yet again, we get up early (not bright &) and go to our vehicles. it seems that the cars were unplugged sometime early morning. luckily, the TWIKE, with its small battery was already done charging at that time and we were able to start out with a full charge. not so team twingo – they decide to leave anyway and charge somewhere en route. since we’ve got to cover 156kms today, we need to conserve energy. our current overall weight is about double the car’s weight. our target consumption for this stage is 42Wh/km. the other cars zoom by […]
WAVE India Day5: Hyderabad – Kurnool
left early from hyderabad. instead of heading straight to the motorway, we first went to see an old fort – the detour definitely was worth it! another iconic picture for TWIKE in india! then, after days of backbreaking roads, we finally emerge on a perfect motorway! just for the fun of it, i accelerate to 98kph gps and – whoooooha – this does feel good! today i’ve got a different co-pilot for the first stage: we start munching up the kilometers. after an hour or so, we pull over to have some breakfast and chai’s. […]
WAVE India Day4: Hyderabad
not much to say for today. theoretically a day off from the WAVE, however we’ve got a big press conference ready for us at the hyderabad air pollution control centre. the WAVE has been partly incorporated in some sort of carbon credit race… TWIKE and all drive there, jean-claude takes charge of all TWIKE-related press activities, whilst i stay at the room to work. with a decent up- and downlink via HSDPA / WiFi. work keeps piling up and i somehow only get back out of the room for a quick snack. finally, at about midnight, i’m able to turn […]
WAVE India Day3: Solapur – Humnabad – Hyderabad
Not much sleep for us tonight. we got to our hotel in solapur quite late and are set to leave at 5.30 am in order to make it to hyderabad by 5 pm > 335 kms away. this might not sound like much, but applied to indian roads – believe me – this is a lot! we get to see the sunrise over the dusty planes of rural india – a big red fireball rises. very impressive and not easily photographed. navigation-wise we never really face any problems – either we’ve got our good friend google with us or – […]
Ask me anything!
so, you’ve seen the TWIKE somewhere in india? you are one of the students we visited? you have a question? ask me anything! …here! 🙂
WAVE India Day2: Pune – Baramati – Solapur
after a good night’s sleep we drive towards baramati. rolling hills welcome us to rural india. roads vary between bad and very bad. since the TWIKE’s suspension is not necessarily designed to take the punishment, it’s our backs that take it instead! but who are we to complain? every 5 minutes or so, a car pulls up alongside us and wants us to stop, which we obviously cannot because otherwise we’d be averaging about 5km/h 🙂 instead, we answer questions on the go. after 120km we arrive at baramati and arrive at a local college. the turnout of students […]
WAVE India Day1: Mumbai > Pune
after staying at the shopping centre overnight, we retrieve the cars at 11am and set off on our first official WAVE india 2011 stage! the stage will take us to pune, a city on a plateau about 600m above sea level about 130kms from mumbai. it takes ages to get out of mumbai. when we reach the outskirts, traffic lightens up immediately and thanks to good road surfaces are able to get a decent average speed. the climb itself is impressive. the road takes us from about 30m above sea level to about 800m. the other cars stop for a good hour to recharge […]
first day on official duties
we got back pretty late from customs. mumbai inner city traffic was very dense (we shall learn today, however, that the traffic we got to know was “light” traffic, according to locals, and now, after the fact, us, too!) for today, we are scheduled to attend a press conference and show our cars at a mall. we plunge back into bombay traffic. it is very dense but unlike european traffic, everyone looks out for the fellow driver. thanks to google and our indian sim, we easily find our way to the bombay press club. first journalists arrive and we are […]
releasing the twike from customs
after arriving at iitb at around 830am i decide that i will not go to sleep but rather stay up and try to sync to indian time the hardcore way. the 4 hours 30 minutes time difference to switzerland are quite noticeable. we head out to customs and a very long while later we arrive and meet our agent, john. entering customs free zone, we proceed to our container. the container looks very interesting, since there are cables coming from it and going into the local power distribution centre. the cables and the installation itself looks very dodgy. but interestingly […]