The Pantry in Rosebank, Johannesburg was the Thursday, 3.30am meeting point for an epic, four-day, 2 200km road trip in electric cars from Johannesburg to Cape Town. And it got off to a smooth start on day one, before running into trouble late in the afternoon.
The road trip – involving Naamsa – The Automotive Business Council, Accenture, Woolworths, KPMG, the Industrial Development Corporation, the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth Development Office, the Electric Mission and Wesbank/FNB, is aimed at bringing a focus to the challenges that might face EV owners doing long-distance road trips in South Africa. And, boy, did we run into difficulty on day one!
The day started well enough, until we reached Colesberg, a small town about 620km from Johannesburg and a popular stopover for motorists on the N1 as it is roughly halfway between Gauteng and the Western Cape. There are three direct current (DC) fast chargers in the town, but when we arrived at around 3pm on Thursday, all three were giving trouble. More on this “Colesberg crisis” in a moment.
Driving five EVs, the team of 13 people participating in the road trip set off at 4.30am, en route to a public charging station in Ventersburg, a small town in the northern Free State.
The vehicles being used on the road trip are the:
- Volvo XC40 (available in South Africa)
- BMW iX (available in South Africa)
- Mercedes-Benz EQE 350 (available in South Africa)
- VW ID.4 (not launched in South Africa)
- BYD Seal (in the launch phase in South Africa)
None of the vehicles gave any trouble on day one. Indeed, your correspondent spent a comfortable first day in the Volvo XC40.
We reached Ventersburg, at 7.20am, where we topped up the Volvo to 56% on a GridCars-operated 60kW DC fast-charger, giving us an estimated range of just over 200km. Another quick top-up in Bloemfontein, also at a DC charger, would take us on to Gariep Dam for lunch, and then onto Colesberg.
We were pleasantly surprised to discover a (relatively slow) alternating current (AC) charger at Gariep Dam (at the De Stijl Gariep Hotel), where — while having (a very good) lunch — we topped up the battery from 23% to 32% at a charge rate of 11kW.
Unfortunately, when we were ready to leave, the AC charger refused to release the charging cable from the Volvo, and a team from the hotel had to be called to open up the charging station with a screwdriver in order to release it. That cost us about 15 minutes — nothing too serious.
After a short drive over the magnificent Gariep dam wall, we proceeded to Colesberg (about 50km away), where the plan was to charge all the vehicles to at least 80% of their capacity for the final drive to Nieu-Bethesda, where we’d overnight.
On the eastern side of town (on the approach from Gariep Dam), an Astron filling station promised two DC fast chargers, but both were on the fritz when we arrived. The RFID authentication on the display of the charging unit was giving an “invalid card” error.
Leaving two of the vehicles at Astron (the BMW and the Mercedes) to try to solve the problem, the other cars – the Volvo, VW and BYD – proceeded to the Engen 1-Stop on the other side of town, where the slower AC charger worked but the only DC charger, which we needed for the onward journey, refused to initiate the charge with any of the vehicles, even though it authenticated our charging cards.
After a lengthy call with GridCars customer support, we were unable to resolve the issue and returned – with our batteries now running close to empty – to Astron on the other side of town, where GridCars had found a workaround with the two DC chargers. The solution was to provide a one-time Pin to bypass the card authentication error.
But with a queue of EVs and only two charging stations available, it turned into a lengthy wait – and the prospect of an after-dark drive to Nieu-Bethesda down the N9. It did, however, offer your correspondent the opportunity to write this article and publish it.
A long evening still lies ahead. More will follow in Friday’s update after we’ve (hopefully) had a good night’s rest in Nieu-Bethesda. Our next leg will take us through Graaff-Reinet and on to Gqeberha. – © 2024 NewsCentral Media
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