Charge around the globe: Pushing the new boundaries of driving

Having answered an advert calling for "Brains, Beauty & Breeches," in 1922 Aloha Wanderwell set off from Nice, France, driving her Ford Model-T on a five-year journey to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in an automobile. She travelled to places that few, if any, Westerner had ever visited, improvising along the way by using kerosene for fuel, bananas for grease, and elephant fat for oil. Aloha is believed to have visited 75 countries across six continents, and met celebrities, bandits, and fellow explorers, before arriving back in France in 1927. She was still only 21 years old.

Aloha's circumnavigation celebrated the possibilities of automobile exploration. It's an achievement that inspired Ford to challenge adventurer and world record setter Lexie Limitless to set her own first—the first person to circumnavigate the world in an electric vehicle. Under the watchful eye of independent adjudicators, Charge Around the Globe would require Lexie to travel at least 18,000 miles across five continents, powered by electricity alone. And the aim was to do it in just 90 days. With echoes of Aloha's iconic journey, Lexie drove her all-electric Ford Explorer out of Nice on September 8th, 2023.

The expedition got off to an excellent start: The roads in Europe were good, the charging infrastructure worked, and even the weather was kind. This helped Lexie settle into her adventure, getting to grips with the Explorer while enjoying gelato in Italy and sunsets in Slovenia. But there were soon challenges to be faced. Lexie found that no amount of preparation could bypass the bureaucratic delays of border control: Visa issues forced an 185-mile, two-ferry crossing detour to enter Turkey via Greece. Here, heavy rain and dense nighttime fog made the steep roads treacherous, demanding intense concentration and calling on the advanced driving skills she'd learned with her Ford instructors before setting off. Success for Lexie's challenge depended on her endurance, Ford's engineering, and the world's fledgling charging infrastructure. This unpredictable element called for careful planning.

Lexie started her African leg in Cape Town, and her progress was soon slowed by heavy roadworks, followed by impressive potholes peppering the roads towards Johannesburg. Worse, an electricity blackout while the Explorer was plugged in broke the charging station and forced Lexie to rely on a domestic charger at her accommodation. It would not be the last time!

However, the epic African landscape made up for these challenges, with Lexie taking a safari detour to meet the Black Mambas, an all-female unit of park rangers. Even here in the African bush, Lexie was reassured to know that a fast charger was just 12 miles away! Crossing into Zimbabwe, Lexie and her Explorer negotiated off-road tracks and tricky gravel roads as charging points became ever thinner on the ground. Limping into Harare, Lexie met a pioneering mother and daughter team growing produce using hydroponics—soilless farming. It proved an inspirational end to her African travels. Next stop, Australia.

The vast expanse of Australia's arid interior was first crossed by car in 1907, but Lexie followed the ruggedly beautiful Great Ocean Road as it snaked along the coast from Adelaide to Melbourne. The country's well-developed charging infrastructure allowed Lexie to relax a little and enjoy the spectacular views—despite a flat tyre. Remarkably, the loss of mobile reception caused the biggest headache as the charging station was operated through a smartphone app. The kindness of a local café owner, who let Lexie hotspot off their Wi-Fi, got the Explorer back on the road. It was now October, and in Sydney Lexie joined marine biologists monitoring the migration of humpback whales, before finishing her 2,500-mile Australian odyssey in Cairns.

From serene ocean roads to frenzied urban traffic, the contrast on arriving in New Delhi, India, could hardly have been greater. Navigating the noisy and chaotic megacity demanded intense concentration and quick reactions. Even a pause to visit a free community-run kitchen served to reinforce the hectic nature and size of the Indian capital—the kitchen serves 35,000 people every day. Despite the frustrations of long AC (slow) charging stops, Lexie's 1,500 miles through India followed the spiritually important Ganges River and took in the iconic Taj Mahal, where Lexie felt a particularly strong connection to Aloha, who wrote emotionally about her visit to the monumental mausoleum more than a century before. Despite the Explorer being hit by another motorist, and a long delay at the border due to a systems failure, Lexie entered the dramatically mountainous country of Bhutan. Here, in the shadow of the Himalayas, the colorful prayer flags and cone-shaped Tsa-Tsa offerings that line many of the roadsides made for a fascinating and uplifting drive. Leaving the country's one major road behind, Lexie took the Explorer along snow-dusted dirt tracks to visit some of Bhutan's most spectacular sites—places that have only become accessible since the country opened its borders in 1974.

Then came a serious setback. Like many great explorers, Lexie fell ill with a fever and reluctantly took a backseat through most of Vietnam. But back behind the wheel in Cambodia, she visited Angkor Wat to marvel at its scale and architecture as Aloha Wanderwell had a hundred years earlier. After the constant vigilance needed on Bangkok's busy streets, and the constantly changing scenery of Malaysia's quiet country roads, Lexie now sailed the Pacific for South America.

The route from Santiago in Chile to Buenos Aires in Argentina crosses one of the most challenging environments on Earth—the Atacama Desert. This is where technology is tested for missions to Mars, and it certainly tested Lexie and the Explorer! With no charging infrastructure, Lexie used every trick in the book to extend the Explorer's range across 300 miles of shadeless desert. Through careful driving, minimizing electrics, and making the most of descents for regenerative braking to top up the SUV's batteries, she emerged with enormous relief. Soon, the verdant landscape of Argentina was rolling past, and despite a near total reliance on domestic charging, she reached the country's bustling capital that marked three-quarters of her challenge completed.

From Los Angeles to Las Vegas and following the Colorado River into the Rocky Mountains, Lexie may have been on 'home ground' in America, but the challenges kept coming. Crucially, Lexie's pre-production Explorer was set up for Europe with a standard connector and would not DC (fast) charge on the US network with the European adapter. Slow AC charging limited Lexie's progress so that colder weather set in, bringing snow and ice to the mountain roads that demanded absolute attention, all the time. Drawing on her advanced driver training, Lexie kept the Explorer rolling, and when Ford engineers fixed the charging issue with new adapters her adventure was back on track. Pausing only to try deep-dish pizza in Chicago and visit an old garage restored as a community gym in the Motor City of Detroit, Lexie cruised through stunning landscapes until the iconic skyline of New York hove into view. Having crossed America, Lexie was headed for the finish line in France.

Norway to Nice took Lexie over the spectacular Øresund Bridge between Sweden and Denmark, and through a rapid succession of border crossings between Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and finally France. For Lexie and the Explorer, this marked the final stretch of their adventure together and it was with mixed feelings that she drove the roads south through the beautiful French countryside. On March 26, Lexie and the Explorer finally came to an emotional chequered-flag stop outside Hôtel Le Royal in Nice. After 18,600 miles through 27 countries and across six continents, she'd done it! Lexie was officially confirmed as the first person to circumnavigate the globe in an electric vehicle, pushing the boundaries of what determined people and their cars can do—like Aloha Wanderwell a century before.