Electric vehicles (EV) can offset part of their higher purchase price very quickly indeed, as we learned from an owner who has covered 1.35 lakh kilometres in two years in his MG ZS EV.
Story: Sayantan De
Photography: Sanjay Raikar
While looking for a new car to buy, most people consider how much they are going to drive it. But unlike most people, Prasad Joshi’s daily commute was a bit longer than average. While most Indian city-dwellers usually need to contend with less than 40 kilometres both ways, Prasad’s daily commute stood at a staggering 280 km combined. Living in the Kothrud area of Pune and travelling to Navi Mumbai for his work, he wanted something economical to run, while being comfortable. Having previously used a relation’s CNG car for the same, he zeroed in on the MG ZS EV after some research. Some of the things that tipped the scales in favour of the MG ZS EV were the range, safety features, and creature comforts.
This was back on 04 August 2022. We sat down for a chat with him about his ownership experience on the second anniversary of his car, 04 August 2024. In these two years, his MG ZS EV has covered a staggering 1.35 lakh km, the result of his marathon 280-km commute. MG claim a running cost of just Rs 0.6 per km, so his estimated running cost has been in the region of Rs 80,000. However, fortune favours the bold and, soon after acquiring his new set of wheels in Glaze Red, his office installed a slew of EV chargers at their car park in a bid to encourage EV adaptation and these chargers were completely free to use for the employees. Even Prasad didn’t anticipate this stroke of luck when he was buying the MG ZS EV.
Considering the mileage he was clocking on his odometer, it needed to be serviced frequently, based entirely on the kilometres and not months, but the MG ZS EV surprised him here as well. His average service bill for paid service amounted to Rs 3,500 and, by his estimate, he has spent a sum total of less than Rs 40,000 on maintenance. To date, he has only replaced one set of tyres and the first set lasted for more than one lakh kilometres.
As it happens to most of us, Prasad also started to discover more features about his car as time went on. In one of the community events hosted by MG for EV owners, he learned how to set cruise control and since then he has been routinely using this feature while on the flat sections of the Expressway, where the speed limit is 100 km/h. By his reckoning, he is much less fatigued simply because of cruise control, though he attributes some of the credit to the much lower NVH levels of an EV compared to an internal-combustion engine (ICE) car.
While he bought the car primarily to commute, he has been travelling with it, too, to far-flung places in the Konkan region and his memory of chilling on the beach with the panoramic sunroof open and the air-conditioner on full blast is one his best with the car. Having the a-c on doesn’t affect range by much, as he once got in traffic on the ghat section of the Expressway and while he was stuck for about an hour, he put the MG ZS EV in park with the a-c on and in that one hour the charge dipped by just one per cent. He even managed to reach home from about five km away when the battery showed zero per cent charge remaining.
Unsurprisingly, based on his stellar experience with the vehicle, he has inspired some of his friends to go in for the MG ZS EV as well and all of them have thanked him for the recommendation. He plans to keep the car for as long as possible and, maybe, one day travel to Ladakh with it, which is a dream shared by us all.
