The trip required multiple sea crossings and wasn’t quite as eco-friendly as it could have been as a result. However, it still underscored the environmental and economic advantages of his ride. The unmodified Golf would have required about 1,792 US gallons of fuel to complete the trip, which would have cost $4,552 if you relied on average US gas prices in 2018. Wakker spent a mere $300 on electricity over three years, and most of that was in the Australian Outback.

You can argue that Wakker achieved his goal, even if he was far from the only one pursuing that electrification dream. EVs were certainly a practical reality in 2016, but your choices at the time were largely limited to either premium cars like the Tesla Model X or short-ranged machines — even Wakker’s custom Golf couldn’t go further than 124 miles on a charge. While EVs are still far from dominant in 2019, they’re considerably more commonplace, affordable and longer-ranged. While stricter emissions rules, competition and economies of scale played large roles in that transformation, we wouldn’t rule out campaigns like Wakker’s playing a small part.