INTO THE RED

Can a completely normal electric family hatchback drive coast to coast across the Australian Outback? Welcome to TopGear's most ambitious electric roadtrip yet...

- WORDS OLLIE KEW PHOTOGRAPHY DEAN SMITH

ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY YEARS AGO, the luxuriously bearded explorer John McDouall Stuart needed three attempts to complete the first northerly expedition across Australia. About five minutes into his successful mission, he was kicked in the head and lightly trampled by a startled horse. Being the hardest known form of human - a Victorian Scotsman - Stuart refused to go to hospital and was instead stretchered for almost a third of the 2,000 mile odyssey.

I am not the hardest known form of human. I ama part-avocado, 'ask YouTube how to erect shelves' millennial. This attempt to retrace Stuart's steps in an electric hatchback at the first time of asking is also likely to be a headache.

The road I'll use is named in McDouall's honour: the Stuart Highway. It lasted until the late 1980s before it was fully paved. Speed limits weren't enforced until 2007. Usually raw distance is the enemy of any EV roadtrip, and we've got plenty of that - 1,920 miles from Adelaide, capital of South Australia to Darwin, biggest city in the Northern Territory. But for the next four and a half days the environment itself is a challenge for almost any car. We're spearing straight into the Australian Outback. A respect demanding wilderness largely untouched by phone signal, teeming with deadly animals, where summer temperatures can soar past 40°C during the day and drop below freezing after dark.