{"id":643820,"date":"2026-04-29T16:02:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T14:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=643820"},"modified":"2026-04-29T16:06:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T14:06:28","slug":"how-much-we-saved-driving-776km-on-a-south-african-weekend-road-trip-in-an-electric-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/motoring\/643820-how-much-we-saved-driving-776km-on-a-south-african-weekend-road-trip-in-an-electric-car.html","title":{"rendered":"How much we saved driving 776km on a South African weekend road trip in an electric car"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We recently took a weekend trip from Pretoria to a mountain retreat in KwaZulu-Natal in a fully electric vehicle (EV) and spent roughly 16% less than we would have in our previous petrol car. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our 338km outbound journey with the GWM Ora 03 GT started at 07:30 on Saturday from a residential address in Pretoria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The car battery’s starting 96% charge would have been sufficient to use just one 60kW station at Newcastle Mall, about 50km from our final destination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, we did not want to take any chances with charger downtime or queuing. The fact that another station on our way at the Sasol N17 Plaza had a Plato coffee shop might also have been a factor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We arrived at this 90kW station with the battery on 61% after covering 124km and spent about 30 minutes charging to 87%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We arrived at the Newcastle charger \u2014 another 208km away \u2014 with the EV’s battery at 32%. The lower consumption on this leg was due to a substantial elevation drop, allowing for lots of energy regeneration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

20% would have been sufficient to reach our weekend accommodation, but we did not know whether we could charge there to return to Newcastle station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, our earliest check-in time was 14:00, and we had started the trip a bit early. We decided to kill some time by having lunch at Spur, right next to the charger, and buying a few last-minute items.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We capped charging at 70% to account for unexpected emergencies and drove the last hour to our accommodation, stopping with the battery at 50%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our host agreed to let us charge on a socket conveniently located in our parking bay. We offered to compensate her at a rate of R5.00 per kWh, slightly more than what she paid Eskom for the power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much faster return trip<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Topping up the GWM Ora 03 at the 60kW DC charger at Newcastle Mall. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As we were staying two nights, we figured out that a charging rate of 2kW would be more than adequate to get back to a 100% charge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We limited the charging current to 10 amps on the portable charger to minimise the risk of tripping the power. Within about 18 hours, the battery was fully charged. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the return trip, we decided to see how quickly we could get home by optimising our stopping and charging times. We left just after checkout time at 10:00.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google Maps predicted our journey home would take roughly 5 hours and 20 minutes without any stops for charging or other breaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We skipped the Newcastle Mall charger and headed straight for the Sasol N17 Plaza station, about 264km away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without giving much thought to driving efficiently, we arrived at the Sasol charging station with 14% charge remaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based on our average consumption up to that point, we could probably have driven roughly another 43km, about 80km short of our remaining distance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We charged the battery to 54% to ensure we could cover the last 124km home with some additional energy to spare in case of an emergency, and arrived at our starting address with 17% battery remaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The total trip back took 40 minutes longer than Google Maps’ estimate, with one 15-minute stop for an emergency bathroom break and one 25-minute stop for the last charge at the Sasol N17 Plaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

R1.15 per kilometre<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
GWM Ora 03 GT charging on the 90kW DC station at Sasol N17 Plaza.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Overall, we consumed 156.08kWh covering the 776km trip both ways. Most of that came from public DC charging, which cost R7.35 per kWh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next biggest source of energy was our home AC charging. That cost us R4.36 on the City of Tshwane’s Block 2 prepaid tariff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using our accommodation’s electricity rather than public charging helped further reduce the total cost. We calculated the energy used on the trip cost roughly R892.33, working out to R1.15 per km.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our previous vehicle \u2014 a Kia Sonet LX 1.5 CVT \u2014 typically consumed about 5.9 litres for every 100 kilometres, or about 17km per litre, on long-distance trips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assuming we had consumed that amount on this trip, we would have needed roughly 45.65 litres of petrol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering the engine’s capacity and the lack of a turbocharger, we would have been able to use unleaded 93 petrol at R23.25 per litre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That would have cost R1,061, R169 more than the cost of the energy used in the EV. Our savings would have been greater if we had phoned in advance to confirm that we could charge at our accommodation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GWM Ora 03 charging cost breakdown for 776km trip \u2014 April 2026<\/th><\/tr>
<\/th>Rate per kWh
(same as electricity “unit”)<\/th>		Energy consumed<\/th>Cost <\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Home AC charging<\/td>R4.36<\/td>60.48kWh<\/td>R263.69<\/td><\/tr>
Public DC charging<\/td>R7.35<\/td>64.1kWh<\/td>R471.14<\/td><\/tr>
Stayover AC charging<\/td>R5.00 <\/td>31.5kWh<\/td>R157.50<\/td><\/tr>
Total <\/strong><\/td>n\/a<\/strong><\/td>156.08kWh<\/strong><\/td>R892.33<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
<\/td><\/td><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
Average <\/td>R5.04<\/td>0.2kWh per km
20.1kWh per 100km<\/td>		R1.15 per km<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At current petrol prices, it has become substantially cheaper to use an EV for long-distance driving in South Africa, even when considering higher public charger prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":643876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29366],"tags":[104179,31960,67290,88598,82661,104856,100578,51719,104855],"class_list":["post-643820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-motoring","tag-e-mobility","tag-electric-cars","tag-electric-vehicles-evs","tag-ev-charging","tag-gwm","tag-gwm-ora","tag-gwm-ora-03-gt","tag-petrol-prices","tag-public-ev-charging-station"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643820"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644319,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643820\/revisions\/644319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}