Anchorage, Picking up the RV
Trip day 2 dawned bright and early, and despite very little sleep the night before, the team were buzzing with anticipation! There was a lot to do to prepare for the trip including picking up our motorhome rental, the car, all our equipment, and other last minute jobs. Before all this work could be contemplated, we had to go down and indulge in the Puffin Inn breakfast!
After discovering a do-it-yourself waffle maker, we duly filled our stomachs before going to pick up the RV Motor Home that we will be staying in until Seattle. It is an awesome vehicle with 8 beds, a kitchen, bathroom and lounge. However, it is already cramped with just the 6 of us and all our kit – it’s going to be very cosy when the others come out to join us! Thanks to everyone at Clippership motors who helped to get us on our way.
Later in the day we drove to the air freight terminal to pick up the SRZero and the rest of our equipment that Hellmann Logistics very kindly shipped for us. We were all a little nervous to see what condition the car would arrive in after being transported half way round the world! But it all arrived safe and sound and when we took it off the pallet, and the car worked first time! So the Hellmann team clearly took good care of our car, and the whole team are extremely grateful for the effort they all put in.
We spent an hour checking that everything had arrived before loading it up in the RV and then heading back to pick up our bags from the hotel. It was a tight squeeze, but with the excellent RGE packaging solutions you have seen in the SRZero, we soon came up with an arrangement to make the space habitable!
And then it was time to head off! The first leg of our journey was pretty short; only a few miles to the outskirts of Anchorage to the Golden Nugget RV Park. There we were able to charge the car overnight from 2 sockets, and by the time we woke up, the car was 100% fully charged!
While we waited in the glorious 24 hour daylight that evening, some of the other guests at the RV park came over to see the car, and we spent time showing them the car. After a long day of packing, moving, talking and driving, Nik and myself cooked up some sausages and steak burgers that were extremely well received by the rest of the team. After food, we had a quick visit from the local media, and very quickly it was time to get a few hours of sleep before the really long journey began…
will you be starting in anchorage? the map says prudhoe bay…
This looks like a whole lot of fun but I do question the merits of the exercise.
There are a ton’o people out there producing or playing with high performance EV’s. Not really that much of a challenge and also not that much to do with a “sustainable tranport future”.
The real EV challenge is the design and packaging of real world automobiles which provide the creature comforts, the range, the reliability, the PRICE POINT and the distribution and service network demanded by the consumer. We have the technology…what we don’t seem to have is the manufacturing and marketing smarts…and yes the balls to pull this off.
From what I can see our friends in East do…and they are, quietly, well on their way to solving this nut while we in the West play with hybrids, Tesla’s and the like, and with vehicles like the highly questionable Chevy volt (which appears to be well on its way to being a financial boon-doogle…which doesn’t surprise me at all).
I will await the arrival of INEXPENSIVE, functional EV’s from China or India or ?? before I add an electric vehicle to my rather expansive fleet of bicycles.
Anyways…have fun!