Earlier today, Scottish adventurers Chris and Julie Ramsey were finally able to announce their completion of the nine-month, 17,000-mile “Pole To Pole EV” expedition, the world’s first drive from the 1823 Magnetic North Pole to South Pole.
Other links:
https://global.nissannews.com/en/releases/north-pole-to-south-pole-with-nissan-ariya
Pretty good except:
I dunno, the whole thing feels a bit too much like a publicity stunt where they cut corners. Like, the wind turbine they dragged along was apparently a 5 kW turbine. But, the batteries on the car have a capacity of 91 kWh. So, under ideal conditions, they would have had to wait 18 hours for the generator to fully charge the batteries. Was that worth the weight and drag of pulling the turbine behind them? I’d bet the turbine was being pulled by one of the support vehicles most of the time.
Also, claiming it was “pole to pole” when one of the “poles” was actually a place where 200 years ago the magnetic north pole had been, when it was at its most southerly drift in known history.
They claimed ‘the purpose of “Pole To Pole EV” is to prove that electric vehicles make a viable replacement for existing diesel-powered expedition vehicles in the polar regions’, but if you need 2 diesel support vehicles, one of which is towing a diesel generator and tons of fuel which was necessary to charge your EV, can you really say you proved it?
It’s great that the car runs at all at -40 (both C and F), and it’s great that the range on modern EVs is in the hundreds of km, making expeditions at least somewhat possible. OTOH, I think it will be a while before anyone completes a legit polar expedition in an EV without significant assistance from diesel-powered support vehicles.
This is hilarious. I’ve never yet owned an EV, but by this logic I’ve only ever driven internal-combustion engines “when it was necessary”. lol