Alaska to Argentina on an electric motorcycle?

A team of three determined travellers are planning to undertake the longest ever expedition undertaken on electric motorcycles – hoping to ride from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska all the way to Tierra del Fuego in Argentina.

The Expedition Electric team are aiming to travel 25,000 miles through fifteen different countries using custom-built electric motorcycles. It will be their second attempt at the trip after a first attempt was derailed due to technical difficulties in 2016. JC Davis, one of the team said: “After we’d made it down through Alaska, through the Yukon, and were on our way into British Columbia, we had a battery failure.”

Ahead of the team’s second attempt, Davis said: “Part of what we want to show is that we can do it even though we had a failure with the first bike. It wasn’t technology’s fault that the trip failed. We want to be able to highlight green technology as we go and show its possibilities. So many people out there are either misinformed or just don’t know enough about [electric vehicles].”

On their original trip, they were travelling around 120 miles a day – but the crew are optimistic they can exceed that on their second attempt. They are also looking to tie in with a TV production company, who might be interested in charting the trip along the Pan-American Highway. Davis added: “When we get back on the road, we will go to Prudhoe Bay and make our way south from there and probably with an eight to eleven-person crew. Hopefully, that will be with new bikes, and we are currently talking to battery and solar companies. We would like to be able to use solar power to charge the bikes but that will require a fair amount of energy.”

Looking further into the future, Davis said: “If the funding shows up, we will go this year and what I’ve said to everybody is we are probably looking to start again early in 2019. Once we get going and get that momentum, we want to ship over to Africa and do the same there, and then in Europe. Phase Three would probably be across Asia.”