On September 30, 2023 the Tour d’Excellence of the Geneva International Motor Show (GIMS) reached its grand culmination in Doha, Qatar, after a 34 days and 8000 km drive. The two crews, led by Frank M Rinderknecht, CEO of Rinspeed AG and Rainer Zietlow, owner of Challenge4.de, left Geneva on August 28. The arrival in Doha not only marks the completion of this incredible journey, but also celebrate the upcoming opening of GIMS Qatar automotive festival which will take over the city of Doha and beyond from 5 to 14 October 2023. This extraordinary expedition at the wheel of two 100% electric Volkswagen ID. Buzz bearing the GIMS colors, has seen the two crews traverse Europe, the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, without any assistance. This adventure was marked by daily and unique challenges, heat, unforgettable experiences, and encounters. One of the standout features of this tour has been the innovative use of technology, combined with the necessary ingenuity. Participants harnessed the power of 26 different vehicle charging apps, a local SIM card and the invaluable help of friendly helpers for translation and electricity access, ensuring that they could charge their electric vehicles. Rainer Zietlow: “Though time-consuming, this approach has underlined the feasibility of electric vehicle travel in diverse regions and also enabled us to meet local people who were as curious as they were delighted to help us charging”. The Tour d’Excellence highlighted a number of important aspects of electromobility. Firstly, the success of the Tour d’Excellence shows that current EV technology from Europe is reliable and, to a certain extent, sufficiently flexible. However, there is still a lot of work to be done on the interoperability of electricity suppliers, as well as the standardization of charging norms or simply the network of recharging infrastructure within a country. Frank M Rinderknecht: “In addition to the 26 apps we had to download, we also had to deal with the fact that in Jordan, for example, most EV come from China and use the GB/T charging standard, which is incompatible with our European Type 2 standard. And in Saudi Arabia in particular, the network of charging points is still not existent, with a very few exceptions in less than a hand-full cities.” And Rainer Zietlow adds: “This didn’t stop us from being among the first to achieve a full 2000km crossing of the Arabian Peninsula in EVs without using one single charging station!”