Day 103 | Leaving Oslo

Day 103 | Saturday June 25

Since a few weeks I had been in touch with Jeroen, a Dutchman living here in Norway, close to Lillehammer. He introduced me to the Norwegian EV association and gave me some more tips. Last week he asked me if I’m stopping by at his place but unfortunately I has to answer no as his lives out of the route. I invited him to go together to the presentation of the SP:01 for the general public, which was today. He was very enthusiastic about this so around 11 we met there.
Jeroen is a musician and plays the guitar. Together with a friend in Lofoten who is an photograph they made a DVD, Jeroen composing the music for the pictures his friend shot. He gave me a copy and you might hear is music one of my videos soon.
At the presentation there were also some electric motorbikes and Jeroen as an motorlover he took the opportunity to test one. When he got back after a few minutes his hair already unfolded he enjoyed it.

https://www.facebook.com/PlugMeIn/photos/a.357717747770627.1073741829.211949022347501/504078846467849/?type=3&theater

At the presentation I met 2 people who also had a plan to make a roadtrip with an electric car. They have this project called Toughtleader Global and want to travel all around Europe in 1 month to visit eco resorts. I thought they were here to present their plans and find some contacts but I was surprised to find out they already are starting this Wednesday! And they don’t have a car yet! Pretty amazing.
So they are doing videos along the way and wanted to interview me. I believe it will be aired in South African TV in a few months.

I rushed back to Oyvind’s place to get my stuff as I had to go to the next plugger. I thanked them for their hospitality and kindness, I stayed at their place 4 nights so I was very thankful.

My next hosts live in Skien but they were BBQ’ing in another place. I put the address in my navigation and when I was there I send them a text. When I told them where I was they didn’t know this place and asked me to put another adress in the GPS. We found out I was 65km away from them… Damn! I didn’t have enough power so it was necessary to stop in a tiny place.
Fortunately charging stations are everywhere here and with the key and RFID chips I received from elbil.no, Vortum and Grønn I can charge nearly at every station.

The last days I had the feeling I loose range more easily and bumps felt less hard so I had the feeling the pressure of the tires was not right. I stopped at a gasstation to check it and actually this was the first time I had to do this myself. I didn’t completely understand how the thing works and was afraid to blow up the tires. In the gasstation were 3 guys sitting so I asked them if they could help. One of the guys drove an EV too and really liked my project. They explained me what to do, listened to my story and continued their way. A few minutes later they came back and offered me a huge pack of drinks. Pretty awesome guys!

Around 23.30 I arrived in Skien at Saskia’s place, a Dutchie. She lives here with her husband and child but they were already asleep. We had a short chat and because she waited for me a long time she was pretty tired so we plugged in the car and went to bed.

Day 101 & 102 | So much to do in Oslo

Day 101 | Thursday June 21

My host Oyvind has a couple of drones which he uses to make video’s for companies. We drove out of Oslo and took great videos of my car. Here is one clip, I will make a compilation later this week.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BHAHZqsEi7g/?taken-by=plugmeintravel

After this I went to town. In March there was a Norwegian magazine who published an article about Plug Me In, now I arrived here I got in touch with them and they wanted to interview me, I will share the article when it’s online.

In the evening I had a meeting where I had been looking forward to for a while. Bjorn Nyland is a famous youtuber who makes videos about his Tesla, which he calls the Millenium Falcon. He shares facts about this car for instance about the autopilot or the Bioweapon Defense Mode.
I wanted to know from him how he got interested in this and info about driving electric cars in Norway. He was actually very interested in my car so he made a movie about that! I hope he will publish it soon. It was really nice to meet Bjorn, just like on his videos he is a nice and funny guy.

https://www.facebook.com/PlugMeIn/photos/a.357717747770627.1073741829.211949022347501/503692469839820/?type=3&theater

Day 102 | Friday June 24

Finally I had a little bit of time to do some sightseeing. First I wanted to visit Holmenkollen, the national ski arena were many championships and Olympic Games where held. I put the wrong address in the GPS so it took me one hour longer to get there. The jump is very well designed. Of course now it’s not in use because there’s now snow but still a lot of tourists (read: Japanese people) come to visit. They made a zip line from the start until the finish, pretty cool idea.
Then I drove to the centre, an incentive for electric cars is that you can park anywhere for free! I visited the opera house which is also a beautiful location. I’m starting to like architecture in general more and more.

A few days earlier my host Paal told me that Detroit Electric would be presenting their new car on Saturday. Detroit Electric was responsible for converting the car I’m driving to fully electric and the Plug Me In kick-off was at their office in Houten, NL. That’s why I was enthusiastic about this. I send them an mail if it was possible to come too and they even invited me to the VIP launch party today.
When I arrived I was surprised that Willem, the Dutch boss of DE was also their accompanied with some of his colleagues. Very nice to catch up with them. I even met the CEO of the company who was seriously enthusiastic about the project and is going to sponsor me! How I will hear next week.

They unveiled to SP-01, and sport scar build on the Lotus Elise. It has a 288km range and a manual gear, which is very unique for an electric car.