The Nissan Leaf carts Steve Cropley and his collection of climbers around the country while they take on the Three Peaks Challenge.
It wasn’t even our idea. There we were, chipping away at the familiar walls of the Autocar salt mines, when a bloke called Dominic Vizor, one of Nissan’s 8000-odd employees in the UK, came up with the idea of a Nissan-Autocar team doing the celebrated Three Peaks Challenge and using a Nissan Leaf for the 470-mile journey it entailed.
Vizor’s plan fell on unexpectedly fertile ground. Hacks are known for sedentary pursuits such as typing and sitting in cars but, as luck would have it, editor Matt Burt is oddly partial to running up hills for sport. So he needed minimal encouragement to start hand-picking a team to ascend the highest peaks in Scotland, England and Wales – Ben Nevis in the Grampian Mountains, Scafell Pike in the Lake District and Snowdon in north-western Wales. Our team would be driven between them as quickly as possible in our Leaf long-term test car.
The hill-walking hard nuts who invented the Three Peaks Challenge tend to stipulate that entrants must complete the task in either 24 or 36 hours but, at the outset, we reckoned a time in between the two was most likely, given the lingering scarcity of fast chargers for battery cars north of Edinburgh and Glasgow and the consequent need to drive our Leaf with restraint to extend its range.
Why choose an electric car at all, many of our friends and family wondered. Why not take a nice, long-legged diesel like everyone else who has ever done the Three Peaks?
We had three good reasons. First, it’d be a good story. As far as we knew, no one had done it. Second, electric cars are indisputably coming, and fast. Charging points may still be scarce in remoter Scotland, but 10 years ago there were none at all. Third, we liked the challenge and we liked the car. Quiz anyone who knows the Leaf and two things soon emerge: that the car is unfailingly smooth, quiet, convenient and comfortable and, compared with others, it is impressively roomy and efficient at moving both people and gear.
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Did Ben Nevis and (some) North Coast 500...
Tesla any Model
National Three Peaks in a VW Touareg
When we got home, we'd done 1004 miles and I was knackered - but then I remembered that my three passengers had done the same but also walked a total of 26 miles (a marathon distance) and climbed 10,000 feet (an Alpine height) - so my absolute respect goes to everyone that completes that challenge.
Like LS above, our 700+ mile range is vital for trips like this.
Well Said Trooper
Yes it's amazing when you total up the leg mileage on these challenges. My Brother did 1200 miles in total...he lives in Suffolk...but not all in one attempt. Was hard for him to catch some zz in the car whilst we pounded the mountains. we had to swap over driving duties for the last 120 miles to Ben Nevis as his eyes were gone...fighting to stay awake, hence I finished it ....then climbed Ben Nevis!! We stayed up there for dinner and had overnight digs. We started on a Friday, finished the challenge on Saturday and drove home on the Sunday.
Tesla would not make the 24hr challenge. Neighbour has an S90D and struggles to get near 300 miles on a full charge...and when crawling in traffic, which you will on the M6 things will get worse.
You can't afford to wait for lengthy recharging as we were monitoring the clock constantly ( stop watch running) so would be interested if anyone managed this ...and how.
Ludicrous speed wrote:
Tesla, or any EV, might do the challenge in 24 hrs if there were charging points in the car park for Scafell Pike - it's 260 miles to there from Ben Nevis and you'd get a boost at the mid-way comfort break - the leg to Snowdon is only 220 miles. If Tesla offered me a loan car I'd do it again - hint, hint!
Going N-S, starting at 5pm Saturday avoided almost all traffic issues except the A55 on Sunday morning
Tesla challenge
It's a fair shout having charging Points at All the mountain car parks....assuming you can park anywhere near them which is the next challenge. Could not get near Snowdon car park ( brother tried for first hour then gave up) so your going to need a fair degree of luck here.
Certainly turning into a good debate with my fellow climbers and neighbour :-) although Tesla boot would struggle with amount of gear we had..the S-Max was loaded right up..
Ludicrous speed wrote:
The advantage of a non-climbing driver is that you can drop the climbers off as near as possible, park up somewhere more convenient and then go back to collect them - cheap walkie-talkies are useful to get progress reports.
Three Peaks Challenge
We are running the event in 24 hours in a Tesla, there might be space in one of the teams cars if you are interested.
checkout threepeakszero dot com and get in touch.
Tesla will make the three peaks challenge :)
We believe we can make the challenge in Tesla's and we're planning to do it on October 15/16 this year.
Check out Three Peaks Zero dot com and sponsor us if you like :)