Our Ludicrous Idea

A guest Blog from Silke – TeslaXCanada 

You all know how difficult it can be to follow up on a ‘ludicrous’ idea, but that’s exactly what my husband Rolf and I are doing this summer. If we learned one thing from our inspiration, Elon Musk, is that ‘ludicrous’ doesn’t mean impossible.

So, here we are, a few weeks away from our cross Canada trip in our 100% electric Tesla Model X towing a camping trailer with a solar panel roof. We are hoping to increase awareness and inspire people to switch to sustainable energy, such as solar, and sustainable transportation, such as 100% electric cars. Our motto: “Because future generations need our voice and our actions NOW!”

Our recent 15,000 km round trip in our Tesla Model S from Victoria British Columbia to Fort Lauderdale, Florida and back was a test run in more ways than one. Never having done social media or drone videography before, we faced and completed some challenging tasks and learned a lot in the process. 15,000 km in a 100% electric car later, we are almost ready to leave British Columbia for the second time and head East across Canada to Newfoundland. All we need now need is our Model X.

Rolf has been busy working on the eight 100 watt solar panels on the trailer’s roof, as well as the lithium batteries and inverter. A test has proven that we could charge the Model X from the camping trailer’s batteries at a speed of 6 km/hour. I have been busy spreading the word about our trip and organizing our participation in the Victoria Day Parade on May 23 as part of the Victoria EV Club’s electric car convoy.

Along our way across Canada, we hope to meet with lots of people, discussing their view of electric cars and solar energy, answering questions, sharing our experience with EV camping, showing that driving a 100% electric car over great distances is doable and fun and maybe even inspire others to follow in our footsteps.

We will face two major challenges on our trip across Canada – two that we are aware of, that is ;-). One unknown is the effect on driving range that towing our trailer will have. Second, there are no superchargers between Red Deer Alberta and the Great Lakes. We will rely heavily on Sun Country Highway chargers, other EV chargers and camp ground electricity. That also means that we really have no idea how far we can get per day. We do want to take it slow, though, since this is supposed to be a vacation, a trip that has been on our bucket list for many years. (We just never thought we would end up doing it in an electric car!). We want to enjoy and show off our beautiful country, our home of choice, that we love so much. Not to forget, I’m looking forward to some beautiful dog walks for our dog and co-pilot Kye.

A few places that we already know we want to visit are Red Deer and Drumheller in Alberta, Yorkton in Saskatchewan, Niagara Falls, Toronto and probably Windsor in Ontario, Saint-Nicolas in Quebec and, of course, Cavendish in the Prince Edward Islands. With regard to other places, we hope to hear from locals about the places they think are extraordinary and a must-see. We are going to cover our trip via our Blog TeslaXCanada.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Please, do not hesitate to get in touch with us with regard to questions, suggestions, or anything else you would like to share with us; and, please, let the world know about our ‘ludicrous’ idea! Thank you!

Rolf, Silke and dog Kye