The annual WAVE electric car rally is currently underway with the event taking place from Eichgraben, near Vienna to Zürich via; Hungary, southern Austria, Slovenia, the Grossglockner pass, Innsbruck, the Swiss Engadin valley, Arosa and St.Galle. The full route can be seen on the WAVE Trophy website here.
With around 40 teams participating, the WAVE rally is the largest electric rally in Europe.
An introduction by Louis Palmer, the tours founder, gives a brief history to the event and it’s background as follow,
“In 2007/2008, I became the first man ever to drive a solar powered vehicle around the world. With the simple message, that electric cars and renewable energies are a clean and reliable solution for our future, I had reached the attention of 770 mio. people worldwide.
In 2010, 3 teams with electric cars joined me during the first race around the world in 80 days with electric cars, the so called “Zero Race.” For this achievement, I was awarded “Champion of the Earth 2011″ by United Nations Environment Programme.
In 2011, 24 teams from 8 countries joined the first WAVE – World Advanced Vehicle expedition, from Paris to Prague. The intention of the WAVE is to create a people’s movement, with a special mission to promote electric mobility running on renewable energy.
In 2012, we drove from Genova (I) to Amsterdam (NL). We visited governments, business leaders, schools and places of interest, and again reached the attention of millions of people.”
You can follow the progress on the official blog here.
The WAVE Trophy also follows an overiding green philosphopy that all the participantts must adhere to. Reading the rules of entry for the competition, each team must provie a 100% renewable energy for the duration of the WAVE rally, meaning that the whole event aims to be emission free – including emissions produced by the production of electricity needed to charge each vehicle.
WAVE is planned and managed according to a sustainability policy to ensure social and environmental responsibility. To meet this goal, the organising team has implemented a series of actions in the following areas:
- Green office management
- Competition vehicles have a full electric motor
- Each team provides 100% renewable energy for their vehicle during WAVE
- A responsible code of conduct for all participants for the 14 day journey
- A responsible guideline for event hosts and partners
- Carbon neutrality and offsetting of the unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions produced
