This ‘crazy’ couple is driving an electric car all the way to the South Pole
Last year, we reported on an electric Nissan Ariya that would make a trip from the magnetic North Pole to the South Pole manned by Chris Ramsey of Plug in Adventures and his wife Julie, who were also the first to complete the Mongol Rally in an EV in 2017. The vehicle will be the first of any kind – gas or electric – to manage this feat.
The couple is now well along the way through their trip, and we caught up with them in Southern California to see how things are going.
The star of the show: Ariya-turned-monster truck
The Ariya in question was modified by Arctic Trucks – an Icelandic company that specializes in preparing vehicles for the most difficult conditions on Earth – and has been dubbed model “AT39.” The Pole to Pole Ariya is the first electric vehicle the company has ever modified and is being used as a proof-of-concept for future modifications of polar electric vehicles, potentially to replace the diesel vehicles currently used for Antarctic research and expeditions.
But the AT39 Ariya actually isn’t that far off from stock. It’s still using Nissan’s suspension (just lifted) and powertrain, but several tow hitches and other gear solutions have been added, along with some reinforcement to the frame and underbody. On a gas vehicle, a gearbox change would have been necessary for such heavy off-roading, but that isn’t needed with an EV due to the broad torque curve of electric motors.
The most striking change is the addition of huge 39-inch BFGoodrich KO2 tires, which required widening the wheel arches and adding large flared fenders – they only had to cut a little bit off the door to do it. On ice and snow, the duo has run the tires as low as four psi to help increase traction on rough or soft road surfaces.
Parked next to a standard Ariya, the AT39 certainly looks significantly more imposing:
Between the huge off-road tires, fenders, and roof rack with rooftop tent, the range has been cut significantly. But the Ramseys haven’t been able to test exactly how much range they’ve lost because the tire modifications mean their speedometer and odometer aren’t calibrated properly. According to GPS, the longest they’ve gone so far between charges is about 162 miles, with 18% left in the battery, giving them a “best” achieved range of ~200 miles out of the 272-mile rated Ariya.
These range losses are part of the message that the Ramseys want to send, anyway. If they can make it all the way from one end of the globe to the other with a 150-200 mile range, this shows that most people don’t “need” the huge range they claim they need.
Challenges behind & ahead
But when they get to the South Pole, things will be different. The rooftop tent will be swapped out for a larger deployable structure that can encompass the whole car, to trap some of the heat from the 24-hour summer polar sun to keep both the Ramseys and the car warm.
Driving over snow and ice in potentially -40º temperatures is going to eat into efficiency, and Chris estimates that the car will use about 1% of battery for every kilometer of travel. So, for the approximately 850 miles (~1,400 km) that they’ll be driving from the edge to the center of Antarctica, this means a lot of charging and then a lot of charging on the way back, too.
Some of this charging will be provided by solar panels, which the Ramseys plan to mount vertically rather than horizontally. At extreme latitudes, the sun is low in the sky, so vertical panels capture sunlight more directly and can benefit from light being reflected off snow and ice.
And when they can’t get enough solar, they’ll have a gasoline generator. This sounds like a surrender, but it actually brings up one of the strengths of EVs – EVs are energy-agnostic and can be fueled with solar, wind, tidal, a hamster on a wheel… or even oil. Whereas gas cars, well, they can only use oil and nothing else.
Previously, the two had planned to charge during stops by using a small wind turbine that they were carrying with them on a trailer. But the trailer ended up being more trouble than it was worth on rough Arctic roads, so that plan was abandoned. The solar plan will be less unwieldy to transport, but it remains to be seen how difficult deployment and teardown will be in frigid polar temperatures.
People have called them “crazy” for doing this expedition, but Chris thinks that he’s the right one for the job. He said he considered an around-the-world trip, but that’s been done before. As a “Plug in Adventurer,” Chris likes to push the boundaries of what EVs can do, and has experience both driving EVs in rough conditions and advocating for them to the public.
Chris said that, outside of the polar regions, finding a charge has not been a problem, even in the most remote areas. This has held true for this expedition and the Ramseys’ previous one, driving an original 30 kWh Nissan Leaf from London to Mongolia in the Mongol Rally in 2017 – again, a low-range vehicle that still managed a long trip. Electricity is everywhere, and electrical outlets are far more common than gas stations, after all.
Climate change in focus
The 17,000-mile trip will take a total of nine months, a timeline constrained primarily by weather conditions at the poles. By starting in the North Pole’s spring, the pair had sunlight available but plenty of sea ice (which is, unfortunately, retreating due to climate change). And finishing in the South Pole’s summer means they’ll have 24-hour sunlight to power the aforementioned solar panels – plus, Antarctic expeditions aren’t permitted before November anyway.
Or at least, that’s how the plan was supposed to go. The journey got off to a rocky start, as they had to rush to make it to the North Pole and back before the ice roads melted. This meant they basically did nothing but drive (oft through barely-passable slush) and charge between March 29 and April 8, getting out with just a day to spare before the ice road closed abruptly due to melting, almost two weeks earlier than it closed last year.
In previous years, the roads stayed open much longer – but due to climate change, they’ve been getting dangerous and undrivable earlier and earlier.
And this is what the trip is all about. The global shift to electric vehicles is necessary in the fight against climate change, to which auto emissions are a primary contributor. Julie wants to use the trip to see electrification efforts and highlight efforts to fight climate change from local communities along the way.
To that end, the pair have already toured a copper mine to see its electrification efforts, checked out an electric seaplane in the Pacific Northwest, stopped by the Formula E electric car race in Portland, and spoken at the Northwest Overland Rally to show a bunch of diesel RV owners that electric cars can handle the toughest travel conditions. And they hung out with the Tesla Owners Club of Orange County (where we met up with them), serendipitously showing off the wide range of EVs available today:
Going forward, they’re looking forward to visiting (and charging from) solar and wind farms run by trip sponsor Enel X, and hoping to participate in reforestation projects in South America.
But the most interesting part so far for Chris has just been meeting people. Both those who are familiar with EVs, like the Tesla club, and who are new to them, like the overlanders, some of whom told him that he’d sold them on EVs with his story.
If you want to follow Chris & Julie’s journey, check out their website or Linktree to find your preferred social media link. You can even track them live with this cool interactive map, showing locations of interest they’ve stopped at so far.
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After years of waiting and many false starts, Formula E is finally going to debut its mid-race charging system, which will give cars a quick boost of energy charging at a rate much faster than current road cars can.
For years now, we’ve been hearing about FIA plans to introduce charging stops to electric racing.
In gas car racing, some series allow mid-race fueling and some don’t. The World Endurance Championship, which runs the 24 Hours of Le Mans, obviously needs to fill up several times during the race. But Formula 1, which hosts shorter races, eliminated mid-race fueling in 2010.
Plans to bring mid-race charging to Formula E started in 2021, when the FIA started kicking around plans for an Electric GT racing series with 700kW charging.
But the FIA already had one electric racing series, Formula E, which had debuted in 2014. At the time, each driver had two cars, and would swap mid-race to a fresh car with new batteries.
Battery-swapping had been considered, but it would be too complicated to set up at temporary race facilities in city downtown areas, as many Formula E tracks are.
Then, in 2018, Formula E debuted a new “Gen 2” car which had a big enough battery not to need a charge mid-race, and later a “Gen 3” car in 2022, which had much stronger regenerative braking, capable of 600kW of braking power. Gen 3 also has an “Attack Mode” feature that lets cars unlock additional power for a short period each race, adding to strategy and mixing up the race order.
That 600kW charging ability could also be used for mid-race charging, so Formula E said that it was working on a system to allow for this. It announced that mid-race charging would come at some point in the 2023 season, but then pushed back those plans until 2024, and pushed them back again, this time with an uncertain date.
The issues involved building the charging system in temporary facilities and ensuring safety of the system (and of pit stops in general, which is always a concern when cars are driving rapidly near people). But after winter testing prior to this season, Formula E now says the system is ready to go.
So, once again, Formula E is ready to announce that mid-race charging is definitely, totally, positively, 100% certain at the upcoming Jeddah E-Prix, on February 14-15 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Formula E thinks that proving this high-power charging technology could help road cars to charge more quickly, which could have myriad benefits for electric cars in general.
The series is calling the system “Pit Boost,” and it will consist of a 34-second pit stop that provides around 10% additional charge to the cars (about 4kWh). While 10% isn’t a lot, 34 seconds is also not a lot of time. For comparison, one of the fastest-charging cars out there, the Ioniq 5, can charge from 10-80% in 18 minutes, which means 10% charge takes 2.5 minutes – five times as long as Formula E cars will manage the feat.
The stop will be mandatory for all drivers to take at some point in the race, and will mean new strategy options for drivers. Taking the stop means getting more energy, which means that your car won’t have to do as much energy saving to get to the end of the race – but it also means giving up your position on track, which can be hard to get back if you do it late in the race.
However, we’ve never seen it happen before, so it will be interesting to see what kind of strategic options develop.
If you’re interested in seeing how it turns out, tune in to the Jeddah E-Prix on February 14-15 to see what happens. It’s a doubleheader race weekend, with night races both on Saturday and Sunday, February 14-15, at 5pm UTC, 9am PST, 12pm EST, and 8pm local time. You can check out how to watch the race in your area by going to Formula E’s “Ways to Watch” section. In the US, Roku should be the most reliable way to watch.
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JackRabbit, the maker of pint-sized electric microbikes, is back with a new product designed to quickly recharge their batteries from pure, uncut photons mainlined into an e-bike directly from the sun. In true independent charging form, the Solar Charging Kit from JackRabbit keeps riders rolling even when there’s not a convenient AC outlet in sight.
Unveiled this week, the Solar Charging Kit consists of a single folding solar panel and a tiny voltage converter that is configured to output 42.0V, which is the exact voltage required by JackRabbit’s little e-bike batteries. There’s also an added USB-A and a USB-C charging port for powering other devices in addition to charging JackRabbit batteries.
“This Solar Charging Kit plugs directly into your bike,” explained the company, “letting you recharge without needing an outlet, but with a speed comparable to the charger that comes with the OG/OG2 (42V, 2A).”
That would mean the panel outputs around 80W of solar power, which the company says can recharge its batteries in just three hours. That fairly quick recharging speed is helped by the fact that JackRabbit’s batteries are a mere 151 Wh, or around a third of the size of most e-bike batteries.
If that sounds small, then you’re right – it is. But JackRabbit is all about going micro, offering barely 25 lb rideables that are easy to store and bring on adventures, even when they aren’t actually being ridden.
With small batteries that fit under the 160Wh limit for many airlines in the US, the batteries can be quickly charged and taken to the widest number of locations. And for riders that want to go further than a single 10-mile (16-km) battery will allow, extra batteries are small enough to fit a pants pocket. The company also offers much larger Rangebuster batteries, though they won’t pass by TSA and make it onto an airplane in your personal item.
It sounds like the Solar Chargking Kit should be able to charge up JackRabbit’s large RangeBuster batteries, though likely in more than three hours.
The $349 Solar Charging Kit is a bit pricier than building something similar yourself, but it’s also safer and more convenient than hacking together your own battery charger since it’s designed to work with JackRabbit’s batteries right out of the box.
Technically it’s only inteded for JackRabbit’s micro e-bikes (themselves technically seated scooters, even if they look and feel more like a typical bike), but it’d probably work for just about any 36V e-bike that requires 42.0V to charge.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen solar charging kits for electric bikes, and it’s a trend that is certainly appreciated by outdoors and camping enthusiasts, festival goers, or anyone who finds themself and their bike spending extended periods in the great, sunny outdoors.
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