They linked Alaska with Ushuaia in a Tesla

“Reach Ushuaia was the formal objective of our expedition”, stated Martín Canabal (engineer and person in charge of planning the trip), who together with Tuti Iraola (environmental consultant and person in charge of aspects related to sustainability, social media and blog) and Oliver Umpierre (director audiovisual and documentary director) united Alaska with the capital of Tierra del Fuego aboard dos Tesla: a Model 3 and the Model Y.

The historic caravan (called Electric Americas) achieved its main objective, but now its second stage has begun: arrive in Punta del Este (Uruguay), the city where they are from.

“Electric Americas is an expedition whose main objective is to demonstrate that today it is possible to drive electric cars between Alaska and Ushuaia, along the well-known Pan-American Highway. This journey has already been traveled in various ways: on foot, by bicycle, by car, by plane, but never in production electric vehicles, cars that anyone can buy and that do not have any special preparation,” said one of the promoters of the project upon arrival in Argentina.

“The trip officially began on June 1, from Anchorage, Alaska and ended on December 29 with the arrival in Ushuaia. Before that we had to move from San Francisco, in the United States. We went to the port of Tacoma and there a company he donated the shipment of the vehicles, by boat, to Alaska. And once we arrived in Ushuaia, this was not the final destination, but now we are traveling from Comodoro to Madryn, to arrive in Uruguay in a few days,” story.

How the idea of ​​uniting Alaska and Ushuaia in Tesla was born

Canabal, who lives in San Franciscoexplained that the idea arose after buying a Tesla.

But to make his dream come true, he summoned his friend Oliver, who suggested that he record the trip and then publish a documentary of the adventure.

In addition, the publications they made from the caravan’s social networks had a luxury follower: Elon Musk.

“I wrote a tweet saying that we made it, we made the journey in electric cars and after a while, arriving in Comodoro and when we had internet, my partner Olivier tells me: ‘Elon Musk te puso like’. I still can’t believe it, nor the consequences that this has had, with almost 4 million views and tweet comments, always positive. I can’t get enough to answer everyone. And there was also, a few days ago, that The people of Tesla put a ‘like’ to another tweet and they asked us for photos that they uploaded on their official Instagram account. For us it was touching the sky with our hands, it’s a confirmation that we did something right,” explained Canabal.

The main problem: energy replenishment

In order to charge the electric battery of the vehicles, they had to retrofit any source of energy to power their vehicles.

“The most difficult points to charge energy were Canada and Peru,” they recalled.

In addition, at some points the electricity charge took more than 30 hours to complete the battery, whose average autonomy is 400 kilometers.