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The North Light Photographic Workshops channel on YouTube recently shared a pretty cool story: a journey circling Lake Superior not only with an electric pickup truck, but pulling a small travel trailer along for the ride. Let’s first look at the video, and then I’ll summarize it for people who’d rather read and then look at what we can take away from this!
He starts the video charging his truck in a stranger’s driveway charging his F-150 Lightning in Munising, Michigan. Why? Because some charging stations in rural areas aren’t your typical public charging stations. DC fast charging has been spreading in the Upper Peninsula, but it still isn’t all in, so people need to do some weird charging stuff.
After topping off in Munising, he takes a look at Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes and among the larger and deeper in the world. Near Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, he shows the scenery. Then, he heads on to his first charging stop at a DC fast charging station in the parking lot of a grocery store. Next stop was at Van Riper State Park on the Upper Peninsula. He was able to charge overnight while sleeping in his teardrop camper for the first night. This gave him a full charge, which he estimates gives him 180 miles towing the little trailer.
He then headed to a retired Ford factory in Alberta Village, Michigan, that has been donated to a local university. The factory used to mill and cut the wood that went into early Ford vehicles, so parking a Lightning nearby really shows how far things have come!
Next, he headed to L’anse, charging up at a Level 2 ChargePoint station, and then headed to camp on a 50-amp pedestal at his next campsite. This put him in at Ontanogon at a tourist park that provided a decent campsite. A little setup work made for a nice meal and some fun for the dog. It also gave him a chance to do some editing and enjoy the lakeshore with its ocean-like waves after sunset. It was also a nice place to do some timelapse photography that was quite beautiful and included some northern lights!
Sadly, the video was over too quickly, as he intends to make a series of them about his whole trip around the lake. It has been a few weeks since we’ve seen a foll0w-up, so we’ll all have to just subscribe and wait for the next one!
Shattering The “EVs Can’t Do That” Narrative
Another recent video I watched showed us how Canadian truckers thought there was no way that Cybertrucks could be out there on the Dempster Highway without a generator. The myth of EVs not being able to thrive in rural areas persists no matter how hard we try to dispel it because it’s an easy narrative to share and mistakenly accept. After all, ten years ago, it was true that EVs couldn’t really do a decent trip in many parts of the country.
Because public perception takes so long to catch up, and there are many people who want that perception to stay in the past, it’s important that we all take these kinds of trips when we can and share the story. It might feel like old news to us who are familiar with EVs, but getting the truth out over and over really matters!
Featured image: a screenshot from the embedded video (fair use).
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