Day two of a 2 200km road trip across South Africa in electric cars, in which TechCentral is participating, proved even more eventful than the drama-filled first day, with trouble starting not long after the conclusion of a leisurely breakfast in Graaff-Reinet.
After a later-than-scheduled arrival in Nieu-Bethesda on Thursday evening – after resolving our charging authentication challenges in Colesberg – it was another pre-dawn, coffee-fuelled start.
We were on the road at dawn, en route to the Drostdy Hotel in Graaff-Reinet that has the only direct-current fast charger in town. Our ultimate destination for the day was Gqeberha.
This article is about the second leg of the four-day road trip, which involves Naamsa – The Automotive Business Council, Accenture, Woolworths, KPMG, the Industrial Development Corporation, the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth Development Office, the Electric Mission, and Wesbank and FNB. It comes ahead of Naamsa’s South African Auto Week conference in Cape Town next week.
The journey, which is being filmed for a documentary, is aimed at bringing a fresh focus to the challenges that could face EV owners doing long-distance road trips in South Africa, especially in more remote parts of the country. And like the first, exhausting day — which you can read about here — the second day proved highly eventful (and just as exhausting).
The Jansenville horror
The group of 13 people taking part in the road trip are driving five modern electric cars from Johannesburg to Cape Town on a circuitous route that takes in the Garden Route and big chunks of the Karoo. The cars are the Volvo XC40; the BMW iX50; the Mercedes-Benz EQE 350; the VW ID.4 and the BYD Seal. Once again, your correspondent spent much of the day in the XC40, which has proved to be a competent and comfortable workhorse.
We departed Nieu-Bethesda – which you really must visit if you haven’t already done so – with just 23% left on the battery (down from 82% when we left Colesberg), and headed for Graaff-Reinet about 50km away. We arrived at the Drostdy Hotel in town with 21% of the Volvo’s battery remaining – only a minor decline owing to regenerative braking on the steep mountain pass leading out of Nieu-Bethesda, which helped top up the battery level.
After breakfast at Maria’s, an excellent restaurant near the hotel, and having topped up some of the vehicles’ batteries, we hit the road in the Volvo. Our first stop, which was meant to be just a few minutes, was at Jansenville, the site of a DC fast charger. Unfortunately, this is where the big drama of the day began. The GridCars-owned fast charger at that location – a dusty garage forecourt – refused to provide the BYD with power, and, unlike in Colesberg, we weren’t able to resolve the situation with the help of the GridCars support team in Johannesburg.
Eventually, after a long two hours in the hot desert sun, a decision was taken to plug the BYD into an ordinary electrical outlet at the service station shop where the GridCars charger was located to get the vehicle up to sufficient charge to drive back to the DC fast charger in Graaff-Reinet.
But at the speed it was charging over the store’s 220V connection – a mere 1.6kW – we realised the BYD team had a long wait of many, many hours ahead of them.
Unable to assist them any further, we decided to push on to Gqebera to charge at the AIDC-EC owned 150kw charger, built and operated by Rubicon. The Eastern Cape government, through the AIDC-EC, is building 13 such charging stations across the province to enable mobility and to stimulate EV uptake and demand.
At the time of writing, it was still not clear why the fast charger at Jansenville refused to charge the BYD, though we suspect the car – a new model from the Chinese auto giant – wanted 800V from the charger, which was only able to offer 500V.
#nevroadtrip The situation in Jansenville right now while we wait for the issue with the charging station to be resolved. Far from ideal… pic.twitter.com/4HaUADYJtU
— Duncan McLeod (@mcleodd) October 11, 2024
There may have been an incompatibility with the charging station, which was built in 2018 – a lifetime ago in EV technology terms. But that’s just our speculation – we’re not sure what the root cause of the problem was, and as of the time of this publication at 5.45pm on Friday the latest was that the vehicle would be loaded onto a flatbed truck and taken to the BYD dealership in Gqeberha to have it charged and ready for Saturday’s leg of the journey.
Greg Cress, Africa principal director of automotive and e-mobility at Accenture, who is a key organiser of the road trip, likened the problem at Jansenville to new technology meeting old and expecting the two to play nicely together.
“We need regulation to ensure there is compatibility testing done. To scale this (electric motoring) from a hobby or project to a national proposition, it needs that sort of regulation,” he said.
Great to meet with @RubiconTech_ MD Greg Blandford in Gqeberha this afternoon and have a look at his stunning @Tesla Model Y, which he imported into the country. He was kind enough to take me through the software system… pic.twitter.com/08fti3rddj
— Duncan McLeod (@mcleodd) October 11, 2024
Back on the road, the Volvo made quick time into Gqeberha, with the vehicles (excluding the BYD) all making their way separately to the fast charger at the stadium, where we were able to top up the Volvo from nearly empty to more than 80% charge in about half an hour.
It was at the stadium that we were fortunate to meet up with Greg Blandford, MD of Rubicon, a company building a network of EV charging stations across the Eastern Cape – and the rest of South Africa. Blandford, who imported, owns and drives a Tesla Model Y, took TechCentral through the vehicle and its impressive software system.
The various vehicles and teams (excluding your correspondent, who made a beeline to the overnight accommodation to focus and write) then headed for a local racetrack to put the cars through their paces.
The third leg of the adventure on Saturday, which will have another early start, will take in the Garden Route (including Fancourt in George), the famous Swartberg Pass and the picturesque Karoo town of Prince Albert.
More will follow in the coming days. – © 2024 NewsCentral Media
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