Somewhere between Ambala and Chandigarh, with Arijit Singh on the speakers and the AC set to what felt like a Scandinavian winter, my friend turned around from the front passenger seat and announced, for the third time in ninety minutes, that we were going to get stranded. He said it with the calm certainty of a man who has been right about restaurants, wrong about women, and absolutely immovable on both counts. Another friend, on the back seat, nodded gravely. These two had been against the idea of taking an EV to Solan from the moment I'd suggested it. The fourth one caught my eye in the mirror and grinned. We were at 47 per cent. We had 160-odd kilometres to go. And somewhere in the hills ahead, our friend was getting married in less than 24 hours.
The car was a Kia Carens Clavis EV, the extended range version with the 51.4 kWh battery, 171 bhp, 255 Nm, and a claimed range of 490 kilometres that Kia and reality have slightly different opinions about, like any other EV in the world. In the real world, with four grown men, a boot full of suits and sherwanis, the climate control cranked, and no interest whatsoever in hypermiling, you're looking at somewhere around 330 to 350 kilometres on a full charge. Delhi to Solan is roughly 290 kilometres. On paper, doable without stopping. In practice, with the ghats eating charge like a teenager eats butter chicken, we planned for two quick stops on the way up and hoped for the best.
I should explain who's in the car. Three of us go back to college, where we shared a hostel corridor and a questionable approach to attendance. The fourth friend joined the group later, through a common friend, and slotted in so naturally that none of us remember a time before him. And then there's the groom, the kind of friend you'd rearrange your week for without being asked. He'd found someone who made him calmer and funnier at the same time, which is rare, and the wedding in Solan was going to be small, beautiful, and full of people who actually knew each other. We weren't missing it.
The first charge stop came at Murthal, about one and a half hours in. A Statiq fast charger at a highway petrol station, plugged in at 31 per cent, the CCS2 connector clicking into the port on the Kia's nose. The car supports up to 100 kW DC charging, though the charger we found topped out at 60 kW, which meant a longer wait than the brochure promises. We grabbed some parathas and lassi. One of my skeptic friends delivered a ten-minute monologue on why EVs are fundamentally unsuited to Indian conditions. While the other one provided supporting arguments. The other friend and I ate our parathas. Forty minutes later we were at 72 per cent, which felt like enough for the remaining stretch through Chandigarh and up the hills.
And here's where the drive changed character entirely. Past Panchkula, the road begins its climb. The flat, beige, truck-choked highway gives way to something else. Greener. Cooler. The sky opens up. Pine trees start appearing. The Carens Clavis, which had been a competent highway cruiser for four hours, suddenly felt more alive in the hills. The instant torque from the electric motor made uphill overtakes effortless. No downshifting, no turbo lag, no waiting for the powerband. You press the accelerator and the car goes. It goes with the kind of quiet, linear urgency that makes you forget you're in a seven-seat MPV that starts under Rs 18 lakh.
But the range was dropping faster than the kilometres. I'd switched off the regenerative braking going uphill because I wanted maximum power for the climb, and in hindsight, that was a mistake. The Carens Clavis has four regen levels plus an i-Pedal mode, all controlled by paddle shifters behind the steering wheel, and keeping it on Level 2 or 3 would have recovered some energy through the constant speed adjustments that hill driving demands. Instead, I watched the percentage tick down from 72 to 44 to 31 as we wound through the ghats, and my friend's prophecy of doom began to feel uncomfortably prescient.
So we stopped again. A smaller charger near Parwanoo, 30 kW this time, which meant a longer sit. Twenty-five minutes for about 15 per cent, enough to kill the anxiety without killing the schedule. Though complaining constantly, one of the skeptics used the V2L socket behind the front armrest to charge his dying phone and his dying laptop simultaneously, which he did without acknowledging that this was, in fact, a useful EV feature. We reached Solan with 22 per cent showing on the dash. Not comfortable. Not catastrophic. The kind of margin that makes you quietly grateful without admitting it to the two people in the car who'd been waiting for you to fail.
The wedding venue was a property with views of the valley that made you forget you'd spent six hours in a car arguing about charging infrastructure.
The drive back was easier. Full charge overnight at the hotel on an 11 kW AC wallbox, and a descending route that turned the Carens into a regeneration machine. I kept the paddles on Level 2 and let the car slow itself through every hairpin, feeding energy back into the battery with each descent. By the time we hit the plains near Chandigarh, we'd gained back about 8 per cent more than the flat-road estimate would have predicted. Regen on a long mountain descent is the EV equivalent of finding money in your jacket pocket. It's small, but it delights you.
We still stopped twice on the way back. Once near Chandigarh, once at Karnal again, same charger, same parathas. The two skeptics were quieter about it this time. The argument had shifted from "this is a terrible idea" to "this is a tolerable idea with logistical inconveniences," which, from those two, counts as a ringing endorsement. The truth is, the car did everything we needed it to do. It carried four adults and their luggage in genuine comfort, with a boot that swallowed garment bags and gifts without complaint once we folded the third row flat. The ride was plush. The cabin was quiet. The 10.25-inch screen handled navigation and the Bose sound system handled music without fuss. And the seats, ventilated in front, kept us sane through the plains heat that April dishes out between Delhi and Haryana.
Did I wish it had more range? Did the charging stops add about ninety minutes to what should have been a five-hour drive? Would I have preferred to blast through without stopping, the way you would in a diesel? Sure. But would I have traded the drive itself, the conversation, the quiet stretch past Kasauli where the four of us stopped talking and just looked at the mountains, the feeling of the car pulling silently through pine-scented air with no engine noise to interrupt it? I wouldn't.
The EV debate continues on the group chat till date. While both the skeptics remain unconvinced, the other two of us want to do a longer journey next.
And our friend who got married, who doesn't know any of this happened, sent a photo from his honeymoon last week. Blue water, white sand, his wife laughing at something off-camera. I looked at it for a while, then went back to the group chat where explanations about why hydrogen fuel cells are the real answer are a new topic of discussion. Some arguments don't need winning. Some trips don't need a verdict. You get in the car, you drive to the wedding, you come home. The car was genuinely comfortable. The wedding was perfect. The friends were the point.
