Plenty of fuel

Day 7: Plenty of fuel

For once the day didn’t start at 6 or 7 in the morning. We were able to sleep in, since we only had to be at our next stop, Solothurn, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon.

The SunCar team used the spare time to fully recharge their batteries (cars and students) and then slowly but surely set off to Solothurn.

In Solothurn it was “business as usual”, the mayor was there and some other politicians, who showed great interest in the WAVE.

Cars standing in position

The team soon noticed, that todays distance that had to be covered were fairly short. The SunCar was fully charged and ready to go. We decided to give as much tours for interested people as possible, showing that electric cars are everything else but boring.

Around 4 pm we left to drive to Gelterkinden, the origin of the Twike. The drive there was stunning. We decided no to use the highway, but drive through the countryside. Since the batteries were full, we finally had the chance to try the SunCar’s sports mode. In this mode the car unleashes it full power. Driving it makes you speechless. The powerful acceleration in combination with the perfect suspension makes our car to a true king of the road.

Arriving in Gelterkinden

Arriving in Gelterkinden we were greeted by the actual inventor of the Twike and his family. They prepared a BBQ for all wavers and after dinner, he held a brief and very interesting presentation about the Twike.

Our overnight stay was in Kilchberg. It was in the middle of nowhere but we had a cute young lady who brought us to our rooms. With a big smile on our faces we went to sleep, what a great day….

East or Westside

Day 6: East or Westside

Before the sun rose, we got up to have our breakfast at the Hotel Steingletscher. The temperature fell to under 0°C overnight, therefore the water on the road and the windscreens of some cars were frozen. But all this won’t stop the wavers for leaving on time. Unfortunately one of the relay (behind the driver’s seat) was switching from On/Off so fast, that it looked like a real problem. While we tried to fix this, the others made the “waving”.

The frozen SunCar

The drive downhill and the roads along the lake of Brienz was amazing. Arrived in Interlaken we caught every sunray to heat our bodies with the power of solar energy. Luis Palmer held a presentation about the wave and his trip around the world with his solartaxi (www.solartaxi.com).

After a 30km ride to Thun, our cameraman proposed to us to do some interviews and a photo shooting with the Suncar at a place with this gorgeous view in the background there were mountains and the deep blue Thuner lake. After cleaning the car to high gloss, we took a bath in the Thunersee, which was a real refreshment!

Photo shooting

The overnight stop was in Bern at the new shopping center, called “Westside”. The wavers were allowed to park their cars in the middle of the tram station. We invited some interested peoples for a short ride in our car. Afterwards we visited the nice swimming pools, for which we received free entrances. On the four kinds of water slide we had a lot of fun, at the expense of the attendant! After  our dinner, we went to the cinema. At the half of the film we concerned, because we all felt asleep (our batteries were too weak…). With the last power we managed to get to the hotel room and layed on the bed. 

Brrr....it's cold up here

Day 5: Brrr....it's cold up here

The day started as early as the others and so we left our “hotel” at 7 o’clock in the morning and drove to Immensee, where we visited a gymnasium.

We were served a great breakfast and afterwards the students had to rate our cars on a scale of 1-10, depending on how much they overall like them.

The SunCar placed second closely behind the ZeroTracer. The SunCar also took the winner of the  “ride your bike to school” competition for a little spin. The smile on the kids face, after getting out of the car, once again showed us that we are involved in a great project.

Sutdents in Immensee

Leaving Immensee we drove to Stansstad. Here the city welcomed us and we enjoyed a nice buffet in a hotel close to our charging position. Most people used the good WIFI connection to update the Blogs and Facebook profiles.

If the SunCar ever breaks down...

We then set of towards Innertkirchen where we charged our cars at KWO. KWO is an electricity company with a huge hydro power plant. We even got a tour to the turbines, which was really interesting, but very loud.

After the guided tour it was time for our cars to face their next real challenge. We had to climb the Sustenpass (from 700m to 1800m). The weather was freezing and it had just rained/snowed a couple of hours before.

King of the hill

The SunCar mastered this challenge with no problems. In fact, once again it showed the agility and power of a true sports car.

At the hotel we enjoyed a tasty dinner and a punch to keep us warm.

It looks like, that we will share our room with some other wavers. We might cuddle up to keep ourselves warm through the night…brrrr it’s cold up here!

A Cinderella Story

Day 4: A Cinderella Story

Since we had to keep the car charging in Buchs while the batteries were balancing, we only arrived at our hotel in Wildhaus at 0:30. The way to the hotel was a beautiful mountain road. The SunCar was able to show its true sports car spirit, even though it was raining heavily.

At the hotel a problem occurred no one of us has never faced before – the key of the hotel room would not fit. Standing outside in the pouring rain in the middle of nowhere, suddenly a fellow waver, Jack (check out his german blog at: www.may-city.de), appeared out of the dark. He had a room in a different hotel and told us that plenty of rooms were free and unlocked. Wet and tiered, but very happy to have a roof above our heads we followed Jack back to his hotel (more a hostel) and went to bed.

Our hostel room in Wildhaus

The next day began quite early and cold, since for some reason a window in our room decided to open by itself.

Leaving Wildhaus we set of to Mosnang, our first stop of the day. There we stopped at a school and got simple breakfast. Each team had one minute to present their cars to the cheerful students (age between 8-12). The school kids rated the cars 1-10 depending on their looks. Of course the SunCar did great in this competition. 

School kids getting ready for "waving"

After Mosnang it was time to go towards Zurich, unfortunately not the city itself, but to Urdorf and Schlieren. Renault welcomed us in Urdorf and the company Smile in Schlieren.  The team used the time to relax and recharge the batteries of our cars. At this point we pretty much felt like Cinderella. Sitting in the cold and rainy weather, having nothing to do but sit around, in addition to the sleep depravity of the last couple of days, our mood wasn’t too great. 

Presentation of Renault E-Cars

At just the right moment Louis Palmer stepped in front of the group (just like a good fairy) and told us, that we get dinner at one of the biggest and nicest castles in the canton of Zug. To be honest, he didn’t exaggerate one bit. The castle was amazing (even in the rain). Also, the owner of the castle was really friendly. We took him for a spin in the SunCar and he was amazed with our work. At this point we definitely felt like the “transformed”  princes, but as the story goes, it soon struck 12. 

Cinderella on the balkony of the castle

Castle at Night

We were assigned to sleep at an apartment of a rotary club member’s mother. The place was nice, but unfortunately the beds for us were missing. We had to sleep on thin mattresses on the floor. It turned out to be more comfortable than we assumed and so we fell to sleep, still thinking about the great time we had a the castle…   

Back in Switzerland

Day 3: The change of seasons

The first stop-over was in Bellinzona on the Piazza del Sole. Our gps leaded us on a narrow street to the top of a hill with a castle, just to tell us to take now the stairs down to the place.. Hopefully this was the last time we were fooled by our navigation system..

Team SunCar

View down on the Piazza del Sole

In Bellinzona we were welcomed by the city major and after a sight-seeing tour we enjoyed a  delicate lunch.

Ahead of us now lay the crossing of the first mountain pass in Switzerland, the San Bernardino. Nearly on the top we stopped again for recharging, because our problem with the balancing was still not solved.

Pictures taken out of the SunCar on the San Bernardino

Because of the not really advanced charging infrastructure (1 phase at about 8 amp) we went to look for another way to charge the batteries, and so at the local fire department we could load with three phases at 16 amps.

Next stop was Buchs, the hometown of the NTB. Alsoe the SunCar was built in Buchs (Video).
Therefore a big feast was prepared and for the first time in days we had some time to relax.

To make things even better the balancing finally worked, ans so we may now enjoy the full capacity of the batteries again..

one thing remains: Soon after crossing the alps the weather changed.. from the summery Italy and Ticino we suddenly are in the midst of autumn rain and wind..

Day of Truth

Day 2: Problem solved

At the beginning of day two we seemed to be one of the lucky teams. The self made transformer stopped working in the middle of the night and three of the cars only charged to about 25%, not enough to cover the more than 97 km long stage to Novara.

Piazza Martiri

On the way to Novara we had slight navigational problems and ended up trying to charge our vehicles on the wrong “Piazza Martiri”. After blowing a couple of fuses and being frustrated with the bad charging infrastructure, we were approached by an angry old Italian lady. Wildly moving her hands and yelling she tried to explain to us, that this is not the Piazza we are looking for, and that she never heard of the WAVE rallye. The problem was, that neither us, nor any of the four other teams trying to load their cars, was able to speak Italian. With hands and feet we managed to find out that we were in a suburb of Novara and the correct piazza was in the city center.

Seeing the cars leave calmed the old lady down and she even seemed to have a small smile on her face. What she didn’t know was, we never reinstalled the three blown fuses…

Finally making it to the correct piazza (also after breaking a few minor traffic laws such as: ignoring one way street signs or entering a pedestrian only zone) with our four-car convoy we were able to recharge our cars.

Monza

With nearly full batteries we set of to Monza. There, we were welcomed by the major and a couple of other, as we assume, highly ranked politicians.

We were given an interesting sightseeing tour trough the old city center, which ended in a small courtyard. There we were served something that looked like risotto, but all of us weren’t really sure if it was. But our good mood could not be troubled by the lack of food in our stomachs and a couple of short nights. Happy we went back to our car, buckled up and were good to go.

After 200 m - big disappointment: At some point our car decided to stop charging and so our batteries were only 20% full. This meant that we had another two hours of charging ahead of us. That meant that we would miss the planned event in Mendrisio. If this wasn’t bad enough, the car would not start by key after it had charged. We couldn’t identify the problem so we decided to reprogram the car’s software, so that we could drive it by using a laptop. And this is then how we left, with a pretty bad feeling in our stomach..
(After a few meters we noticed we still needed the key because of the steering wheel lock, haha..)

At the borderline of Switzerland

Feeling like winners we arrived in Mendrisio with two hours delay.
We just arrived in time for dinner, and guess what was on the menu: risotto!

But against all fears, it was really good this time. Everyone enjoyed this wonderful dinner in the city hall of Mendrisio, especially after such a long day.

Directly after finishing our dinner, we went searching for the cars error.

Amazingly, after only 15 minutes Roger found a half-broken fuse. It was easily replaceable and our car was fix within minutes. Very happy the team enjoyed a couple of beers while waiting for the car to charge completely. We were hoping that the batteries would automatically start balancing, after it was charged. We waited untill 0.30 o’clock , but unfortunately nothing happened. We decided that we had to go to bed, since our alarms were set to 6:30 in the morning.

Let’s just hope the batteries will balance tomorrow