The premise has always been somewhat the same: put Ewan and Charlie, old friends who love adventure travel, on the back of two huge and heavily laden adventure bikes and send them around the world or across a continent. Predictably, Long Way Up follows a similar setup, and it takes place mostly in South and Central America. But this time there’s an electrifying twist.
Sorry, terrible pun. But accurate, since Charlie and Ewan ride about on modified Harley-Davidson LiveWire motorcycles. You read that right: the boys are ditching the BMWs for some juiced American muscle. It’ll be interesting, to say the least, to see what they think of the bikes. Or how much cursing will be involved when they have to lift the Harleys up on the soft stuff.
It’s the chase vehicles that really grab our attention, though. Two Rivian R1T electric pickup trucks carried the support crew. And a new video from Rivian details some of what it took to make this all happen. For one, Rivian built a transcontinental charging system just for the adventure—putting more than 200 level 2 chargers along the route. (A few, to be clear, were temporary but many are staying put.) These pre-production vehicles, with a roughly 300-mile range courtesy of Rivian’s “mid-sized” battery pack option, charged every night along the way. We spoke to Brian Gase, Chief Engineer of Special Projects at Rivian, who told us the company used this drive as a validation exercise. The company learned a lot about the little things that can happen in the field from the experience—from bad 12-volt battery connections, frayed steel braided cables snaking through the suspension—and what it’s actually like to service the trucks under severe conditions. Thankfully for Rivian, both R1Ts finished the journey. That’s rather remarkable since the company had only five months to build these two trucks from scratch before the pair were placed in crates and shipped to South America.
The 13,000-mile trek these Rivians endured would be a monumental journey for any electric vehicle, even a factory-backed EV traversing a specially prepped and planned route. It’s the sort of stunt that rugged trucks and SUVs have been doing for ages. It’s good endurance (torture) testing, and also a great public relations stunt. Think about all the rallies and expeditions Land Rover has traditionally been involved in. It’ll be interesting to learn what sort of things Rivian discovered about its forthcoming R1T pickup while partaking in this ambitious adventure.
Long Way Up debuts on Apple TV+ on Friday, September 18, with new episodes rolling out weekly. And don’t forget to come back to the MotorTrend App after watching to discover more great motoring shows.
