Patrick Martinoli with the C-Zero electric cars.
The car took eight months, travelled 25,000km through 17 countries and consumed just €250 ($325) of electricity.
Orange said the object was to show that a standard electric vehicle could cope with such a trip. Orange outfitted it with its M2M fleet management system, which enabled the company to track the vehicle and monitor its condition at all times.
Data received from the M2M onboard box enabled Orange to update a website showing the car’s progress several times a day, said M2M communications manager Alexandra Hong.
“The box and server enabled us to keep watch on the level of the battery, so we knew if it was getting low and we could tell the car’s crew to stop in the nearest city to recharge.”
The car, which has a range of 100km on a fully-charged battery, typically covered 200km a day. After setting off in the morning with a fully-charged battery, the crew would stop around lunchtime to plug in the car to top up the battery, drive again in the late afternoon, then fully recharge it overnight, a process that took seven hours.
“It was a great human experience,” said business development manager, machine-to-machine, at Orange’s International M2M Centre, Tom Sorgeloos. “You can use any power outlet, the crew just had a whole set of different cables and plugs.”
