WAVE 2014 - summary

We were so busy during the last days of the rally and afterwards, that we were not able to do regular updates. Now WAVE is over, everyone, including us, got back home/ to the office so it’s time for our last post. Covering 2000km electrically as part of the WAVE was a great adventure, even if tiring at times. We presented the cars in cities and at schools, always bringing forward the message: e-mobility is the way to go. We showed that electric cars can go long distances, high up the mountains, provide for a great driving pleasure and, the most important for us, they can be fast charged in series and put back on the road quickly, even if they have an empty battery. 

 

Our purpose at the WAVE was promoting CHAdeMO fast charge. We did it not only by speaking about CHAdeMO at numerous stops and giving out the badges (see a special mention on the badges below), but most of all by providing charging to CHAdeMO-compatible teams using an EVTEC portable charger. Although we were not a supporting team at the WAVE, we still provided a great deal of juice to the rally-participants. The portable charger proved especially valuable:

• during a night charge in Garching one phase went down and thus the cars that were plugged into it found themselves empty - and with 130 km to cover as part of the next stage of the rally (team Still Married and Watt-Wrum),
• After a 131 km driving, partly up hill from Garching to Schwangau (8 teams charged),
• When a team arrived at Wolpertshausen with 5km of automomy and still had 30km to cover to the hotel (team Marie and Benoit),
• before traversing Furka pass - climbing to 2400masl with our EVs, a very energy-vore exercise (10 out of 11 teams benefited from the CHAdeMO top up).

Of course, the charging was also important at other points of the journey, but its impact was less visible and much more about 'working behind the scenes'. Giving a CHAdeMO-charge to EVs that needed it meant that we were often one of the last ones to leave from charging spots and the last ones to arrive at the hotel. But, our efforts were not for nothing. The winners of the 2^nd and 3^rd place in the ‘Popular’ WAVE category were teams driving Nissan LEAFs that both said after having been given the awards ‘without CHAdeMO, it would have been impossible’. Although we as a team did not win anything, it is indeed great to know that we contributed to the success of others.

1/2 of the winner of the 2nd place, team Watt-Wrum on top of Mountain Rigi with its trophy:

Team Still Married, 3rd place winner, with their trophy 

And here, Still Married right after they recieved their trophy calling CHAdeMO team to thank them for the charging and to say 'without CHAdeMO, it would not have been possible'.

 

What also needs mention was the team work of the CHAdeMO-family, i.e. teams driving CHAdeMO-compatible EVs. Special thanks to teams: Marie and Benoit, StillMarried, Watt-Wrum, Chargemap, Blue Drive and Slovakia who were always there to help, be it in finding 32A plug to plug the charger, or an adapter from 63A to 32A, or enough power, or, last but not least, taking the 65kg charger out of the booth. 

Group photo at night

  

Group photo day time

As part of our CHAdeMO-promotion efforts we were giving out the 'I love CHAdeMO badges'. They were, as always, welcomed and worn with pride. And, as we found out at the final WAVE stop, mountain Rigi, they are now famous and circulate way beyond our own give-aways. While waiting for the presentation of our team to the public gather at the finish, we were approached by a gentleman with our badge pinned to his shirt who said 'I got it from my friend from France'. No better way to show the importance of CHAdeMO for e-mobility!

Conclusion: Was WAVE tiring? Yes, very much so. Was it easy? No. Was it worth it? OF COURSE YES.

And here are some highlights of the day 7 and 8

DAY 7

Charge stop in Sion

GPS leading us through 'the shortest route', i.e. through rose-lined vinyards

Charge stop in Le Bouveret

Arriving in Murten.

Presentation by CHAdeMO Association to the WAVE participants

DAY 8
Picturesque route of the day 8

Charge stop in Interlaken (literally - between the lakes)

...and arrival at the mountain Rigi. 

Charging the WAVE - statistics

Before delving into the summary of the last days of the WAVE, here are some visual representations of how many times we charged and whom.

Note: Those numbers are only about the EVTEC's portable CHAdeMO charger that we carried on board of our Peugeot Partner and do not include individual CHAdeMO charges that teams had with stationary fast chargers along the way.

 

And here are the teams that charged with us (yes, there were 11 of them!)

Wave Day 5 and 6 - in pictures

Wave Day 4

3rd day of the Wave went past under the theme of charging. 4th, on the other hand, was all about visiting very special places. We started by crossing the mountains at the highest car-accessible point in Germany, at over 1400 above the sea level.

Beautiful views and winded roads were with us for about 50km. And although climbing up the mountains ate a lot of our battery, we were able recuperate a lot of it while going down. 

After, we arrived in a school were school children were judging our looks: the colour, the design and the decoration of our EV. 

Then another short stop in Begrenz where e-mobility conference was being held and we were off to the highlight of the day - a visit to a Zeppelin factory. All 80 Wave teams gathered in a huge hangar but even this gathering of the cars was not enough to overshadow the enormous Zeppelin towering over all of us. 

We charged, took Wave photos, ate and were off again, heading for a Bodensee ferry crossing. All Wave vehicles were packed onto a specially ordered ferry, probably the first time in the history of that ferry company that it was transporting cars, but not a single one of them had a combustion engine motor. 

Beautiful views, wonderful breeze, both our EV and it's pilots felt very much rejuvenated afterwords. And the day still wasn't finished.

Leaving the ferry behind we went into the Harbour in Konstanz, parked our EVs by the lake and joined the special e-mobility event organised for the occasion of welcoming the Wave. 

1h later we were off again, this time to the Islamd of Mainau. Island's very owner, Contess Bernadette, greeted us upon the entry. 

The day finished with a presentation by Chris Paine, the director of 'who killed an electric car'.

Day 4 was so light back that the only car that we charged with a CHAdeMO charger was ourselves! But that was to change on day 5 (coming as a next post).