Last weekend, TechCentral participated in a four-day road trip across South Africa to test the feasibility of driving electric cars across our vast country, including to remote villages in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape and across countless mountain passes.
Starting in the early hours of Thursday morning at The Pantry in Rosebank, Johannesburg, a team of 13 people set off — including your correspondent — set off on what would become an epic adventure full of incredible views, amazing people, good food – and more than a little trouble along the way to keep it interesting and challenging.
Days 1 and 2 of the road trip are covered in some detail here and here. Days 3 and 4 were just as epic, though the charging infrastructure – which had given us grief on days 1 and 2 – was a lot more reliable on the next two legs that took in Gqeberha, Jeffreys Bay, Knysna, George, Oudtshoorn, Prince Albert, Laingsburg, Barrydale and Swellendam.
The road trip involved and was led by Naamsa – The Automotive Business Council, KPMG, Accenture, Woolworths, the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth Development Office, the Electric Mission, and Wesbank and FNB. It came ahead of Naamsa’s South African Auto Week conference in Cape Town, which was underway at the time of this publication.
The journey, which was filmed for a documentary that TechCentral will republish in a few weeks’ time, was 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, unfortunately, we ran into some trouble early on.
All five vehicles – a Volvo XC40 (in which TechCentral travelled), a BMW iX50, Mercedes-Benz EQE 350+, BYD Seal and Volkswagen ID.4 – made it to Cape Town, despite a few nerve-wracking hours in Colesberg and Jansenville (a hamlet in the Eastern Cape where the biggest drama of the road trip unfolded – more details about that in the day 2 report).
The photo essay that follows provides a glimpse into the adventure and some of the learnings – and why there’s still plenty of work to be done behind the scenes in developing South Africa’s electric car-charging network.
The scene at 4am on Thursday, 10 October at The Pantry in Rosebank, Johannesburg. The five vehicles were charged as much as possible at a fast charger before the team hit the road before sunriseSetting off in the BYD Seal, a new electric vehicle from the Chinese manufacturer that impressed everyone on the road trip. The Seal starts at R1-million in its base configuration, an aggressive price point given the technology on offerA quick briefing from KPMG’s Dex Machida (background, third from right) before the vehicles hit the road at the start of the four-day journeyThe first EV charging station was a DC fast charger at an Astron service station in Ventersburg in the Free StateAccenture’s Greg Cress getting ready to top up the Volvo XC40 in VentersburgOn the road in the Volvo, with Greg Cress at the wheelFirst major challenge: all three DC fast chargers in Colesberg, south-west of Bloemfontein, were misbehaving. Eventually, with the support of GridCars, the supplier of the stations, we resolved the issue and were back on the road – albeit hours behind scheduleThe situation in Colesberg last Thursday afternoonThe BYD Seal parked on a street in the picturesque hamlet of Nieu-Bethesda in the Eastern Cape. The town, which was our first overnight stop, is well worth a visitLeaving Nieu-Bethesda at dawn. We’ll be back for a longer visit next time…Quick break to take in the view at dawn, just outside Nieu-Bethesda on the road to Graaff-ReinetThe second major hiccup of the journey occurred in Jansenville, 80km south-east of Graaff-Reinet, where a 60kW fast charger refused to deliver power to the BYD Seal’s battery. There was an incompatibility issue, possibly related to voltage differences (the BYD supports 800V, while the GridCars station, which was built in 2018, could only supply 500V). BYD and GridCars are investigating the issue to find a resolution“That’s right, ma’am, I’d like to plug my car in, please!” Accenture’s Greg Cress assists with charging the BYD with a mains-supplied trickle charge at a farm stall in Jansenville. Eventually, the BYD had to be loaded onto a flatbed truck and transported to Gqeberha – the only such incident in the four-day tripGreg Blandford, MD of Rubicon, which is building fast-charging infrastructure across the Eastern Cape (and further afield). Blandford drives a Tesla Model Y, which he demonstrated to TechCentral outside the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, the site of a 150kW faster charger built by Rubicon for the Eastern Cape governmentGreg Blandford’s Tesla Model YVisiting the Jeffreys Bay wind farm … as one doesPosing for a photograph at Fancourt in George. The site has six AC (slow) chargers built by BMW. Four of them were working when our crew arrived for lunch on Saturday, 12 OctoberSummiting the magnificent Swartberg pass on the road from the Cango Caves to Prince AlbertThe Swartpass pass, looking south in the direction of OudtshoornThe Mercedes EQE 350+ made easy work of the Swartberg passAdmiring the view on the Swartberg passTaking a quick break near the summit, though the sun was setting so we had to press on quickly to get to Prince Albert before dark (we didn’t)The final photo … the five electric cars and the team that participated, photographed on Signal Hill in the late afternoon of Sunday, 13 October. The epic road trip was over, but South African Auto Week was just getting started. There is still a ton of information to glean from the trip, and TechCentral will publish more of the findings as well as the documentary video in the coming weeks. Let’s do it all again next year!
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