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Converted Electric Nissan Qashqai Completes Round-World Trip

 
987 views May 17, 2011
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Moto-Mundo World Electric Tour Team

Moto-Mundo World Electric Tour Team

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There are two types of people in the world: those who like long-distance trips and those who don’t.  

Danish adventurers Hjalte Tin and Nina Tin Rasmussen are most certainly the former. Last week the couple celebrated the completion of the Moto Mundo World Electric Tour - a ten month trip around the world in an all-electric Nissan Qashqai.

Converted by Danish firm AfutureEV from a gasoline Nissan Qashqai, their car was equipped with an 60 kilowatt motor and a 40kilowatt-hour lithium-ion Dow Kokam battery pack.

Capable of a top speed of 80 mph, the converted Qashqai could cover approximately 124 miles per charge and recharged its batteries to 90% in around 6 hours. 

Leaving Copenhagen on June 25 2010, the couple drove through Denmark, Norway, sweden, Estonia, Russia, Mongolia, China, The United States, Spain France, Switzerland , Germany, Poland and Holland, covering 18,640 miles in ten months. 

Moto-Mundo World Electric Tour Team

Moto-Mundo World Electric Tour Team

Enlarge Photo

The challenge took in several exhibitions en-route, including the EXPO 2010 in Shanghai, the Detroit Motor Show and the Monte Carlo Rally for electric cars, finishing 8th behind the winning 2011 Tesla Roadster. 

Unlike the Racing Green Endurance team which completed an all-electric trip along the trans-american highway in November last year, Hjalte Tin and Nina Tin Rasmussen did not have a support team traveling with them, meaning the converted Qashqai was the only form of transport on the trip. 

The trip put both car and drivers to the test, with extreme heat in Russian and one of the coldest winters on record in the U.S.  The team were also the first to cross the Gobi desert in an all-electric vehicle. 

The adventure is already being immortalized in a book and television production about the trip, details of which are expected in the near future. 

While the Moto Mundo World Electric Tour may not be the first team to drive an electric-powered car around the world they have taken electric cars into areas of the world where electric cars had never been seen before, helping push the spread message of electric cars far and wide. 

[Moto-Mundo.com]

 





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Comments (5)

  1. MichaelThwaite avatar Michael Thwaite Posted: 5/17/2011 1:37pm PDT

    I love road trips! Battling against the odds is what it's all about. Why would you climb a mountain when there are perfectly good helicopters? Why would you take an EV round the world when there are perfectly good Toyota Landcruisers? Easy; EV's do everything else better than old fashioned cars but range is still the challenge, everyone knows that, but a challenge is a challenge & who's going to back away from that?
     
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  2. By Luke Posted: 5/18/2011 12:40am PDT

    @Michael
    I can't disagree, but there still is a problem as a power source. Batteries are big and heavy. Elon Musk belives in ultra capacitors, but they won't solve the problem either (don't get me wron I am really into EV) because the problem isn't really how long it takes to charge because we can't even support that much energy (e.g. Roadster has less than 60kWh battery so if we want to charge in 5 minutes we need to provide 720 kW - more actually because charger isn't 100% efficient - these are simple calulations done in 2 min pease don't take them as anything super accurate).
    So at the moment if nobody invents something that would allow us to have electricity in the car without charging it we won't get any better than now.
     
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  3. By Keith Ruddell Posted: 5/18/2011 10:26am PDT

    @Luke
    Why does an electric car need to recharge in 5 minutes? I commute 20 minutes each way and stop to buy groceries and other things 2-3 times a week. So the car is in use, roughly an hour a day. That leaves 23 hours left in the day to recharge it. For me an EV would work just fine.
    If you go on frequent long trips, with no access to fast charging or time constraints, then EVs probably aren't a good choice at this time.
     
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  4. By Luke Posted: 5/18/2011 11:05am PDT

    @Keith
    I see your point and to be honest EV would work for me as well, but we will never be able to do anything more exciting with EV's (e.g Dakar race and that sort of stuff). That would require batteries with more capacity and charging them wold take ages.
    I just wanted to point that unless somebody invents romething really pushing technology forward EV will be commuter only forever. Yes, we don't need more but we want to entertain and we like motorsports and for now ev only work for 1/4 mile (I am not saying it's wrong, but it's like paradox - cars won't get much better really, people want more capacity and charge their cars in insane rates even that they dont need it. All I wanted to point is that there is nor much more to achive.
     
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  5. By Noel Park Posted: 5/18/2011 4:29pm PDT

    AWESOME!! All credit to the intrepid Danes.
    #4 Luke - I am an amateur race car driver and I dearly love going as fast as I can. Even so, I am really enjoying the game of trying to squeeze the maximum AER out of my Volt. Take that OPEC!
     
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