Roof Pod on MG ZS EV. Range stats & scenery from Springbrook National Park Electric Vehicle Camping.

Here’s a sneek peek of commentary from our latest free YouTube video on our recent camping trip to Springbrook National Park with our MG ZS EV electric car using a roof box for extra storage. The video was posted on 12/06/2021 and available to watch here: Roof Pod on MG ZS EV. Range stats & scenery from Springbrook National Park Electric Vehicle Camping.

Welcome to Electric Car Australia and our latest video showcasing our family’s camping trip in our MG ZS electric vehicle or EV up to Springbrook National Park near Tamborine Mountain in Queensland. Given the MG ZS EV is small than our station wagon we usually take camping we decided to use our Rolo Roof Pod and were interested to see what impacts this had on our range.

We loaded up our electric car around 6am on a cool 12 degree Brisbane Saturday morning with all the camping gear we needed for an overnight stay in the Settlement camp ground in Springbrook National Park. Even though we were only staying overnight, given it’s winter we needed extra cloths, bedding and food so our total extra weight for the trip including us, a family of 2 adults and 2 young kids, was 250 kilograms. Add to this the extra wind drag of the roof pod we didn’t know how much energy we would consume, although we knew we could comfortably do the return trip without needing to charge.

This EV camping trip averaged 18 degree daytime temps and had numerous driving conditions, from multi-lane 110 Km/h motorway driving to windy single lane mountain roads through forests. Each of these had very different energy consumption figures as you would expect in an electric car. We show some great scenery of the trip up to Springbrook and also a good look around the Settlement Camp Ground, including the camping facilities available, which don’t include EV charging, not that we needed it! Also included for your viewing pleasure is some photo’s of the spectacular Purling Brook Falls and the walking tracks in the area. This is a great camping or bushwalking locations for families as you will see.

From Brisbane to Settlement Camp ground at Springbrook National Park the MG ZS EV travelled 91 klms and consumed an average of 20.1 kilowatt hours per 100 klms (20 kWh/100 klms) which included a mountain climb from sea level to 610 meters. This is the highest consumption we’ve had in our electric car. To be honest we thought it might be higher given the weight, roof pod and slight head wind but admittedly this didn’t include heater or A/C. We did have the cabin fan going to circulate air and surprisingly this drops the estimated range by 10-20 klms on the Guess-O-Meter (GOM), being the EV’s calculated range, and it doesn’t change even if you then turn the heater or A/C on.

The return leg of the EV camping road trip was 88 klms and had energy consumption as low as 7.5 kWh per 100 klms as we returned heaps of electric energy back into the EV battery using the maximum braking re-generation (re-gen) possible being setting number 3 in the MG ZS EV. Average energy consumption for this leg was a great 14.2 kWh per 100 klms which was assisted by re-gen, slightly lighter load and no head wind.

Overall the average energy consumption for the MG ZS EV electric car for the full 179 klm trip was 17.15 kWh per 100 klms which is only slightly higher than our normal kilowatt hour consumption for mixed driving of 16.1 kWh/100 klms. We arrived back home in Brisbane with 52 klms range left and the first, amber low battery light had just came on, meaning this was the perfect distance trip for the MG ZS EV if you didn’t want to charge and still have a comfortable buffer up your sleeve.

So in summary; this EV overnight camping trip with the MG ZS EV using a roof pod and carrying 250 kg additional weight over a total of 179 klms of mixed driving conditions used approximately 6.5% extra energy being 17.15 kWh/100 klms compared to our usual mixed consumption of 16.1. The MG ZS EV’s GOM estimated we lost 30 klms, or 12% of the normal/average range for this electric car. The GOM average range is 260klms per charge whereas the EV calculated we would only get a total of 230 klms for this particular trip.

We hope you enjoyed the beautiful Springbrook scenery and found the stat’s on the camping gear load and roof pod interesting as well as the couple of photo’s showing all the electric charging options in the area.

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Music featured in video:
‘Happiness’ available on https://www.bensound.com

Mentioned Business’s/Organisations Links:

Settlement Camp Ground, Springbrook National Park: https://parks.des.qld.gov.au/parks/springbrook/camping

Purling Brook Falls Walk: https://www.queensland.com/in/en/plan-your-holiday/journeys/p-56b2624b2880253d74c4b16e-purling-brook-falls-circuit-springbrook-national-park