We drove an electric car to Botswana and back — and almost ran out of charge

MyBroadband recently put an electric vehicle (EV) through a tough, long-range test over the Easter weekend, taking it across the Botswana border using a route with limited charging infrastructure.

For this trip, we drove the GWM Ora 03 GT, which has a 63kWh battery and claims a WLTP range of 400 kilometres on a single charge.

As with all EVs, achieving anywhere near the claimed range typically requires a lot of city driving.

EVs benefit from frequent stops as they can use regenerative braking to put some energy back into their batteries.

The total distance between our starting location and destination in Botswana — a family friend’s home in Gaborone — was about 386km.

Using real-world estimates on EVDatabase and the A Better Route Planner app, we knew that at least one long charging stop would be necessary.

Our fastest and shortest route to the destination had a single DC fast charger, a 60kW GridCars station at Waterfall Mall in Rustenburg, just off the N4 highway.

We started the trip in Pretoria on Friday morning with a full battery after charging the car overnight.

The first leg of our trip had no issues, as the charging station was just 124km away. However, the second leg was 260km away, which we knew would be cutting it slightly close.

There were only two fast AC chargers available in Gaborone as potential backups, but the nearest was still 255km away from our stop in Rustenburg.

Therefore, we spent about one hour and 15 minutes at the mall eating breakfast and going for bathroom breaks to charge the car to near its full capacity.

We unplugged at 97% charge as we did not want to spend any time waiting at the vehicle itself.

Close call

Driving with cruise control set to 120km/h for most of the remaining trip, we arrived with 6% battery at our destination in Gaborone. Fortunately, our calculations proved accurate.

We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing with family and friends, and the car could be left plugged in for up to three days.

The portable charger that came with the Ora supports a 3kW charging speed, which means it takes just about 20 hours to fill its battery pack from empty to full.

For the return trip on Monday, we decided to limit our speed to 110km/h instead of 120–130km/h to improve our energy consumption and ensure we could get to the fast charger without issues.

Despite our altitude increasing on this leg, we consumed 81% battery compared to the 90% we used in the opposite direction.

With 260km covered, the range estimator showed we could still drive about 63km before running out of power.

The additional headroom also meant we could spend less than an hour eating lunch and taking bathroom breaks before getting back on the road.

Starting with 71% charge, we arrived back at home after another 124km travelled with 23% battery left.

Over the entire two-way trip, we travelled about 768km and consumed 158.3kWh of energy. That means the average highway range per recharge was about 288km.

The table below provides a summary of the trip legs and charging stops on our EV trip to Botswana.

Money, money, money

One major selling point of EVs is lower running costs. However, this is primarily applicable when you are using the car in the city and can charge at home.

DC fast chargers along long-distance routes are expensive, with the price per kWh of R7.00 or R7.35 at most locations in South Africa.

In our case, about 65.8kWh of the energy we consumed came from DC fast chargers. That provided roughly 319km of range with our consumption figures.

At a cost of R483.63, the price per kilometre of this energy was about R1.52.

At current unleaded 95 petrol prices, that is equivalent to what the petrol would cost in a vehicle that consumes 7 litres per 100km.

Fortunately, the cost was lowered significantly thanks to charging at home and at the house in Botswana, as shown in the table below.