On the way home during the Spring Festival|Many tram owners told about the hardships of the journey home
With the advent of the Spring Festival holiday, many self-driving tram tourists have encountered a test again - in addition to mileage anxiety and charging difficulties, a few days ago, the Xuwengang Wharf in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province restricted trams on the ferry, which also made many car owners from afar worry that they could not get to Hainan Island. Coupled with the slippery road surface and the failure of assisted driving caused by rain and snow, many tram owners have a poor experience when they return to their hometowns this time...... Recently, the reporter interviewed a number of self-driving tram owners who returned to their hometowns or traveled, and they told about the trials and difficulties encountered on the way.
Range anxiety + difficulty in charging: rain and snow increase the burden on trams
Different from returning home during the Spring Festival in the past, on the eve of the Spring Festival this year, many places in China encountered severe cold, rain, snow and freezing weather, which made many tram owners stage a realistic version of "people are embarrassed". Many tram owners said that in the low temperature environment in winter, the battery life of pure electric vehicles is greatly reduced, and if the air conditioner is turned on again, the power consumption rate will skyrocket, "It is too difficult." ”
Recently, upstream news (report mailbox [email protected]) reporters searched Xiaohongshu, Weibo, Douyin and other social platforms and found that "battery life" and "charging" are still the two core problems of driving the tram home. In terms of battery life, a netizen posted on Weibo: "Due to the low temperature, the battery life plummeted, and the car machine repeatedly prompted that it could not reach the destination. I was going to charge in the high-speed service area, but I didn't expect that there were no charging piles in two consecutive service areas, and the charging distance after getting off the highway was also very far" "In order to insist on driving to the third service area, the speed began to slow down halfway, and the speed gradually dropped from 100 to 60, turn off the air conditioner, turn on the double flash, drive on the right, shivering in the temperature of minus ten degrees, and finally arrived at the Great Wall Ridge service area after 50 minutes, and the battery life was only 7 kilometers left when I arrived......"
According to the surging news report, although many electric vehicles claim to have a range of up to 500 kilometers, according to the evaluation data of the automotive information platform "Know Chedi" and the battery life announced by various manufacturers on the website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the battery life of popular new energy vehicles in winter is "broken". For example, Tesla's popular Model 3 has a range achievement rate of 46% in the winter environment of -15 to -10 degrees Celsius. On the one hand, the battery activity decreases due to low temperatures in winter, and on the other hand, the hot air conditioning in the car consumes more electricity in winter. Therefore, many electric car owners who drive long distances in winter are faced with embarrassing situations such as "dare not step on the accelerator" and "dare not turn on the air conditioner" in the face of the sudden drop in battery life.
Charging difficulties and range anxiety are still the two major problems that plague electric vehicles. Network diagram
In addition, the difficulty of charging when returning home during the Spring Festival is also a hot topic. Recently, a news item entitled "1800 kilometers charged 7 times" appeared on the major hot searches. Mr. Jia, the owner of the car, said that they drove back to Shenyang from Hangzhou on January 28, and arrived home at 1 a.m. on January 30, with a toll of 900 yuan and a charging fee of 800 yuan, the trip took 38 hours, and the charging time was about 8 and a half hours, and the middle rested in Jinan for one night, and the driving time was about 18 hours. Mr. Jia said that this trip was 1,800 kilometers and a total of 7 charges. The most thrilling time on the road was that on the afternoon of January 28, when they arrived at the service area of Baoying County, Yangzhou, the power showed that there were only 9 kilometers left to drive, "After this time, we controlled the remaining power in the range of 50-100 kilometers every time, and planned for charging in advance." ”
Specifically, the difficulty of charging can be roughly divided into the following three reasons: First, slow charging. Many charging piles are slow charging, which takes 8-10 hours to fully charge, and only a few belong to DC fast charging. According to statistics, the data in 2022 shows that there is only 1 charging pile for every 2.6 trams, and the third is that the charging pile is damaged or there are too many waiting vehicles. Taking the expressway service area as an example, it is common to see news that trams in the service area are competing for charging piles. It is worth mentioning that petrol-electric hybrid (extended range vehicles) like Ideal and BYD Qin DM-i were also "disliked" by many pure electric vehicle owners during the Spring Festival, believing that they should not come to grab charging piles.
Extreme weather has a great impact: low temperatures lead to the failure of assisted driving
Different from the past, many car owners who passed through Hubei, Hunan, Anhui and other places encountered extreme snow and ice weather on the highway, and the road surface was very slippery, resulting in many vehicles unable to move forward at all, and could only wait for rescue on the highway.
The reporter saw on major social platforms that many car owners posted videos saying that the vehicles were difficult to move on icy and snowy roads, and the brakes were almost ineffective. Once the tires slip, the vehicle is out of control, "the ground is too slippery, it's not ordinary snow, it's very hard." The tires were on it, and the steering wheel didn't grasp steadily, and the car slid away. "In addition, on ice and snow roads, almost all major brands of electric vehicles cannot be used for assisted driving, because parts such as cameras are frozen and can only be driven by manpower.
In the event of extreme rain and snow, many vehicles were blocked on the highway, and tram owners did not even dare to turn on the air conditioner. Network diagram
A few days ago, Mr. Ye drove the newly purchased ZEEKR tram from Sichuan to Wenzhou for the Chinese New Year, "I have driven this road many times, but this year is the first time to drive the tram through, and it is also the first time to encounter such bad weather." After entering Hunan Province, there are icy roads along the way. For safety reasons, Mr. Ye drove at a low speed of 60 km/h and kept a certain distance from the front and rear cars, "The road surface is slippery, the tire grip is weakened, and when encountering a situation, he can't press the brakes vigorously, and can only brake many times." ”
In addition, due to the lack of sufficient water and food, car owners also experience another kind of anxiety and restlessness. Some car owners said that he was stuck in traffic on the highway for several days, and all the New Year's goods prepared in the car were eaten. Many people also said on social platforms that they did not carry enough food, but fortunately, they received bread, eight-treasure porridge and water from the local government and enthusiastic people along the way, and they persevered until they got out of trouble.
The wrong route was chosen, and the car got stuck due to taking the side road
Recently, Mr. Sun (pseudonym) from Jiangsu posted on Xiaohongshu that this year's Chinese New Year is the first time he drove his newly bought tram BMW ix3 back to his hometown from Nanjing to Nantong. However, in order to save 50 minutes of travel time, Mr. Sun got off the highway according to the navigation prompts and took a small road instead. As a result, when passing through a village, he encountered a section of ice and snow, the ground was full of mud, and the wheels slipped and fell into the mud, and he tried to save himself many times to no avail.
Mr. Sun's BMW ix3 tram (left) got stuck in the car. Photo courtesy of the interviewee
Mr. Sun said: "The villagers' uncle brought hay to pad it, and many well-wishers came to help push the cart, but they couldn't get out of trouble. During the rescue call was also made, but there may be more accidents, and after the well-wishers pulled my car out with a winch, the rescuers contacted me, overall, except for this small episode, the others are not bad, and there is no problem with the mileage that has been worried, after driving 260 kilometers to home, it shows that it can also drive 100 kilometers. The music was on all the way, and the air conditioning was halfway on, which was not bad. ”
Mr. Sun told reporters that the experience of driving the tram home this time also increased his confidence in driving long distances by tram in the future, "I usually drive in the city, and the experience is not bad." Now I think that as long as there is no extreme weather or very bad road conditions, the tram can still be able to drive yourself. ”
Xu Wengang once restricted trams from boarding ferries
Recently, a blogger posted a video on social platforms saying that the new energy vehicle was shipwrecked through the port ferry, and the number of tickets was small. Some car owners said that they had waited for nearly 10 hours for the tram they were driving and still did not board the boat. Some car owners said that the long queue time of the tram is due to the small number of "quotas" arranged for boarding. Many car owners questioned that ship-related companies discriminated against new energy vehicles.
In this regard, the "Guangdong Railway Ticket Reservation" platform reminded that due to the fire safety requirements of ships, each ship is limited to 15 new energy vehicles.
The Xuwengang Pier Ferry used to restrict tram boarding. Network diagram
The relevant staff of Xu Wengang also said that due to the safety of new energy vehicles on board, the proportion of new energy vehicles loaded on each ship is generally controlled below 10%, and the number of vehicles during the Spring Festival transportation period has increased, so the queue time of new energy vehicles is longer.
Later, according to CCTV news reports, the Qiongzhou Strait opened a special class for new energy vehicles to cross the sea from February 1 to alleviate the demand for new energy vehicles to cross the sea. The newly opened special ship transportation of new energy vehicles means that the new energy vehicles and drivers are transported by a ro-ro ship, and the personnel on board are transported by another ship, and the ro-ro ship transporting new energy vehicles does not carry passengers at the same time. At present, there are 4 special ships per day, namely 2 flights from Xuwen Port to Haikou New Port and 2 flights from Haikou New Port to Xuwen Port.
Witnesses' "support": go to the service area less, and go down to charge
Compared with the "embarrassment" of many tram drivers, Mr. Zeng, who drove the tram back to Wuhan from Shanghai, can be called a "little planning expert" - in terms of route, he studied the weather conditions in advance and drove more than 100 kilometers, but bypassed the snow jam section;
Mr. Zeng told the upstream news reporter that he is a native of Wuhan and is currently engaged in the advertising and media industry in Shanghai, and this time he returned to Wuhan to drive a Tesla Model Y tram. At 6 o'clock in the morning on February 3, he drove from Shanghai and arrived in Wuhan at 10 o'clock that night, a 1,000-kilometer journey that took a total of 16 hours, "including 12 hours of driving on the road, charging 5 times, a total of 2.5 hours, in terms of cost, charging fee of 370 yuan, toll fee of 330 yuan." Mr. Zeng said that before leaving, he carefully did his homework on route planning, "Normally, Shanghai to Wuhan is to take the Shanghai-Wuhan Expressway, more than 800 kilometers, generally about 10 hours to drive." However, I found that the road conditions of the Shanghai-Wuhan Expressway were not good in those days, and there was fog and even rain and snow on some sections, and there was a risk of congestion and road closures. After research, Mr. Zeng finally chose to detour to the south, after starting from Shanghai, passing through Huzhou, Xuancheng, Chizhou, Jiujiang and other places, and finally arrived in Wuhan, "Although this route has to go more than 100 kilometers, but counting the time to charge and eat, it only took 16 hours, some friends who took the Shanghai-Wuhan Expressway back to Wuhan, blocked for a long time on the road, and drove for nearly 30 hours to go home, I am very lucky." ”
In terms of charging, Mr. Zeng also did his homework, "I didn't experience a traffic jam all the way from Shanghai to Jiujiang, and drove down at a speed of almost 120 kilometers per hour, but in the case of low temperature, the energy consumption of the tram is relatively high, and the original plan was to charge 3 times, but actually charged 5 times." Mr. Zeng said that he did not choose to go to the high-speed service area to charge, but to charge at the super fast charging stations in Huzhou, Xuancheng, Chizhou, Jiujiang and Wuhan after getting off the highway, "This has several benefits." Firstly, there is no need to queue up in the service area, and secondly, these superchargers are located in the mall, so you can also eat and rest in the mall while charging, so you can have the best of both worlds. ”
Mr. Zeng drove a Tesla Model Y to avoid the jam and drove more than 100 kilometers, but arrived home more than 10 hours early. Photo courtesy of the interviewee
Finally, Mr. Zeng also gave some suggestions for long-distance tram driving with his own experience: first, charge the remaining 20% of the battery, don't have a fluke mentality, and second, don't force the last 5% of the power when charging, it is difficult to fill, and it is not recommended to consume that time. Third, do your homework on road and weather conditions, and avoid rain and snow and congestion. Fourth, in case of high-speed traffic jams, the air conditioning temperature should not be too high, the air volume should not be too large, reduce battery consumption, no matter how blocked the high-speed will still move, and then choose the nearest exit to get off the high-speed.
Upstream news reporter Jin Xin Some of the information is synthesized from Metropolis Express and The Paper