Wiebe Wakker
September 28, 2016
Day 195 | Sunday September 25
My hosts needed to rebuild their kitchen so I helped them a bit with that, okay to be honest I moved 1 cupboard and the gasring. As they didn’t need to care about me I could focus on my own work.
At night Serhii made some fresh food on the bbq, potatoes, meat and more. He has a pretty big garden and he told me that he dreams about having solar panels on his roof, and of course owning an electric vehicle. Serhii had diamonds in his eyes when I offered him to test-drive my car.
Day 196 | Monday September 26
Serhii and Sergei (the other electric car guy) went with me to a car workshop. I told them I had some minor issues and they knew a professional workshop who could fix it. The issue was that the power to the Battery Management System (this is a small computer places under the steering wheel) was loose. It disconnected a lot and this gave not the right information about the status of the battery. Also the cigarette lighter was not working anymore, which I use for my navigation and now I needed an powerbank to charge it every time, not so convenient. The electrician looked at it for a few seconds and had it fixed easily.
Serhii than took me to 2 of his friends/ colleagues from the ElectroCars Club, Vladimir and Sergii (the third Sergii/hii I’ve met in the last days, they are not very creative with names here), they offered me lunch and than I headed to a meeting with Smart City Kyiv. This project aims to create opportunities for the evolution of the capital, combining strategic approach, technological advances and widespread public involvement in the creation of a new quality of life. Their office was location on a former Soviet Union complex where the USSR used to demonstrate it’s technologies. A full interview with Smart City will be published later on this website.
Together with Vladimir and Roman (it’s crazy how many people I have been introduced to today) we went a bit outside of the city to meet Viktor. He converts electric cars and had really special ones in his collection. One serial Chinese EV, a converted Ukrainian car which is the cheapest in the country and… the Synchronous. Probable the biggest electric vehicle I have ever seen, or should I call it a spaceship? It has room for 6 passengers and a driver. Monaco ordered this car and it had been driven around in the country, now it was here for maintenance. It has a 24KWh battery and 180km range.
My host for tonight was Vladimir who is the husband of Alina who I met at the Georgian festival earlier this weekend. We parked the car to charge at a nearby fuel station. At home we had some food with Smetana, it’s some kind of sour cream and they put it on everything. Doesn’t matter if it’s sweet, sour or another taste, they like it and I like it too.
Day 197 | Tuesday September 27
Time to leave Kyiv. It would be a long day as I needed to travel 300km. With Vlad I picked up the car at the gas station and together we drove to an Okko station just outside the city. There Sergii (number 3) joined us and we had some belated lunch.
The remaining of the day I drove a lot, charged at a few places and arrived at a hotel late in the night. The ElectroCars Club guys arranged this for me.
Support me
Lately I have been receiving messages from people who want so support me with financial resources. I always declined this as it was the challenge to do it without money, which worked well in the first part of this trip.
Now I am reaching a new stage: the Middle-East and I am going to need a lot of visa’s, temporary car insurances etc. so it’s going to be more convenient if I have financial support.
On the website I added an option to make a donation. You are free to decide which amount you want to donate and you can pay easily with PayPal, iDeal or bank transfer.
See this link: (removed)
It’s open now and looking for €29 to pay towards the visa for Turkey. Hope you can help :)
Pictures
