A Dutchman took the worlds slowest car trip in hope of stopping storms
A Dutchman completed an epic 95,000 kilometre (59,000 mile) journey by electric car in Sydney Sunday in a bid to prove the viability of such vehicles in tackling climate change.
The average speed here is 3.6 kmph (2.2 mph).
The world would probably cool if he took, say, 1,000 years.
Wiebe Wakker drove his retrofitted station wagon nicknamed “The Blue Bandit” across 33 countries in what he said was the world’s longest-ever journey by electric car.
The trip from the Netherlands to Australia took just over three years and was funded by public donations from around the world, including electricity to charge the Bandit, food and a place to sleep.
Proving EV holidays are viable if you can create a global fan-base by riding on a multinational industrial scare campaign, and have 36 spare months to do what fossil fuels can achieve in 20 hours.
Should catch on with two, three people.
h/t Pat and Tim Blair who says “Non Flying Dutchman wastes 3 years”
UPDATE: If they tried to show how impractical electric cars could they have done a better job?
Given it takes 12 hours to recharge the car from a domestic power point and three hours from a commercial point, he’s learned to live in the moment. The journey appeared to go really pear-shaped in Surabaya, Indonesia when floodwaters deluged his battery pack, rendering it completely unable to hold a charge.
However, the indefatigable Mr Wakker simply set up a GoFundMe page to raise the cash to have a technical specialist ***fly in and fix it…
When Coober Pedy was his next goal 260km away, he waited 12 hours for a tailwind and then trundled along at a power-saving 60km/h, with giant road-trains thundering by at irregular intervals. Despite the conservative approach he still fell 15kms short of the mining town and had to be towed the rest of the way…
— Canberra Times
h/t to Pat, and Stonyground in comments.