12/07/2024 author Tuomas Sauliala
Commercial cooperation. Original publication Oikosulku blog.

Cycling is a nice sport because you can ride it right from your front door. However, competitions related to the sport are organized all over Finland, so a car, such as the Skoda Enyaq RS , is an excellent tool for practicing the hobby further away from home. In addition, Enyaq enables the transport of luggage and fillers inside the car, on the roof racks and behind on the towbar. Drivers and luggage, perhaps preferably inside the car.

This summer's race trip went to Tahko, where Finland's biggest mountain bike competition, Tahko MTB, . My travel buddy is Jaakko , who is already familiar from previous bike runs, and is better known the Kampiapina-Youtube channel.

Skoda Enyaq RS is Volkswagen's MEB platform. Its sister models are the Volkswagen ID.4 and the Audi Q4 . Although the models in themselves are technically quite similar, it is interesting to note that it is the Enyaq that seems to retain its resale value perfectly, for example in an online car. For some reason, we Finns are Skoda people.

The journey from Helsinki to Tahko is a little less than 500 kilometers. After all, there is work to be done, but there is less than half of last summer's trip to Kaldoaiv to drive. According to the WLTP classification, Enyaq's operating range is 539 kilometers, which means that charging might not be needed for the round trip.

The trip went well with the Skoda Enyaqk. On the right, an enthusiastic YouTuber looks for the best place for the camera.

Charging before – and during – the trip

We left for the trip on Friday, the day before the race. The purpose was to spend the night in Tahko and then, after a good night's sleep, leave for the race on Saturday morning. Such a schedule takes the rush out of traveling, making driving a relaxed and effortless experience.

Despite Enyaq's long operating distance, it was already clear from the start that the charging break would come quickly: The air resistance of bicycles traveling on a rear hitch rack increases Enyaq's consumption to 21.1 kilowatt hours at highway speeds. Even the air conditioning takes power in the heat. With this consumption, the car's range is about 360 kilometers. Of course, that is also a very good performance from the Czech.

The first download break hit Vierumäki. The car charged with high-power charging during the lunch break by topping up the battery. In addition to the heavy consumption, the reason for the break was above all that it was not possible to start the race trip with a full battery. My building company did not allow the car to be charged in the parking lot overnight, when a few days had passed since the last charge. A good and functional parking charging would have made it possible to start the trip with a full battery.

Kempower's charging cable solution fits quite nicely with mountain bikes. The cable does reach.

Parking charging is usually low-power, around 3.6 to 11 kilowatt charging. With this power, the battery charging time of a modern electric car from empty to full is about 5 to 20 hours. Charging devices are installed in parking areas and, for example, in parking garages so that all charging cars have a charging option. This way, the car can be charged overnight or, for example, during a working day. With the long charging time, even a lower charging power is enough to fill the battery of an electric car or plug-in hybrid, especially when the need to charge from completely empty to completely full hits the spot less often.

When the charging power is low, the charging device can also be simpler and the electrical power in the parking area remains reasonable. This all means lower costs for charging per parking space and thus a more affordable charging electricity price.

In addition to the charging equipment, an operator is also needed to maintain and service the system and handle invoicing for the charging electricity. This kind of service is offered by Finnish eParking .

Enthusiastic cyclists in Tahko MTB's competition terrain!

The drivers were refueled in anticipation

In addition to the car, refueling the riders was also important on this trip to Tahko: Mountain biking is an intense activity and Tahko MTB's Classic 60 km race is a long and demanding race. There are very few free downhill kilometers that road riders are familiar with. In addition, the hot weather seemed to continue until the morning of the race day.

The program included rehydration in advance, as well as refueling with carbohydrates, especially in the form of doughnuts, buns and candy. Finnish gas stations offer all of these without exception and in abundance, even in Vierumäki.

The journey progressed comfortably in the hot weather. We stopped in Kuopio to buy sapuska for the weekend. One more quick charging break so that the battery is enough not only for Tahko, but also for the trip.

High-power charging enables long journeys with an electric car

eParking is focused on parking charging services, but on this trip we also got to see eParking's high-power charging in the parking garage of the new campus area in Kuopio's Savilahti.

Now that the semester was on break, the parking spaces in the parking garage were empty, so there was no information about the congestion. In addition to high-power charging, the parking garage has up to 270 parking charging points and twenty more efficient basic charging points. Here, the price of low-power charging is 0.20 – 0.25 € per kilowatt-hour, and high-power charging costs only 0.40 €/kWh. The Savilahti parking lot is therefore a good example of implementing parking charging.

eParking has several parking charging devices in its catalog. Such a device has been chosen for the parking garage in Kuopio's Savilahti.

At Tahko, the odometer had accumulated 498 kilometers. After the highway section, the speeds and thus also the consumption had dropped. The consumption of the entire trip eventually leveled out at 19.5 kWh per hundred, which means a range of about 400 kilometers. The reading could be compared, for example, to the other extreme: the Hyundai IONIQ 6, which is aerodynamically optimized for traveling and which was not followed by bicycles during the test drive: In two separate highway tests, the car traveled with 16.6 and 19.4 kWh/100 km consumption.

The lesson of the story: Mountain biking is a nice hobby and the ease of the sport is attractive, but combining it with driving increases the average consumption of the car. With suitable charging solutions, this is not a problem, only cyclists' thighs always seem to need more power. But that's a different story.

This article has been implemented in commercial cooperation with eParking. In addition, the Tahko MTB event offered free participation in the mountain bike race itself. Helkama Auto offered to use the Skoda Enyaq car free of charge as a so-called press test drive.

Text: Tuomas Sauliala, Photo: eParking

The author is a professional in electrical engineering, communication and marketing who has been writing about electric cars and their charging systems as well as vehicle software since 2013.

Tuomas Sauliala on Twitter
Tuomas Sauliala on LinkedIn
Contact us: tuomas.sauliala@gmail.com