Not Charging EV Before Going On A Hill Station Trip: Mahindra XEV 9e Owner Runs Out Of Charge
A lot of people in India are now buying electric cars, and it's a good thing. EVs help in saving a lot of money that gets spent on fuel and maintenance. However, there are some things which all EV owners have to keep in mind while buying one and taking it on longer journeys. Recently, this exact thing has been explained by an owner of a Mahindra XEV 9E coupe electric SUV in the short videos shared by her online. This particular issue is about the battery consumption of an EV on an uphill drive.
The video of the Mahindra XEV 9E-owning couple struggling with this major issue has been shared on Instagram by JourneysbyJS on their page. It starts off with the woman mentioning that they recently bought themselves a brand-new Mahindra XEV 9E electric SUV and have been using it without any issues for their regular journeys from Chennai to Tiruchirapalli.
She explains that the distance from Chennai to Tiruchirapalli is around 350 km, and when they drive with a fully charged battery pack and reach their destination, they have around 40 to 50 percent charge left. So this time around, when the couple was traveling from Tiruchirapalli to Kodaikanal, they started off the journey with 68 percent battery and 418 km range.
After this, she mentions that as they only had to travel 204 km, they thought that the range of 418 km would be sufficient for them to reach their destination. The video then shows that when they reached Dindigul, they had 39 percent battery and still had 176 km of range, and they only had to travel 96 km more. However, this is when things started to change, and what happened afterwards was something that they were not prepared for.
The woman highlights that soon after they started driving on the uphill road of Kodaikanal, the range of their XEV 9E started dropping extremely fast. As a result of this fall, their battery depleted to 1 percent, and out of desperation, they started looking for a working charger on the uphill road. However, they could not find one and also could not find any help from fuel pumps and other shops.
They then stopped at a chocolate shop on the hill and asked the owner if he would let them charge their car using the 3.3 kW charger. To this request, the owner obliged and let them charge their vehicle. However, due to some voltage issue, the charger stopped charging after some time, and they had only 4-5 percent battery.
So, after finding that the next charger was only 4-5 km away, they hoped to reach there with the remaining battery. However, while driving at a very slow speed and barely making it to the charging station, the couple met with another issue. They were told that the charger was not working and they would have to travel a few more km to reach the next charger.
As a result, they started driving their XEV 9E to the next charger while being in limp mode and at an 8 kmph top speed. Unfortunately, just before they could reach the charger, there was a 20-30 meter slope which their car could not drive on. So they asked for the help of a few people on the road, who helped them reach the charger. Finally, they plugged in the fast charger and had a full charge after 1.5 hours.
The woman in the video mentions that this video is not meant to show the XEV 9E in a bad light. Instead, she acknowledged that they were at fault for not having enough charge in their vehicle to compensate for the higher battery drain on an uphill climb. She added that their XEV 9E has no other faults, and they are completely happy with the vehicle.
She then concludes that as the vehicle uses more battery during uphill drives, their suggestion is to have 100 percent charge before taking the vehicle on a hilly road.
The simple answer to this question is that because the electric motor has to work harder to overcome gravity and move the vehicle uphill, it takes more energy from the battery pack. Factors including the steepness of the incline, vehicle weight, passenger and luggage load, driving speed, and use of air conditioning also increase energy consumption.
It has to be noted that although EVs can recover some energy with regenerative braking while going down the hill, the amount of energy gained is mostly much lower than what is consumed during the uphill climb. And this is why EV owners should always keep their battery fully charged before heading into hilly terrain.