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Used BPCL EV charger to charge my Nexon EV: Experience, costs & more

17th April 2023, 11:11 by Dev Shah

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The car was able to charge successfully from 39% to 100% but upon removing the gun and starting, it flashed the HV Critical error.

BHPian Shresth_EV recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

We got many new chargers from BPCL over here in UP.

Almost all highways radiating from Lucknow now have at least one BPCL DCFC:

Lucknow - Ayodhya (BPCL Mawai, 70km from LKO, 50km from Ayodhya)
Lucknow - Prayagraj (BPCL Nikhil Fuel, 150km from LKO, 50km from Prayagraj)
Kanpur - Prayagraj (BPCL Malwan)

As @speedmiester noted, it seems to be a pan India effort.

Altough I faced a tough situation at BPCL Nikhil Fuel on a LKO-PRYJ-LKO trip. The initial plan was for my parents to pick me from college hostel on 6th in PRYJ after a brief charging halt at the said DCFC which other people had already checked into previously on plugshare.

The car was able to charge successfully from 39% to 100% but upon removing the gun and starting, it flashed the HV Critical Error. Despite sincere help from @darthveda over reddit DMs, we were unable to start the car and it had to be RSA'd back to LKO. The car got all errors cleared and returned back from SC the very next day (since it was already noon when the error occured and almost evening by the time we reached back).

Been working fine since then and in fact, we took it on another excursion on Sunday (9th) which I shall detail in another post. All happened within span of 3 days. The SC itself concurred with @darthveda later on 7th, that it might be possible that the charger hardware may not be upto the mark - today we got a call from the pump folks too - an apology of sorts (they helped a lot while we were stuck there and gave a cell number to call in case we needed to verify charger status before headin out) - that the charger had some earthing issue apparently, which was diagnosed by the engineers from the charger manufacturer after our car got error and towed on 6th.

Lets see how it pans out. I must also thank @darthveda again for his help over reddit DMs.

Before starting charging:

After charging ended:

General word of advice as received from @darthveda and previous Team BHP posts if you're a Tata EV owner finding themselves at a BPCL DCFC with HV Critical error :

Don't charge to 100% (this was my fault as I should've warned them not to charge fully on DCFC not only from time tradeoff but also from perspective of public charger etiquette).
Follow the 3 step start - Start button w/o brake pressed to go into ACC, Start button w/o brake again to go into IGN mode and finally Start button WITH brake pedal to start car
If you do get error, try to remove, wait 5-10min and reattach the -ve terminal of aux battery under the hood.
If possible, get a OBD2 Scanner which works with bluetooth to clear errors yourself in emergency situations.

Few days later, I went to scout a DCFC run by BPCL yesterday, which also had a nice Dhaba in the Pump premises itself. 70km one way from home. You ask why? Because dad is posted in Ayodhya and this DCFC is a very strategic one at 70km from our house and dad’s current rented house in ayodhya is 50km from this DCFC. By charging once here, we could make the rest of the journey and back home (50+120) on a single charge. As it stands, the charger came online a few weeks ago and what better opportunity to check it out?

The Figo 1.5 was due for service so had to drop it off at service Station. The said SC is on the same route as the highway between LKO-Ayodhya, so we dropped it on the way on, and picked up on the way back.

The aim:

Not only would it be a proof of concept to undertake the full trip in future it would also let me verify the charger location and reliability, and update the same on plugshare — it is after all, a community driven initiative. I hope my sunday shennaigans prove useful for other prospective EV users on the road (As it happened, I met a tiago owner from LKO itself while navigating through the BPCL Charging portal at the DCFC). The new Tiago EV came along with family on board, so I yielded the charger since they were on an actual long trip.

I could only put the charger for 10min while we had dessert at the dhaba (Ice cream), after our lunch and their Tiago was done. They had got their Tiago only a fortnight ago.

Trip legs:

Home—SC : 5.2km/96% (Range 236km)
SC—BPCL Mawai : 73.3km/66% (Range 175km)
DCFC session : 66%->76% (New Range 190km)
BPCL—home (went to spencer’s, and picked up Figo from SC) : 97.2km/32% (Range 92km)

Total trip: 175.7km

Total range: 257km [ 175 (driven) + 92 (remaining) - 15 (added at DCFC) ].

Predicted range in morning (100%): 263km.

Range deviation: -2.34%.

Avg consumption: 136Wh/km (133Wh/km on the onward trip; 136Wh/km on the total trip).

Driving mix: 10km city traffic total — SC to home and home to SC, SC is on the LKO-ayodhya hwy itself; Spencers is on same road between home and SC.

Speed mix: 70kmph-80kmph on cruise control for 90% of the highway; 30-40kmph in city no cruise (obviously).

Regen setting: regen3 in city & regen1 on highway.

Charge added: 3.3kWh (10min).

Trip costs: ₹305 = ₹85 (DCFC) + ₹220 (Toll) Since we fully charged at home using solar, we don’t pay a penny even for lighting, let alone charging at home.

Total trip time : ~8h (including errands, eating lunch and visiting SC in morning and eve to drop and pick up the Figo).