The team's Australian Mock Race started today from the outskirts of Adelaide, South Australia. While the Global Green Challenge will start from Darwin in the Northern Territory and end in Adelaide, race regulations prevent us from traveling on the race route in the Northern Territory before the race. Therefore, our Mock Race is from Adelaide to the Northern Territory border and back, a distance of 2435 kilometers (over 1500 miles).

Today's race day started just after 11 AM--while the first day of the race starts at 9:00 AM, we were delayed in our car preparations due to our batteries not arriving from the US until Monday. Nevertheless, we started out from Adelaide and were instantly met with cloudy weather. Starting with a full battery pack, we were able to move at a reasonable pace; however, with no end to the clouds in sight, we had to move forward cautiously. It would be unfortunate to run out of energy in our batteries before we could get to the sun of the Australian outback to recharge.

This being our first running of the car in Australia, we did run into a number of minor electrical gremlins that put us on the side of the road three times, and had to bleed our brake system while pulled over as well. The likely cause of the electrical problems, a loose connection within our battery control modules, was diagnosed while examining the batteries at the end of the day, so we hope not to encounter this problem again tomorrow.