A Scottish couple just drove an electric vehicle from the North Pole to the South Pole!

[thewayne]

It did take nine months and a bit of planning.

The car is a heavily modified Nissan Ariya, and they drove from the 1823 Magnetic North Pole to the South Pole in about nine months. North America was fairly easy for charging, South America was a bit dicey but they worked an agreement with an electric charging company to establish chargers in their corridor that the company will maintain for the people in the area and for future rally racers. When they didn't have chargers, they had a wind turbine and solar panels to power up their battery. When all else failed, they had a petrol generator and a support truck.

In 2017, the couple completed the Mongol Challenge in a modified Nissan Leaf, driving 10,000 miles in 56 days in a vehicle that does 90 miles in one charge!

Pretty intrepid people there! And they certainly like a driving holiday!

https://www.engadget.com/an-electric-car-completed-the-worlds-first-ever-drive-from-the-north-to-the-south-pole-073155506.html

Comments

[disneydream06]

WOW, that is a crazy cool adventure. :)
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

I really hope they were shooting a lot of video and photos of the trip!

[disneydream06]

Oh, I hope they did, and they will share them. :o

[kaishin108]

That is really impressive. It would make a cool documentary.

[thewayne]

Agreed!

[silveradept]

That's cool to read about! I wonder how much support material they had to work with, as well, as I can guess that breaking down in the middle of various places would be potentially lethal if your repair shop isn't literally in the next car over.

I also want to know how having made this trek will help with making electric vehicles even better for us peons.

[thewayne]

I really hope a book will be forthcoming covering their triumphs and tribulations.  I like reading about electric car challenges, for example there is an electric Baja 500 and I believe the support trucks are run on biodiesel.  Since they had a support truck, they were probably reasonably safe, but still it would be quite an arduous trek.  I suppose one thing that this does to encourage EV sales to the Average Jo is it shows that these vehicles can do extraordinary things and could be quite inspirational.