North to the Future
By Michael Lindemann
Aug. 19, 2022
What does it mean to be first? To some it means to push boundaries exploring new territories, for others the term may carry no weight at all, still others may think it shows a vanity on the part of the person trying to be first. We were the first. We were the first people to drive electric vehicles to Oliktok Point. Oliktok Point is the furthest north point on the mainland of North America that can be driven to. There were certainly a few hurdles to overcome along the way but in the end we all made it.
The journey for me started when LAUNCH Alaska’s transportation lead, Tim Leach, mentioned that he was looking for one more support vehicle/person for the Arctic Road Rally, a rally in which electric vehicles would be driven to Oliktok Point. Given my background in the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) and the fact that I had a Toyota Tacoma, I felt that I’d be a good fit. So, I volunteered. A few weeks later I found myself driving from Anchorage to Fairbanks with about a thousand pounds of fuel and gear. To say that my poor Tacoma was “loaded down” would be a major understatement.
The morning after I arrived in Fairbanks everyone started trickling into the Golden Valley Electric Association’s parking lot at 7:30am. I immediately began installing Geotab units in peoples’ cars. These Geotab units were to acquire data on how their cars functioned and performed on the rough haul road. Our fleet of EV’s consisted of: 5 Tesla’s, 3 Rivian’s, 1 Hummer, and 1 F-150 Lightning.
At the starting line we did what's called a staggered start, the timings and orders were determined by Devon Kibby, the electrical engineer behind the project. He calculated the best ordering and timing to ensure that there were no bottlenecks at the chargers along the way.
Leaving Fairbanks, we got a rude awakening as to how rough the Dalton Highway, or more locally known as the ‘haul road’, was. It seemed like the road wasn’t really a road, it was more of an endless series of potholes and frost heaves. I was driving my Tacoma with long travel suspension and Fox shocks so for me it wasn’t too bad but it sure looked like the Tesla’s were getting bounced around a lot. Slow and steady was the name of the game. The first stop on our trip was the DOT facility at 7 mile, which is just across the Yukon river. At this point I was traveling behind the F-150 Lightning, the timing worked out perfectly and we pulled in just as the Rivian crew were finishing charging. After about 2 hours of charging we headed on to Coldfoot. The road after the 7 mile facility was mostly all dirt and was in much better shape than the paved sections. As a group we lost 2 tires that first day, both of which were on Tesla’s.
The next morning, we left Coldfoot and headed for Kuparuk with a charging stop at Pump Station-4. This day was fairly uneventful, there was one more tire lost on one of the Tesla’s on this second day and it turns out that would be the last tire lost of the whole trip. Due to the chargers at PS-4 being a bit finicky and people stopping to take pictures in Atigun Pass, we missed our 6 pm escort from Deadhorse to Kuparuk, but luckily ConocoPhillips was willing to give us another escort at 11 pm. At about midnight we arrived at Kuparuk, got vehicles on chargers, settled into rooms, and all went to bed.
At 8 am the next morning we had a safety briefing from ConocoPhillips in their movie theater. After that, we gathered our things, and all made the 45-minute drive out to Oliktok Point. It was a typical fall day on the north slope, which means the wind was blowing about 20 mph, it was raining/snowing, and the clouds were right down on the water. Due to the nasty weather the event at Oliktok Point was fairly brief and afterwards we came back to Kuparuk. Once we made it back to Kuparuk, ConocoPhillips washed all of the vehicles and pulled them into one of their shops for a “car show”. I have jokingly come to call the car show the “Inaugural KOC (Kuparuk Operations Center) EV car show”. The rest of the day was spent showing off the vehicles and talking about them with ConocoPhillips employees. There was actually a very large amount of interest from all levels of Conoco employees and honestly, I don’t think I heard one negative comment the entire time about the EV’s or us being there.
The next day we headed back for Coldfoot, at 8 am we had a security escort off ConocoPhillips property. About a mile from PS-4, I spotted a Musk Ox a little way up the side of the mountain. I had been sent out ahead of everyone on this day, so I stopped and hiked up the hill to get some pictures of it.
In this picture you can see the Musk Ox on the left, and the Hummer EV on the road (very small) on the right. PS-4 is in the background.
After leaving PS-4 I was sent along with the Hummer EV to get pictures with it, as up until then there had not been much in the way of pictures with it. We went up through Atigun Pass and found a spot about 50 miles before Coldfoot. In this particular area the valley was fairly narrow, and the pipeline was buried beneath a riverbed. There was an access road down to the riverbed since the pipeline was buried there. Due to spring runoff the riverbed was quite large but since we are in the fall most of it was dry. We took the Hummer EV down onto the dry riverbed to get photos and this ended up being probably the highlight of the trip for me.
I tried to get the Rivian folks to drop down in and get photos as it was such a beautiful spot, but they were a bit hesitant for various reasons, so they did not do it. The F-150 was also deemed to be too low to the ground to get down in there (I still think it would have made it) so unfortunately the Hummer is the only EV that we were able to get photos of in that beautiful location. It would have been really neat to have the Hummer, the Rivian’s, and Ford all down on the dry riverbed at once for a group photo, but maybe next year.
We stayed the night in Coldfoot that night and headed for Fairbanks the next morning. I stayed behind with Devon and Dimitri to disconnect all the charging gear at Coldfoot and prep it for transport. Since people were eager to get back to town we didn’t do as much of a staggered start as we had previously. This meant that we had a bit of a “pile up” at the DOT’s 7 mile facility which was actually sort of nice since it allowed us to say goodbyes and such. Right as we neared Fairbanks, Dimitri’s Tesla ran out of charge due to him not quite taking enough charge at 7-mile. So, the Hummer EV came back and they gave him a bit of a tow. Thanks to the re-gen in the Tesla, Dimitri was able to get 13 miles of range in just a few miles of towing. According to Devon there were times when he saw 250 kW coming out of the Hummer EV’s batteries and he thinks that the Tesla was charging at roughly 150 kW. Quite impressive! I’d really like to see the data logs from that. We all ended up making it back into Fairbanks without any other issues!
Some wrap up thoughts: As a whole, the trip went really well, most of that I think was down to the planning and preparation by Devon, Dimitri, Rob, and Tim. All of the chargers used in this event were second hand, and Devon and Dimitri did quite a bit of work to recommission them, but their cords still had some connectivity issues. They proved to be a bit finicky. I was very surprised by how far the Hummer EV could go on charge. We typically had one charge stop in about the middle of the day and oftentimes the Hummer wouldn’t even stop to charge. This was counterbalanced by the F-150 Lightning which seemed to be extra finicky with the chargers and due to its smaller battery size, would always stop to charge and would take longer to charge than the Tesla’s. One thing that was surprising to me was that as a whole we really had no negative reactions to the EV’s along our route. Even in “oil country” people were really interested in checking them out.
This was quite the experience, and I am thankful to have been able to be a part of the journey!