh with a 57% state of charge. I had access to a TATA charger, but didn’t want to charge to test the single charge hypothesis. Finished my meeting, headed to Koregaon Park and Yewalawadi, which is on the diagonally opposite end of Pune (when coming from Mumbai).
I left from Yewalawadi by 10-11pm, I headed back to Koregaon Park → Baner → Pimple → Expressway to Mumbai.
It had been raining pretty heavily on the entire way back with very little visibility. I could barely see the car in front with less than 10m visibility. My estimated arrival in Mumbai was around 2:45 AM, and I had to keep the defogger on the entire time. In an MG, the defogger cranks up the fan and slightly increases the temperature of the aircon. The rear defogger works really well. I had to cycle through sessions with the defogger on for 1-2 minutes, followed by 3-4 minutes of build up.
I was able to reach my destination - T2, Mumbai Airport by approximately 2:50 AM, and reached home with 6% charge to spare. This was the first time that I saw an advisory to not accelerate suddenly. It could be because the firmware for the car was updated from v7 to v10. I had taken the car down to ~6% on my Gulbarga trip as well, but don’t remember seeing the warning back then. The car was relatively new and still had a bigger bottom battery buffer as to now, after driving roughly 9000kms.
With 6%, I still had a 24km range. I had driven a total of 356kms for 94%.
TLDR :
Mumbai - Pune - Pune errands (50+ kms) - Mumbai
An MG can do a 350km drive with incline and downhill, with AC on for 85% of the route.
PS : Take your EV to a scenic Western Ghats trek and enjoy listening to the sounds of nature, in these heavy rains.
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