At last, someone who’s feeling positive about Ireland’s electric car sales performance. “What I’ve heard is that Ireland is very good for electric car driving,” says Rainer Zietlow.
“It’s almost like Norway — it’s cold, it’s rainy, but the Government is doing so much in the background to give incentives and so on.”
Zietlow is, of course, a touch on the biased side.
He’s an electric car enthusiast, and is so enthusiastic that he’s actually driving a Volkswagen ID.Buzz electric MPV around the world to prove that electric cars can be viable transport even in the remotest parts of the world.
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Zietlow’s journey, which he expects will take him eight months, is already underway. It started at the Volkswagen factory in Hanover, where the ID.Buzz is built, and it had already covered 5,789km in just seven days (at the time of writing) when Zietlow nosed the Buzz off the ferry in Dublin.
Even just that figure should be a reassuring one for any electric car sceptics, not least because the Buzz does not have the greatest EV range in the world, with a useable driving range of around 400km.
Arriving in Ireland, Zietlow’s first priority was to get a signature for the official paperwork that certifies for the Guinness Book Of Records, which countries he has visited. With a planned 75 countries on the list, this should be a record-breaking journey, but it almost came apart in Ireland, when no one seemed to be on hand with the authority to sign the paperwork.
“When we enter each country, we have to take a film and some photos of the signing, for proof,” Zietlow told The Irish Times. “And there was no one around, so I suggested we should go and find a police officer.”
Zietlow actually found Garda Georgia Foley, who was not only happy to sign the paperwork, but who stunned Zietlow by effortlessly switching into fluent German, which she had learned when on an exchange programme in Germany some 20 years ago. “And then another officer comes up, and it turns out she played football in Germany,” laughs Zietlow. “It really was a super coincidence.”
Zietlow is clearly having fun, and is enjoying the fact that the Buzz is one of the biggest vehicles he’s yet used for one of his epic transcontinental journeys.
“It’s a good thing that this is the long-wheelbase Buzz, because we can fit a bed, a bed that’s 1.8 metres long, and it’s exactly the size we need so that I can sleep in there with a cameraman. Also, I think many people might see this and be convinced that if the Buzz can go around the world, then it can also do so in everyday business.”
Zietlow’s previous journeys have taken him deep into the Arctic in a specially-modified VW Amarok pickup, and from one end of the Panamerican Highway, from the tip of Chile to the edge of Alaska, in a Touareg 4x4 (although even that car had to be airlifted over the notorious Darien Gap, a supposedly impassable swamp that cuts through Panama and Colombia).
The circumnavigation in the Buzz starts in Scandinavia and north-west Europe, with the trip to Ireland an opportunity to not only give a rousing talk to VW Ireland employees, but also to make sure that the Buzz gets a good look at the Atlantic, before turning east, dropping down through Europe, across the Middle East, and on into Asia, reaching Japan before turning south through Indonesia and on into Australia and New Zealand.
The driving takes a small break then, with the Buzz going on a long sea voyage to South America, before heading up the Pacific coast of both South and North America, finishing in Canada.
No Africa on this round-the-world trip? Well, maybe… “It depends” says Rainer. “If Volkswagen decides that they want us to go to Africa, then we will. We’ll go through South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and Namibia, and that would bring the total number of countries we’re visiting from 75 up to 80.”
Obviously, the idea behind all of this is to demonstrate to a global car-buying public, one which is still wary of electric power, that EVs can cover monster mileage.
“Probably, when they see what we’re doing, they’ll go ‘wow, electric cars are not just for cities.’” said Zietlow, who also reckons that the work he’s doing with EVs might also convince people about their reliability. “You know, when I go to a garage in Germany, you pay maybe €120 or even €150 per hour to repair any problems with a car. Electric vehicles don’t need much repairing. When I’ve done these epic drives with electric vehicles, we’ve had not one problem, other than the occasional puncture. No issues with batteries, no problems with gearboxes, nothing.”
To make it through the arduous journey, the ID.Buzz is, perhaps surprisingly, pretty standard. The only modification, other than the bed, is that it’s been fitted with a clever on-board charging transformer, about the size of a small fridge.
In Europe, Australia, China, and America, there won’t be much of an issue getting a charge when needed, but in the more remote areas — Kyrgystan, for instance — Zietlow is going to have to beg and borrow energy from the likes of factories and large commercial operations which have three-phase power.
Plugged into this special transformer, that three-phase power can be boosted to up to 75kW of fast-charging energy, which will get the Buzz back on the road. Indonesia is another potential EV charging black-spot, but that’s less of a worry for Zietlow, as he’s sponsored by Singapore-based tyre company Giti, which has massive factories in Indonesia, and they’re already primed and ready to assist the epic electric journey.
It’s Indonesia that Zietlow is looking forward to the most. “Indonesia is a very nice place, with lovely people, and it’s good to drive there. The roads are a little narrow and tricky in places, but you know it’s the smell of the country. You know that smell that hits you when you get off an aeroplane in a new place? It’s a very sweet smell in Indonesia, and it’s lovely to be there.”
I wonder if Zietlow will find any other German-speaking police officers out there? You can follow his round-the-world journey at idbuzz-worldtour.com.
