A few minutes later however, he turned up looking very dishevelled. In a triumph of intelligence, Nik had decided to bed down in a flower patch outside which was riddled with sprinklers, and at around 4pm they turned on and he got soaked. But rather than coming inside, he decided to sleep on the concrete outside the office, and when a member of staff arrived, they were concerned to find what looked like a homeless person passed out in front of their office! But upon being ruffled awake, Nik introduced himself and all was well as he walked into the office to join the rest of us.

Most of the time, RGE is super keen to carry on moving and getting the miles under our belt. But this time we had to stop and take care of a growing problem; laundry. I can’t speak for everyone else, although I suspect they were in a similar situation, but I had absolutely no clean clothes left. So we had to take a break and go and do some wash our clothes and generally clean ourselves up. This being completed, we reassembled at Rinehart and gave our hosts a couple of spins round the car park, packed up, and started our journey south to Yreka.

Today was another one of those journeys where months before you start dreaming about it, for today we were to enter California on our epic road trip. Romantic notions of the sunny summer of ’69 and the accompanying hippie songs ran through our minds…we were in the mood for California! It was a long drive to Yreka though, with huge gradients in between, so we had to take it at only 50-55mph on the highway. In fact, we had been warned about this particular mountain we had to cross as it was high, around 4,500ft, and right at the edge of our range which means we were driving uphill with very limited charge left.

At around midnight we hit the mountain. Up and up we went, and suddenly signs for local ski resorts started popping into view, and the air was certainly becoming cooler. But by now, our state of charge was dropping vast as we drove upwards, and soon we had hit zero! We were now running on our “reserve tank” and with no end of the hill in sight, the state of charge situation starting looking a little dire.

But finally, signs for the summit appeared and the welcome site of a 7 mile downhill stretch beckoned. By this time however, we were on -3% state of charge, and the regenerative breaking, whereby we put energy back into the battery pack when going downhill, was most definitely needed! Off the throttle I came, letting gravity do the work. At the bottom of the hill and with the Californian border in sight, the state of charge read 1.9%, and we coasted all the way up to the border gate.

“Border?” I hear you say, “There are no borders between US states!”. Well that’s what we thought too until we were asked to stop. I was expecting a thorough questioning about what the car was and why it was here, but instead I was stopped by an elderly farmer-looking and moustached man and asked if I had any fresh fruit on me. I did not, and neither did the support vehicle, so we were able to pass without hindrance! Apparently diseases in fresh fruit brought into California can cause problems with their crops, hence the strictness.

Anyway, back to the driving. We still had a good 12 miles to go to our recharging point, and the state of charge was falling once again. After driving very carefully, in a process we have come to call “EcoFoot”, we made it to the Holiday Inn in Yreka, which fortunately had an adjacent RV park to charge off. And just to add more flavour to the evening, which was by now very late (somewhere in the region of 3am) we got stopped by the police. But this time they were not even interested in looking at our documents, and were far keener to hear about the car and project. I did a few skids in the gravel to impress upon them the potential of electric vehicles, and then headed over to a charging bay to give the car some much needed juice.

By now we were absolutely exhausted, and not even the hotel’s pool was enough to tempt us away from rushing towards our beds at the Holiday Inn. But what from little we could see in the dark, the surrounding scenery looked stunning and we were looking forward to the morning when we could take a look around and drive through the area.

The first order of business was to transfer all the equipment from the RV and pack it neatly and accessibly in the much smaller support vehicle. This took quite some time because as we were packing we were also cleaning up the RV ready to be handed back later that day. Fortunately, Charis had agreed to join us for a few days after Vancouver and so we had a competent woman to help us get organised. After a few hours we ready to head back to the Fairmont Hotel to pick up our charged car. Just before the convoy was due to set off however, Richard received a call and found out his wife was in labour and so he made a speedy departure back up to Vancouver. We would like to wish Richard and his wife all the best for the latest addition to their family!

However, our convoy was not to remain light for long because at the Fairmont we were due to meet Ben Pullman and Dan, reporter and photographer respectively for the famed CAR magazine. They were due to stay with us until San Francisco to write a long article about the project. While we went off to the Fairmont to pick up the SRZero, Toby and Clemens took the RV to the long stay car park at the SeaTac (Seattle-Tacoma) airport where we were to drop it for the rental company to pick up the next day.

Upon arriving at the Fairmont, the day’s first surprise awaited us; the car was not fully charged. In fact it was nowhere close…it only had 53%! Clearly some personnel on the morning shift who was not familiar with our arrangement with the night staff had disconnected the plug after about 4 hours of charging. This was nowhere near enough charge to get to Portland, so we had to schedule an emergency stop elsewhere. And this is where the RV stepped in for the last time to help us out; we were going to charge off its onboard generator for the first and last time. So the support vehicle, SRZero, and Ben’s car headed off to the airport for a quick emergency charge.

After spending a few hours at the airport charging the car, we continued on our way south to Portland. In fact, our final destination for the day was a town called Wilsonville about 12 miles south of Portland, and home to Rinehart Motion Systems, a silver sponsor of ours who built us our custom motor controllers. We had been promised beer and a barbeque at their facility so we were very keen to push ahead and get there as soon as possible!

It was a pretty eventless journey, with the car performing very well, and really eking out every last joule of energy from its limited charge. At about 8pm, we finally pulled into Rinehart’s car park and was greeted by the entire company. It was quite a weird experience as we had been speaking to members of the company for so long without having any knowledge of what they looked like, so it was great to finally put names to faces after about 9 months of skyping!

As always, we had to ensure that the car got fed before we did, so out came the cables and plugs. However, this was possibly the best bunch of people in the world to help us come up with a quicker solution for charging, and very quickly they had located some 600 volt power supplies from the back of their workshop. After hooking 2 of these units up in parallel with our one existing charger, we were able to charge quickly for the first time since Whitehorse, and so in the knowledge that the car would be charged by early the next morning, we tore our eyes away from our baby and onto the food!

Nachos, pizza and salad were waiting for us as the barbeque got going, with delicious smelling burgers, chicken wings and salmon cooking away. Beers abounded and the whole atmosphere was extremely friendly and jovial. While eating, we had the privilege of being shown around their facility and some of the cutting edge technology they have been developing. We were blown away; some of the equipment that they have built in-house completely boggled the mind, and compared to other products we have seen on the market, it would appear that they were way above the curve!

By now it was getting late, and food-induced tiredness was setting in. Larry, the CEO of Rinehart, showed us into the office where he offered us the opportunity to crash on the floor. Given the fact that we had slept the previous night in a car park, the clean, carpeted floor looked extremely welcome, and we gladly accepted the offer! After a quick internet fix, it was time to crash out!

A massive thanks to Larry, Chris, Azham, Patty, Kyle and all the rest of the Rinehart bunch for feeding us, accommodating us, and of course sponsoring us!