I drove from Mumbai to Goa yesterday. As an act, it’s rather normal for me and no one who knows me would bat an eyelid at the thought. What made this instance rather significant, though, was that I drove an EV, the first time I’d left Mumbai city limits in a battery-powered car. Why? Well, to see for myself if an electric car could truly imbibe the liberating aspect of the automobile. Chasing horizons is an integral part of the romance of the car, after all. Another reason was that I just had to drive the BE 6 for as long as I could; Mahindra’s audacity to put concept-car vibes on the road just had to be taken down NH 66. And for someone who hates extended stops on a long ride/drive, it was a challenge fuelled by curiosity.
On the morning that the drive began, the BE 6 welcomed me by announcing, ‘Welcome to your XEV 9e’ which had me make double takes in all directions at once. Just a minor case of mistaken identity, nothing more. The screen said that I had 80 per cent of charge available, more than enough to make it to our first scheduled charging stop at Mangaon. The plan was to drive in Default mode, which somehow showed more range than in, er, Range mode. But first things first, I had to see for myself how the BE 6 went in a straight line, and it didn’t disappoint… well, until 144 kph, at least. In Default, it refused to go any higher than that. Clicking it into Race mode, the BE 6 jumped forward like someone had stepped on its tail, and was well on its way to its 202-kph top speed until better sense prevailed. This was one fast machine, all right!
Now, the drive from Mumbai to Mangaon is fairly dull, and the best part of the Konkan begins shortly after the latter. So, when we turned up at the charging station, I was already impatient — and then we discovered that the place had no electricity. I’d been checking the charging company’s app daily for a week before the drive, and we’d even called the place beforehand to ensure that nothing like this happened, and yet there we were anyway. After hanging around for a bit, electricity returned and I plugged the car in. Then the app went on a crusade of restrictions that’d make the Middle Ages proud.
I could not charge to full capacity. I’d be restricted with every subsequent charging session. This was news to me, and I had to ask Kaizad to download the infuriating app and then top up the BE 6 to 100 per cent. As it happened, there was an XEV 9e parked in the place and the couple driving it walked up to chat. I was figuring out the hugely frustrating app, so it fell upon Ruman to play host. But I did notice the trepidation in their voices, especially when they parted ways with a sympathetically nervous ‘All the best…’ Then, another family showed up in a Thar and the kid shouted, ‘Look, a BYD!’ Oh, the infernal irony of it all. My response to the situation? Impatient pacing in the rain. A fuel tank would never do this to me.
Anyway, after we finally got going, it didn’t take long for me to forget all those charging troubles. However, I did ponder the First and Second Laws of thermodynamics as I gazed at the monsoon-fed Konkan that was greener than the BE 6’s number plate. The charging station had also come equipped with a permanently-stationed employee who’d spent all his time monitoring how much the contraption heated up while charging the car. It was almost a picture-perfect real-life example of the fact that energy cannot be created or destroyed, and that entropy only increases. That chap’s hand against the charging station’s vents said it better than any textbook could.
A well-timed pothole jolted my attention back to my surroundings. I’d been keeping the BE 6 at a measured pace between 80-100 kph, and getting used to one-pedalling it on the highway. I have to say it was a different kind of fun and it got pretty addictive, too. The complete absence of the sound and vibrations I was used to from a IC engine left me free to listen to the loud disclosures and pronouncements being projected through the speakers by Queen, AC/DC, Dire Straits, Dream Theater and many of their other musical accomplices. All this while performing a series of slalom manoeuvres down the rain-soaked Konkan myself. How could that not be fun?!
Nonetheless, the BE 6’s screen continued to be adamant that I was drowsy and regularly rattled the steering wheel in my hand. As you can imagine, that was more than a little annoying, especially when I was trying to find the happiest line through the many series of ghats on the way. After a few hours, I noticed the state of charge drop to 50 per cent, and it had yielded exactly 205 km. And as we reached the second charging stop with 39 per cent SOC, we were to learn yet again that the Konkan isn’t the most reliable place for electricity, more so in the monsoon. Yes, there was no electricity again. And it ran on another goddamned app, of course.
There was no helpful employee here, though there were fellow travellers in a Tata Nexon EV who tried to help us out. One of them said, ‘There is no way but to download all the possible apps and keep all your accounts topped up with cash, you cannot rely on just one. And no matter where you go with an EV, range anxiety will always remain.’ No kidding. The problem was that my phone had no network at that location. Ruman downloaded the app, topped it up with the required amount, electricity eventually returned, and we plugged the so-called gun into the BE 6. We were losing daylight and I knew we were in for a tough time. By the time we reached the limit of our collective patience, the BE 6 had charged to 75 per cent, and off we drove into what seemed like a never-ending waterfall. Of course, by now we’re all aware that modern car headlights are more or less built to match the intensity of a smartphone’s torch, so it was slow going.
Last-moment swerves were freely employed to make it through the worst patches. Eyes alternated between intent peering and opening wide with shock. And a thousand curses were sent the way of every single high-beam enthusiast in the opposite lane. However, all through this, the BE 6 was simply unflappable. It did have a tendency to wash its entire face in every puddle we encountered, but other than that it was planted and assured all the way into Goa. Of course, I heaved one giant sigh of relief, those can actually be deafening in the silence of an EV cabin. And I’d decided, after all the thought, that I won’t be downloading 25 apps on my phone and keeping money stuck in them until I drive the next EV. But that’s only because I don’t think I’ll ever own one.
As I reached our destination in Goa, the BE 6 informed me that I had saved 81 kg in CO2 emissions on the drive. I thought that’s quite a lot — until I looked up some numbers. The average tree absorbs 22 kg of CO2 in a year, so the BE 6 had deprived nearly four trees of their annual food supply. Then again, making an 80-kW battery releases anywhere between 2400 kg to 16,000 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere, so EVs are indeed good for trees, I suppose. For reference (or comic relief), an average human child’s annual carbon footprint is the equivalent of around 60 tonnes of CO2. It’s not often that my mind goes as silent as an EV’s cabin, but it did at the time.
In the end, the drive lasted almost 14 hours; that’s quite a bit more than the usual 9 hours we’re used to. Then there was the difference between the exact charging time and the total stop time. Between waiting for electricity, fiddling around with apps and so on, the two stops were an hour and a half each. We’d spent ` 1820 to cover the 525 km to Goa; that makes it ` 3.46 per km (compare that to the ` 6500 the 1.5-litre turbo-petrol support car blew out of its exhaust pipe as you will). The average energy consumption for the drive was 6.3 kWh, which translates to a total range of 504 km… but you don’t want to run it dry now, do you? I’d expected to miss the sound and feel of an IC engine, the soundtrack to all of my long drives so far, but I really hadn’t. However, it was clear that an EV isn’t for those who want to get anywhere in a hurry or with their peace of mind intact. And that it’d help to carry a book or two along.
More than anything else, though, I go for long drives because of the continuous state of focus they put me in. As I found out, these charging stops broke that meditative state, and long-distance EV travel is far from straightforward and simple. It is thoroughly efficient, though — and the BE 6 does make a fantastic case for itself as a fun-to-drive machine in its own right, not just as an EV. I won’t be doing this anytime soon, though, and I’m already dreading driving back to Mumbai tomorrow. Last night, as I closed my eyes, the only thing I saw was the dark and rainy highway, and the tension between progress and patience. And I wrote this story, all the while wondering if any of us are ever truly free.
