The Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) students drove the SUV, which doubles as a small campervan, from Tangier in northern Morocco across dry riverbeds, steep mountain passes, and loose sand before arriving at the Sahara desert three days later.
“It was an incredible trip with a positive ending. We were able to drive the entire trip on the sun’s energy and did not depend on charging stations"
Let’s put aside the desert part, where is there 1,000km of road in the Netherlands??
If you read the little summary, the test drive was in north Africa.
Yes, my point is that you can’t travel 1,000km in the Netherlands. While it’s somewhat facetious, I’m still valid in stating that the country is quite small.
I took a holiday to Eindhoven once, and wanted to give a gift to a friend from Amsterdam. He sent a mate on his bicycle to meet me. That wouldn’t be practicable in many other countries, even if they had the same cycling infrastructure.
That doesn’t detract from the success of the range of this vehicle, I’m just saying that it’s funny and excessive for the Netherlands. But really, that excess is only a good thing.
It’s a 400km drive from the north end to the south end of the country.
They could have easily done this test within the Netherlands. I bet they did far more testing than that on local highways before taking it to the desert.
Maybe, just a thought, they don’t plant to restrict sale of this car to just the Netherlands. Maybe they’ll use it all across the Benelux, maybe even all of Europe!
That’s a 7,5 hour bike ride, I call BS
Often a reason I hear for not taking EVs here (anecdotally so take with a grain of salt) is the fact that you can’t take it on a holiday because of frequent charging. This could be a reason why excess is good even for NL
This might blow your mind, so take a seat:
Car companies test and sell their cars outside of the country that the company is based.
VW sells cars outside of Germany. Mazda sell cars outside of Japan. Hyundai sells cars outside of South Korea.