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Plucky Nissan Leaf Heads Out On African Adventure

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When you have an electric car, most people want to know how far you can go on a charge. If you give them the official figures, the observers will usually follow up with a quip about how an EV’s range can make road trips difficult. Well, one explorer wanted to show EV haters how wrong they are by taking the Nissan Leaf EV on a road trip across Africa.

You heard that right.


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The Electric Explorer African Challenge launched this year as the first electric car journey across Africa. Polish traveler Arkady Pawel Fiedler and photographer Albert Wójtowicz are driving across the continent as we type. Their journey started in Cape Town, South Africa and headed north. The last update posted by the team on social media on February 25th showed that they had finished crossing Namibia and were heading into Angola. From there the pair will continue to drive mostly parallel to Arica’s western coast until they finish the trip in Tangier, Morocco.

While we love the Nissan Leaf and other EVs, there is no question that this trip could be extremely difficult, as finding reliable electricity in the middle of Africa could be a challenge. On the journey so far, the team has been able to do a lot of their charging overnight and has had assistance from Nissan car dealerships near the route. As they head further north, political conditions and infrastructure challenges could make recharging the battery more difficult.


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If you want to track this trip on Instagram or Facebook, check out the links below. We’ll be cheering for this duo and their trusty Nissan Leaf as they hopefully continue to make their way north.

Track the Journey: Facebook or Instagram