A couple of days ago we drove up a mountain pass of over 2.200m in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. On our way up, we had planned to charge our car with an 11kW AC charger located at a restaurant which we found via an app.
When we arrived at this restaurant, it became clear that there was not enough electricity for charging our electric car.
With a 20% state of charge (SOC), we were not sure if we could make the pass and the planned camping place 3 hours of driving after reaching the pass as it was still quite high up. We decided to continue, worst case scenario was that we needed to charge the car with our solar panels, which we could do the next day. Or we could turn around and drive the same route down the hill to regenerate.
In the last hour of climbing, we saw our SOC dropping quickly so we looked for spots to set up camp so we could charge tomorrow. Suddenly, after a sharp turn, we arrived at the top of the pass with 13% SOC. We made it! We contained driving down for another 3 hours and arrived at the camping place with 15% SOC as we regenerate energy by driving down.
We focussed on the issue at the moment, but with the data of the past hours before reaching the top of the pass and with our experience driving with an EV in the mountains we would have known that we would be able to make the pass and the camping after, but we focussed in the moment on just a number provided by the car.
It made us wonder; how often we focus on a certain detailed issue while the solution is just out of our sight.
“Enjoy the failure” is a praise used in the cockpit of an airplane. In case of an emergency, take a step back from the emergency lights and sounds in order to get a proper overview of what’s happening.
