After leaving Trossingen in the morning and stopping for lunch somewhere on the way, we arrived in Bietigheim by the end of the afternoon. Finally, the big picture is coming together since now all 78 teams were assembled on the same parking lot – that’s quite a view. Unfortunately, cars were cluttered and trees in the way so there were no clean pictures to be taken. I’m sure there will be other opportunities to show all cars together in one frame.

The big news is, since the race is now on, we are now wearing our team dress. Now that sounds at least one order of magnitude more dramatic than it is, because we just both wear the same shirt with our mascot on the front and our team name on the back. yaay…

Later in the evening, the pre-race team briefing took place; roadbooks and timeplans are now issued and have to be studied carefully. it looks like we have a short night ahead of us since there is some homework to be done…

Today’s featured car is a Volkswagen T2 bus, originally from the german THW Katastrophenschutz; later imported into Switzerland, it was converted to electric power by Designwerk. It now has a 100 kW electric motor, but the power is artificially reduced to keep the gearbox from disintegrating. It does run properly though and has a range of over 300km on one charge. We think it’s totally cool and I’m sure a few of you people out there will think alike. Its most important features are listed on the Designwerk website.