Essay by Eric Worrall
They plan to bring a portable wind turbine to charge the vehicle when sunlight is unavailable.
Climate change: Couple set for Pole-to-Pole electric car challenge
Ben Philip – BBC Scotland
Mon, 20 March 2023 at 10:07 am AEST·A husband and wife from Aberdeen aim to drive from the Arctic to Antarctica in an electric car.
Chris and Julie Ramsey will set off to travel 17,000 miles (27,000km) from the Magnetic North to South Pole this week.
Their vehicle will be powered for much of the trip by solar and wind energy.
The couple will navigate into Canada, then head south through the United States and into warmer temperatures in South America over the space of 10 challenging months.
They will travel through Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Argentina.
…
“There will be a wind turbine and full double solar on this device which will be towed along, harnessing the renewable energy sources – the wind and the sun – to power the car.
…
Read more: https://au.news.yahoo.com/climate-change-couple-set-pole-000736611.html
Recharging time might be an issue. They used a Nissan Leaf on at least one previous drive. A portable wind turbine produces maybe a few hundred watts, maybe a kilowatt for a larger device, but a Nissan Leaf with the big battery has around 59KWh capacity. Even a partial charge would take a long time.
Apparently this isn’t their first long distance EV drive, so they probably know what kind of route they need to map, and have a fair idea of charge times. Perhaps taking their time is not a problem – it’s not like a daily commute or business trip. In any case, as EV owners they are probably already used to taking long breaks while their vehicle re-charges.
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I wonder will they tow a trailer with a diesel generator? About the only way this could be done!
Naw, yer quite right.
🤣
Considering that the “North Pole” is inaccessible to driving, Pole to Pole cannot happen. The closest they’ll be able to get is
Kiruna, Sweden
Cape Town, South Africa
15,663K.
I suppose they could take a boat to Antarctica and attempt that pole but…
According to Google maps, there is no drivable route from Canada to the tip of South America
Winnipeg Canada to Santiago Chile
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Winnipeg,+Manitoba,+Canada/Santiago,+Chile/@8.2232662,-83.90389,3z/data=!4m8!4m7!1m2!1m1!1s0x52ea73fbf91a2b11:0x2b2a1afac6b9ca64!1m2!1m1!1s0x9662c5410425af2f:0x8475d53c400f0931!3e0
Odds are, they’ll get the car dropped off at the Magnetic North Pole currently about 100 miles west of the geographic pole
And sink or feed the Polar Bears
They must be considering magnetic pole circa 1900ish
Wouldn’t any point on the globe away from the Geographic North Pole be due south?
Technically…technically any point in Antarctica is also North of the geographic pole but the continent is decided into East (EAIS) and West (WAIS)
It is also highly unadvisable to drive through Mexico.
Yes, but for a green, that’s as true as if they had actually reached the pole.
One of the few places they might be able to make a short drive.
I would think a large portion of the trip is covered by diesel powered boat in order to take their vehicle about 5000mi or more of vast ocean. I am not sure what the itinerary is, maybe something like Canada to North Pole, then start the trip from the North Pole to land, then land to South Pole, then south pole to back home?
Lots of ocean diesel travel.
They did say Magnetic North instead of North Pole.
Since you can’t charge a Li-Ion battery when the battery is below freezing, I was wondering how they plan to charge up while in Antarctica.
Don’t tell them till they get there. Will make for an interesting epilogue to their “story.”
Picture the same photo, only with smiling skeletons.
Likely scenario for their trip
April 1 left Inverness on moderate sized diesel powered vessel
April 17 reached Baffin Bay waiting for Russian Ice Breaker
April 22 Diesel powered Russian Ice Breaker arrives Baffin Bay
April 24 with Russian assistance arrived Ellesmere Island 330 Mi SE/ Alert
April 26 managed to get EV, Trailer, Panels, Wind Turbine and Honda Pull Start on snow/ice covered solid ground
April 26 waved goodbye to both vessels.
April 27 made 57 miles before batteries depleted, recharging
April 30 Solar not working set up Wind
May 4 Wind worked OK made it to the other side of the Ellesmere Ice Field recharging
May 11 recharged and traveled 60 miles … Woo Hoo
May 31 wind died for 15 days and Solar was unhelpful but finally recharged traveled 48 miles in sight of port at Grise Fjord…Polar Bears are HUGE
June 3 Wind worked well enough made Grise port where our ship waited to take us to Devon Island.
Thought better of it (too many Damned hungry Polar Bears giving us the eye, going back to Inverness
They’d do better to start at “North Pole” Alaska. At least they could claim to start at North Pole and they’d have paved roads instead of Ice fields
They could even stop at South Pole Drive in at Tipton Indiana. If they detour through Hell Michigan they could claim to have driven from North Pole to South Pole and had to go to Hell in the process
Honda Pull Start mounted on the trailer and wired directly into the electric motors!!!
I’m surprised griff or the like hasn’t pointed out that it’s downhill from the North to South pole.
Only after you pass the equator.
I’m surprised that no one has pointed out that you cannot drive to South America from North America.
The Pan American Highway stops at Yaviza in Panama, where it runs into the Darien Gap.
They’ll have to get to the Panama coast and hire a boat to ferry them to somewhere in Colombia.
Yeah. But no problem if you’ve plenty of time on your hands and someone else is picking up the tab.
What’s not to like?
I predict they’ll get down to warmer climes remarkably quickly (if at all), and then just mop up what publicity (and kind donations) they can get.
Actually, the top of the ice sheet in most of Antarctica is over 2,000 meters above sea level. It will be all uphill from wherever they land to the magnetic south pole.
They would also have to make it to Antarctica by late January or so, otherwise they’ll run out of daylight down there. Batteries don’t charge very well in extreme cold, and they would drain really fast if they need to turn on the headlights. Also, solar panels don’t work very well at night.
The world’s southernmost driveable track or road is at 54.9S on Isla Navarino. Apart, that is, from some bits of Antarctic station. And to get a car to Isla Navarino takes two diesel boat trips, one across the Magellan Strait and one across the Beagle channel. Oh, and if you want to catch a boat to Antarctica, you have to go back across the Beagle channel so there’s not much point in going onto Isla Navarino anyway (apart from the fact that it’s a very interesting place where Charles Darwin went for a walk).
But the point is that they go to some length to specify the magnetic north pole as their starting point, but don’t seem concerned that 54.9S is still 2,000 miles by crow from the South Pole.
Yeah. But, as it happens, I live pretty much at 54°N. Plenty of solar farms still and far North of that. But only for subsidy farming and virtue signalling.
But the weather in Patagonia is a tad chillier and wilder than North Yorkshire.
If they ever get as far as Patagonia, I think they will remember something urgently needing attention back in Scotland.
You’re acting as if you expect people who are dumb enough to pimp electric cars are going to know anything about geography.
Which magnetic north pole??
News flash, Northern Canada doesn’t have summertime roads connecting to Ellesmere Island. Haven’t they watched Ice Road Truckers? Winter Ice is crucial to drive where they intend to which melts in late spring when the sun is more friendly to solar power
OMG the agony of doing that, it would seem nearly impossible! Can’t wait to hear the reports.
Clowns….more than one Nodwell drove over the horizon and was never seen again.
Tracked vehicles from Canada to the North Pole in 1968 had their work cut out for them, and at the time it was only about 450 miles away….
https://www.snowmobile.com/events/ski-dooing-to-the-north-pole-707.html
“from the Magnetic North to South Pole” plus “The south magnetic pole is constantly shifting due to changes in Earth’s magnetic field. As of 2005 it was calculated to lie at 64°31′48″S 137°51′36″E, placing it off the coast of Antarctica,” equals swim suits?
Swim suits? The monthly average sea surface temperature for those coordinates there rarely goes above 1 deg C, according to the Reynolds OI.v2 data. Brrr.
Regards,
Bob
And notably south of Australia. I guess this trip will rather be symbolic – for their struggle against reality.
Hat tip to John Cleese in Life of Brian!
Completely daft. If they start out in the Canadian Arctic in, say, June, they will be in US winter that same year given all the charging time. Won’t end well. Which is fine with me.
If you are going to pull PR stunts, at least chose something with a chance of success. Greta’s Atlantic sailboat stunt, for example, despite the boat crew transatlantic airplane backstory.
Nope. I maybe misunderstood. They are going to tow a trailer with the solar arrays and wind turbine kit, not fit it to the car. That will for sure ‘work’ (NOT). Think of that wind turbine producing electricity from the forward motion of the electric vehicle, to recharge the electric vehicle. There is only a tinsie wintsie physics problem with that scheme. Not to mention towing anything cuts EV range substantially. For an EV pickup (Ford Lightning) from 300+ to 60 miles with a standard small lightweight camping or work trailer. The experimental data is readily available.
Wile E. Coyote.
They’d do better to stay in the UK and drive from Thurso to Dover 734 miles and return about a dozen times until they’ve covered 12,000 miles
“Think of that wind turbine producing electricity from the forward motion of the electric vehicle“. I thought it through. The car will probably be in park, not trying to blow its own sail. The TV show Mythbusters’s episode on blowing your own sail surprised me – yes, apparently you can.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/135548/blowing-your-own-sail
nope. you can’t. saw the same program. if you look closely at the air flow hitting the sail. a small amout is being deflected side ways and slightly to the rear creating thrust. myth busters had some good shows, that was not one of them.
A variation on this theme was Rick Cavallaro’s “Blackbird” vehicle a couple of years ago.
Example URL : https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/10-000-physics-wager-settles-the-debate-on-sailing-downwind-faster-than-the-wind/
Note that this was a custom-built demonstrator / prototype machine though, not a “bog-standard” Nissan Leaf (+ trailer).
Note also that the expert that eventually “conceded in light of the evidence” was a physics professor.
An extract from the above link that I think is applicable to the “climate debate” :
The sailboat Greta rode was almost entirely constructed of carbon fiber composits. I.e. fossil fuel extracts. What a hypocrite.
Unfortunately for them to start at Ellesmere Island (per the article) in June they won’t even make it off the island to mainland Canada without a boat at some point. Then Northern Canada is full of tens of thousands of lakes that need to be frozen over to have an Ice Road system of travel to get to the populated sections. They’ll need to travel in Winter to start
Not sure I understand how they can go pole to pole in a car? Maybe the North Magnetic Pole is in Canada, but the South Pole is across the water and in a roadless area. They surely know that, so I’m not quite sure what they are doing. Maybe it sounds better than going from northern Canada to southern Argentina.
Yes I was disappointed that I could not find an answer to the most obvious question raised the article – what route?. Many readers must have been looking for the same thing. I guess I’ll have to wait for a banner ad with a pretty model and click to see the top ten ways my US state’s politician is giving away free money to drive to the south pole with solar panels.
Well by the time they haul the car from Scotland to Canada in a fossil fuel powered boat, tha car battery will probably be dead. And you’re not supposed to charge it at freezing temperatures.
Oops.
Maybe they really meant that they’re driving from one person of Polish descent to another person of Polish descent who lives 17,000 miles away.
Didn’t some darn fool try to paddle a kayak to the North pole a while back?
How did that turn out?
Not well. ‘Ice free Arctic’ is not what he thought. Illustrated along with a lot of other silliness that same year in essay ‘Northwest Passage’ in ebook Blowing Smoke.
Claimed victory by utilizing the Magnetic Polar location from some Obscure point in history that can neither be proven or refuted
The kajakkers were followed by a support vessel propelled by a diesel engine. When they hit the wall of ice some 100 km north of Iceland the fools wanted to go into the ice field to continue their fight against climate change. The captain of the boat was wiser and let it be known that they would not follow because they wanted to be home at Xmas, thus forcing abandoning the whole silly stunt. Undaunted they were welcomed like heroes back in Iceland by clueless supporters. The whole thing was financed by an insurance company keen on making a quick buck out of the climate scam. Well, it wasn’t an oil company, so that must have been okay.
I suggest they watch this, https://www.longwayup.com/long-way-up, about using EV to go from tip ofSouth America to Los Angeles. Two electric Harley’s and a Rivian electric pickup.
What could possibly go wrong?
They’ve got an out:
“vehicle will be powered for much of the trip by solar and wind energy”
Yes, I noticed that too. Will we ever be told just how much “much” of the trip turns out to be?
They’ll have their media coverage of some sort for that “much” part, but probably will be in “no service areas” for the other parts.
Good catch. “Much” is less than “most.” So I guess for more than half the trip they’ll be using generated power.
Hopefully, a LOT. All live stream publicized by these nutters until we never hear from them again.
Perhaps they could mount a satellite WebCam on their trailer so the public could follow their dismal progress.
Better take one of these with you…
story tip
US firm agrees to sell 24 mini nuclear reactors to UK customers (yahoo.com)
I guess it will end at Tierra del Fuego, the land of fire. Not many charging points there but plenty of wind, v little sun. I had some ‘range anxiety’ the other day; down to two bars on my fuel gauge so had to call in at diesel station for five minutes.
The protagonists are not nubes. They probably know how to maintain the vehicle.
Did you have a coffee while you were there?
Hans Frischeisen has bicycled and kayaked around the world “vertically” and “horizontally” (see his book). Going south in the Americas he went as far as Punta Arenas, Chile. Because he wasn’t stupid and didn’t want to kayak to Antarctica and bicycle to the South Pole. (We all have our limits.) I would love to see Hans race this couple on his bicycle. Given their delays for charging, he’d have a very good chance of winning.
Maybe they can use a dynamo to recharge the batteries. /sarcasm
It will work better than solar power does at night.
Well, for starters, the North magnetic pole left Canada in about 1995, and is now in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, charging towards Russia at an ever-accelerating pace. Perhaps Vladimir Vladimirovich will be able to score diplomatic points from this; he certainly needs some.
Even when it was in Canada, it was in the Arctic Archipelago, and a quick glance at a map will show them that there are no roads anywhere closer than Yellowknife, 1,200 kilometres away.
Ignorance of geography is obviously something that eco-nits wear with pride, just like their ignorance of physics.
Magnetic North vs Geographic (True) North Pole – GIS Geography
I went Googling to fact check “the North magnetic pole left Canada in about 1995“. Verification depends on whose line you use to decide where Canada ends, but the big idea is correct.
After all these years I’d thought a meteor impact had left a giant magnetic deposit in Northern Canada, I feel duped. So much of what I “learned” on grade school was nonsense – though I’ve consistently found high quality work wherever it had been produced by that generation. I guess its always been about which who you listen to.
You can’t go wrong by trusting Greta. After all, she can see the demon.
I feel no need to prolong her 5 minutes of fame. Why must we keep naming her?
They could probably find some farmers along the way with horses or oxen to tow them as needed. They can revel in the synchronicity of using pre-industrial technology in the form of horses and oxen to help them accomplish their trip powered by pre-industrial technology in the form of wind while the proletariat gaze at them wonderingly as they pass them in their internal-combustion engine vehicles.
“Their vehicle will be powered for much of the trip by solar and wind energy.”
Is their car amphibious? And just how “much” of the trip will be powered only by wind and solar? Are they going to skip all grid recharging stations that might be powered, in part or in whole, by fossil fuel or nuclear or hydro?
A PR stunt.
I forget the name of the plane but several years ago it made headlines by crossing the English Channel under human peddle power.
Glossimer Albatross I think not sure.
Yes, Gossamer Albatross and it won £100,000 for crossing the Channel. Guy Martin tried to set a world speed record in something similar during his series on setting world records.
Mad as a box of frogs! I don’t wish them ill but if they come to grief along the way I shall not be surprised. If so, it’ll be a metaphor for the lemming-like rush towards nut zero.
I wish them well in Mexico. The cartels have a habit of kidnapping errant souls in the northern deserts.
No reason to insult the frogs!
… she explained “It’s to dispel common myths that people have when they question electric vehicles – things like range and how far can they go.”
Range is how far they can go.
Electric cars are not unlike horses – yes, you can go as far as you desire, but both modes of transport require some downtime to recharge and refuel. The very first cars were referred to as “horseless carriages” (the carriage moves without being pulled by the horse), so I suppose EVs could be referred to as “electric horses” (a mode of transport that, like the animal, requires rest).
I was surprised to learn that when the wagon trains headed west across the plains, the people walked most of the way to spare the horses.
Aka “not very.”
How long does the recharge take when that hungry looking polar bear is eyeing you and your wife?
Beyond that, I wonder how long a Leaf would be able to keep that polar bear out?
With a live feed, we may find out.
Pun intended?
Not a problem. Al polar bears are gone, aren’t they? I’m sure I recall that polar bears are extinct, already gone. I think it was around 1985,95,05, 15. Well you know one of those dates must be right.
I think the last survivor was eaten by a penguin.
Thrown off a cliff by an angry walrus perhaps?
They are young, may they reach their target before retirement age 😀
Yes, I was going to independently remark that I may not be around to help celebrate the end of their journey, assuming that they actually get to their destination.
I remember a TV program, I think it was Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, where he remarked that if Conestoga Wagons could fly, and one left for the moon in 1849, the Apollo astronauts would have gotten to the moon before the wagon. Sometimes it is better to wait for a technology to mature before attempting to do something that the current technology is not suitable for.
“Sometimes it is better to wait for a technology to mature before attempting to do something that the current technology is not suitable for”
Sometimes is when risk tolerant market participants push leading edge past the current standard
(usually idealists like in the story – but it takes lots of them)
It will have been moved up to 95 by the time they reach journey’s end.
So they will be shipping their car and gear to somewhere in the Canadian Arctic to start their drive? That doesn’t sound very environmentally friendly.
The Canadian North is very sparsely populated and HUGE: the area is 13,000,000m2 for NWT and Nunavut, as compared to 90000 m2 for the UK. A Brit I met once was going to travel across the Cdn prairie to experience “vastness” for the first time in his life, vastness not being an attribute associated with European living. It sounds like this couple will be experiencing vastness too; and maybe also they can ponder the huge spaces between settlements, the vagaries of Northern supply chains whilst awaiting car parts, the changing weather conditions of a northern summer, the role of road conditions in maintaining civilization, to say nothing of challenging their ingenuity and skills at electric car repairs. And that’s the first month.
I think they’ll be as successful as all those tourists and climate scientists wanting to traverse the newly ice-free Northwest Passage. How has that worked out for them?
I wonder if they have considered whether their EV will have sufficient power to get up some of the steep roads they may encounter in mountainous areas.
Read the source story – they supposedly have done “this sort of thing” before. I tdoes not say they won a race, but that they “got there first”. I wonder what technicality they bent?
It appears that the standard of education in Scotland has sadly declined.
Education is no match for religious fervor.
Education is much overrated !
Clueless dolts.
I really want to see a copy of their itinerary. They’re going to have to avoid big mountains as much as possible (looking at you, Andes), but the jungles between Panama and Colombia dont have much in the way of travelable roads.
As mentioned many times – what route?
I don’t think they did the math. A wind turbine you can tow will reduce their range with drag. And it won’t produce very many miles of travel per hour. Even a household 120v 15amp plug only provides 3 miles per hour.
They will simply tow the turbine, charging the batteries while they go. Perpetual motion you see.
How does the math change if you start with the premise that any speed is better than zero or get-out-and-push? In other words distance possible is more important than movement rate.
Planned route … well … no.
From Google Maps:
https://bit.ly/40jy9xl