Big myth about electric car range in South Africa

South African consumers are overly concerned that the range of electric vehicles (EVs) is too short for their regular daily driving or even long-distance travel on several of the country’s most popular routes.

Sceptics often scorn the sub-500km ranges of many EVs because they are lower than some petrol and diesel cars, some of which can achieve around 1,000km on a single tank of fuel.

However, comparing EV and fuel range is illogical for several reasons.

Firstly, EV drivers do not need to visit a public location to charge their batteries, unlike petrol or diesel drivers who must go to a fuel station.

Instead, EVs can be topped up in charging sessions during periods when you would naturally not be using them — like when they are parked at home or the office.

If this becomes a habit, EV owners will likely use public charging stations far less than they otherwise would have.

Secondly, an EV’s range is not necessarily much shorter than that of internal combustion engine models with similar performance.

EVs offer higher outputs and torque than equivalently-priced petrol or diesel cars, particularly when it comes to options under R1 million.

Thirdly, the distances most South Africans cover daily will consume less than 20% of the capacity of most EV batteries.

According to Electric Vehicle Database (EVDB), the average kWh consumed per kilometre of travel across more than 400 passenger EV models is about 191Wh or 0.191kWh.

With Numbeo’s average of a 44km two-way commute for South African drivers, the typical EV would consume about 8.4kWh of its battery capacity with a day’s driving.

The cheapest proper passenger EV sold in South Africa is the Dolphin Standard, which features a 44.9kWh battery, over five times the average consumption.

It would be able to commute for a regular five-day work week without charging and have about 3kWh of capacity left.

However, one should keep in mind that this is when using EVDB’s average for hundreds of EVs.

The tested “real” consumption for the Dolphin Standard on EVDB is 169Wh or 0.169kWh per kilometre.

That means it would consume just 7.4kWh on 44km of driving and have over 8kWh left by the end of the week.

Recharging the Dolphin Standard’s 44.9kWh battery on a 7.4kW home charger will take about six hours in a single go, less than the time needed for a healthy night’s sleep.

However, it is common practice to plug an EV in to charge up when the opportunity arises.

For those who plug in at home every night, it will take just over one hour every night to charge the battery back to full using a 7.4kW charger — or about two and a half hours on a slower 3.7kW charger.

The table below shows how long it would take to recharge an EV using typical home chargers and various daily travelling distances.

Hitting the highways

While EV range feasibility is clearly a non-issue in typical city commuting, others might be put off by their long-distance capabilities.

Unlike petrol or diesel cars, EVs are less efficient at high speeds due to their significant weight.

They are more efficient in scenarios with lots of stopping, which can put energy back into their battery packs through regenerative braking.

However, South Africa already has an extensive public charging network consisting of around 400 stations, including DC fast chargers — many of which can add triple-digit range in about 40 minutes.

Many of these stations are also located alongside major routes, making it possible to travel hundreds of kilometres with a few 30-minute charging stops along the way.

Alongside the busiest major highway — the N3 between Johannesburg and Durban — there are at least nine DC fast charging stations over the 571km distance between the two cities.

That works out to a charging station every 63km on average.

The longest distance between two chargers on this route is 117km, about a third of the range of typical EVs in South Africa.

Many EV owners will only have to stop once on this route to top up their batteries, provided they plan properly to use the ideal location for high recharging speed and significant battery refill.

The slowest DC charger on the route is at the Engen Mooi River fuel station, which has a maximum charging speed of 30kW.

That could top up about half of the typical 60–70kWh batteries of many mid-range EVs in an hour.

Charging at this station for half an hour will provide around 68km of range at a much heavier highway speed consumption of 22kWh/100km.

MyBroadband looked at the DC charging stations available along three other popular long-distance routes and compiled the table below with key metrics. It includes the total number of chargers and the average distance between them.

We also calculated how much highway range an EV could add with 30 minutes of charging at the slowest DC speed on each route.