Tata Punch.EV Facelift: Save 2500 Rupees On A Chennai-Bangalore Highway Trip, Says New Video

Tata Motors is set to launch the facelifted Punch.EV in India on February 20th. With just days left for the same, the carmaker has now released a film showing the vehicle being driven from Bengaluru to Chennai. The clip says that the driver was able to save Rs 2500 by choosing the EV instead of his petrol car.

The Video

The clip features Ravi Iyer, an IT professional who works in Bengaluru. Every weekend, he goes to his native- Chennai, in his petrol car. He starts early in the evening and reaches home just in time for dinner. This time, he attempts the same in the new Punch.EV. Iyer says that this Bengaluru-Chennai drive is a routine for him, and he has a set-pattern for it, involving just one stop mid-way. He also adds that this is his first long drive with an EV.

In the video, Iyer says that his friends already own EVs. But he thinks they are good for city drives, and not inter-city commutes. He starts the journey with 100% charge. Bengaluru- Chennai is a 360km drive and he usually takes six hours to do the same. He starts driving at 2:00pm. He says that the car Punch.EV feels great to drive on the Bengaluru-Chennai highway. Halfway through the journey, he takes his usual stop at Vaniyambadi. By then, the battery level had reached 61%.

Iyer plugged the Punch.EV facelift into a nearby charger for some time. He had a chai and got refreshed just like he would do on every other weekend drive. He did not want to stay longer than usual for charging the car. When he started driving again, Iyer was surprised by the battery level. 15 minutes on the charger had taken it to 92%, giving 135km of additional range. Now, he had almost as much range as what he had started the drive with.

By the time he reached Vellore, the battery level had dropped to 75% and he still had 40% of charge left when he reached his home in Chennai, at around 7:45 pm. The travel time in this case, was 5:45 hours, almost the same as that of his petrol car.

Later in the video, we see Iyer give out some astonishing numbers. He says that the EV road trip helped him save Rs 2500. The total charging cost was just Rs 500 and usually he would spend around 3,000 rupees for this journey.

More About This Video

Let’s take a closer look at this case. The video doesn’t mention the make or model of Iyer’s petrol car. Let’s assume it to be some car that returns 12 kpl in mixed driving conditions. If so, the 360 km drive will need roughly 30 litres of petrol. A litre of petrol costs Rs 103.46 in Bengaluru, at the time of writing. The total fuel cost in this case will be Rs 3103.8. The total charging cost, on the other hand, was just Rs 500, meaning a saving of over Rs 2600 (Rs 2500 as mentioned in the video).

The video mentions that the car’s battery was fully charged at the start of this roadtrip. The likely from a home/office charger. One unit (1 kWh) of electricity costs Rs 7 in Bengaluru. The Punch EV facelift has a 45 kWh battery pack. A full charge would then cost Rs 315. DC charging stations typically charge Rs 18-24 for a unit. So, relying less on DC fast chargers and leaning toward home charging for most journeys can bring about dramatic reduction in energy expenses for EVs.

More details of the facelifted Punch.EV are expected to surface in the coming days.