New Car, New Plans

With this post, I would like to share some exciting news with you. I’ve bought a new car, solely to be used for my upcoming EV overlanding trips. And I have some interesting plans for the near future.

New Car

End of June I’ve picked up a new Audi Q8 e-tron at the customer center near the Audi headquarters in Ingolstadt.

By the way, I bought the car at a regular price at a normal Audi dealer with my own money. I’m not sponsored by Audi.

The Q8 e-tron is probably not the obvious first choice for most people if you think about an overlanding vehicle, even if you limit your selection to EVs only. But there are a couple of very good reasons for choosing exactly this car. I will explain this in detail, including all the potential alternatives I’ve evaluated, in a future blog post.

I’ve bought this car for a very specific trip that I’ve planned for next year.

Overlanding Trip 2025

In 2022/23 I traveled for one year through South America. I learned a lot during this trip and even checked out the charging infrastructure in some very remote places (see here). And I thoroughly enjoyed my time in South America. Now, I have a strong desire to repeat this experience with an EV. And I’m feeling well prepared for it. But this time I would like to not only explore South America but drive the whole Panamericana from Alaska to Argentina.

So far only two teams have managed to drive the whole Panamericana with an EV without a big support crew: Electric Americas and Pole-to-Pole Expedition, both in 2023.

And two more teams did it with a large support crew in the past (see here).

It is still a very challenging expedition and far from something that people do all the time. A lot of things can go wrong along the way. But that’s the overlanding spirit and part of the fun. I’m really looking forward to it.

Rive Maroc Rallye

I put a lot of thought into the modifications of my new car to make it suitable for long-time international overland travel. I will make a separate blog post about this topic in the next months.

But you never know how good a new setup is until you really test it under challenging overlanding conditions.

Therefore I was immediately interested when I read that the Rive Maroc Rallye for electric vehicles will take place in October this year in Southern Morocco. I thought that this might be the perfect test drive for my new car and its overlanding modifications.

The Rallye will also include a two-day Sahara challenge in the dunes near M’Hamid, close to the border with Algeria. The perfect place to test my new all-terrain tires and recovery gear.

Friday this week I will start my trip to Morocco and I have planned to post daily on Instagram about my experience. Please follow me on IG @ev_overlanding to get the latest updates.