Phileas Fogg and Monty Python Arthur meets 400-mile eco trip.

Is there a relationship between movie legends like Mr. Fogg and King Arthur to our trip from Durham to Cardiff? 

At a first glance the answer is no… 

After some thought however, the answer is not so clear.

There have been dozens of road trip movies in the global movie industry, many of them related to a mad idea of some friends or a love story somewhere in the middle of the European or US motorways.  Does this adventure have such romantic characteristics? Of course not. We are simply investigating the technical implications of driving an EV for several hundred miles. Many of our friends have found the adventure bizarre - something along the lines of “A Mexican and a Greek driving cross-country in an EV, yeah right”  Well, quasi-lunacy is exactly what relates our trip to cinema and literature.

In London, October 2 1872 Phileas Fogg bet that he can travel around the world in 80 days. Together with his servant Jean Passepartout, they began this crazy trip around the planet using all kinds of transport. This story of course is a product of the imagination of French novelist Jules Verne that would be brought to cinemas in 1956. Britain is no planet, but it certainly seems long when planning an EV route!

I shall now introduce a similar story: King Arthur crossing the country in search of knights to join him in his court at Camelot just by “holding two empty halves of coconuts and bangin’ ‘em together” making a horse sound. Comparing the way that King Arthur travelled and the lunacy of our plan, the parallel is evident: crazy people travelling in an environmental friendly “vehicle” except this time around, the i-MiEV will prove to be faster than the Monty Pythons' creation. 

By the way, for our international readers who are not familiar with the Monty Pythons, the following video shows who they are.

Speaking of lunatic journey stories, I can't help but think of the movie “Those magnificent men in their flying machines”, in which aircraft pioneers from different countries, compete in a race from London to Paris using their primitive airplanes around the 1910’s. I wonder if anyone ever thought of mirroring the 1965 classic on to an EV story. 

But going back to next week's plan: Living in the technological transition to EV infrastructure in the UK - the notion of a lunatic journey for research purposes is nothing else but pioneering, like the traits depicted in characters previously mentioned. The exciting part is that it's just the tip of the iceberg. Driving to Cardiff is part of the greater CLNR's project to make the move towards a low carbon economy. 

In a few days, we shall find out the funny moments that we will enjoy and suffer through in this project. Although realistically speaking, there will not be a movie made of our lunatic-wannabe journey, it would be a big lie to say that we are not excited to participate in such an adventure!