In the cool desert morning, Simon and Emilis have set off on their attempt to break the current distance record for a production electric vehicle.

Motor Sport Manager from the South Australian Motor Sport Board, Jeff Mattner,
applies a seal to the Roadster’s “fuel tank”.

At 6am, the weather is lovely and cool at the moment, with a slight breeze (not a headwind! Hoorah!). It’s an auspicious start to what will be one of the most interesting – and exciting – days of the event.

We’ve been asked a lot of questions about what we’re doing, and people are interested to hear that the basic plan for today involves driving at a steady speed of around 55kph, with driver changes every two hours to avoid fatigue. That means travelling pretty slowly for around 9 hours or so, before recharging once the battery is flat (and the record is broken!), and then driving at a more sensible speed into Coober Pedy. It’ll be around 12 hours of driving time, plus 3+ hours of charging, so you can see we’re settling in for a looong day, even by our standards.

Erring on the side of caution,
Kingsley applies an additional seal to the generator.

I’ve got a few hours this morning to “relax” before heading off to meet up with the Roadster at Kulgera, which is around 300km from Alice Springs – if you’re following at home, our intention is to cross the SA/NT border and end up somewhere around Marla, which is 450-odd kilometres away. To take a better look, keep an eye on our tracker, remember the Roadster is Agile-Spot-1!

Right now though, it’s breakfast time for those of us not on the road yet, so I’ll head off and do that, and hopefully round up some more results from the other cars.

Stay tuned – today is going to be very exciting (even if it’s very slow…)!

Jessica Citizen

Simon Hackett, as he sets off to break the world distance record for a production electric vehicle