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Jaguar I-Pace and Olympic Cyclist Complete “Everesting Challenge” on One Charge

Jaguar’s battery-electric crossover SUV has been around since June 2018 in Europe. To make sure that customers don’t forget about its existence, the company recently completed an interesting achievement called the “Everesting Challenge.” As the name implies, it has to do with Himalaya's Mount Everest, more specifically its well-known height of 8,848 meters (29,029 feet).
Jaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting Challenge 25 photos
Photo: Jaguar Land Rover
Jaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting ChallengeJaguar I-Pace and Olympic cyclist Elinor Barker go on the Everesting Challenge
But don’t think the EV actually traveled to the China-Nepal border and hired some Sherpas to do the legendary climb. Instead, Jaguar cooked up an alternative right at home in UK and enlisted the help of Olympic, two-time world, and six-time European champion team pursuit cyclist Elinor Jane Barker, MBE.

The Member of the Order of the British Empire (since 2017) took to the steering wheel of the I-Pace and completed the company’s own “Everesting Challenge” by climbing the equivalent height of Mount Everest on a single charge. The feat was achieved by performing exactly 16.2 ascents of Great Britain’s highest surfaced road—Great Dun Fell, with a gain of 547 meters (1,795 feet) on each full climb.

And because we’re dealing with an EV, every time the I-Pace returned to Base Camp, it also used its smart regenerative braking system to recover some of the previously lost energy, which amounted to the equivalent of some additional 58 miles (or 93.3 km).

Since we all know that in this day and age, it’s quite hard to reinvent the wheel, the idea for the challenge came up because popular exercise tracking service Strava noted that in 2020 the interest for repeatedly completing a climb until on par with the Everest height has surged some 600% among cyclists.

This time around, though, it wasn’t so much a human endurance challenge but a way to showcase the performance and technology of the I-Pace as the crossover EV stormed Great Dun Fell, in Cumbria, with a single charge of the 90-kWh battery. The highest surface road in Great Britain is also popularly referred by cyclists as “Britain’s Mont Ventoux,” a direct call to the tricky Alpine stage from the legendary Tour de France.

It presents itself with many sweeping turns, up to 20% gradients, and a peak height of 848 meters (2,782 feet) on a 3.6-mile (5.8 km) climb. As such, during the more than 16 loops spanning 7.2 miles (11.6 km) each, Barker was able to generate an additional 60% energy, according to the automaker. In the end, she drove for a total of 124 miles (199.6 km), including an eight-mile (12.9 km) trip to the starting point, and still had some 31% SoC in the battery, enough to cover some additional 80 miles (128.7 km).

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About the author: Aurel Niculescu
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Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution.
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