A growing number of South Africans are buying electric vehicles (EVs) as their daily drive. With their improving range and load-shedding now a distant memory, battery-powered cars are becoming more practical as urban commuters.
With a range of between 350km and 480km, the latest EV models typically do not require a charge every day, depending on driving style and commuting distance. It’s also feasible to use EVs for longer weekend trips.
Some shopping centres and car dealers offer free charging to attract customers. Also, if you juice up the vehicle at work and your company doesn’t charge you, it could cost you nothing to run your EV.
Public AC and DC chargers vary in power, with the fastest 150kW DC chargers able to juice up an EV to 80% in a claimed 30 minutes or less. There are only a handful of such ultra-fast chargers, but with more than 350 publicly accessible charging stations, South Africa’s number of charging points per EV is one of the highest in the world — with about six cars per charging station — and the network is growing.
But can you use EVs as holiday cars for long distances?
In 2019, when EVs were new to the country and there weren’t many charging stations, I drove from Joburg to Durban and back in an electric Jaguar I-Pace to answer that question — the verdict was that it could be done, but not without stress.
Charging times vary depending on the car and what type of charger is used, and how stable the power supply is. On the trip down we needed one 90-minute stop in Harrismith to recharge the partly-depleted battery and all went smoothly, but things went pear-shaped on the drive back to Joburg.
Because there was a lot more uphill driving, which drains the battery faster, we planned an extra charging stop in Pietermaritzburg, only to find the two chargers there were offline. With no other chargers along the way, we had no option but to crawl to Harrismith at a much-reduced speed. We made it with a couple of kilometres of range to spare. Our nerves were shot and it took two hours to recharge the fully-drained battery.
Our verdict was that holiday travellers might not mind a single 90-minute stop on their Jozi-Durban trip while enjoying a meal, but a second stop might be more of a deal-breaker. And if a charging station is out of action, the only option might be to call a tow truck.
But what about even longer journeys, such as Jozi to Cape Town?
Since 2019, the network of chargers around the country has grown, including on holiday routes linking Joburg to Durban, Cape Town and Mbombela. The locations of charging stations are listed on the websites and apps of major players such as GridCars and Rubicon, with GridCars’ live map showing which chargers are online.
The lower running costs are offset by EVs being more expensive than cars with internal combustion engines
In theory, if you’re patient enough to make a few lengthy stops, you could travel from Jozi to Cape Town in an EV as there are a sufficient number of charging stations along the way. In reality, however, there are technical gremlins and compatibility problems in an EV ecosystem that is still in its infancy.
In October, motor industry body Naamsa stress-tested the system with a five-car EV road trip from Joburg to Cape Town (the video documenting the journey can be viewed at https://shorturl.at/idpJ2).
In terms of travel costs, the win went to EVs. Over the course of the Naamsa trip, the kWh energy/recharge cost per vehicle worked out to 91c per km, around two-thirds of the R1.47 per km it would cost for a petrol or diesel car averaging 7l / 100km.
The lower running costs are offset by EVs being more expensive than cars with internal combustion engines (ICE). It’s the main reason EVs still make up less than 1% of new-car sales in South Africa, though that figure should rise as economies of scale and potential tax breaks make EVs cheaper in future.
Costs aside, there were technical challenges on Naamsa’s Joburg-Cape Town trip that thwarted the prospect of long EV journeys.
An unexpected issue was that certain charging stations were incompatible with some of the cars, making an extra overnight stop necessary. The EV had to be plugged into a regular household wall socket, where it took about 10 hours to charge the car for an 80km range so it could be driven to another fast-charging station that was compatible. Another time-consuming hiccup was when one EV’s cable became stuck in a charging station and technicians had to be called out to release the car.
Technical gremlins aside, there is also the prospect of facing a long wait when arriving at a public charging station that may already be occupied either by an EV, or an ICE car driver inconsiderately using it as a parking space (it happens — EV etiquette is new to South Africa).
The upshot is that long distance travel in an EV is possible if you’re very patient and all the infrastructure works as it should, but there are still teething problems with the nascent technology. For now, a Joburg-Cape Town EV journey may be more adventure than many holiday travellers are willing to handle.
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