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Start 'ZEM Goes USA' Tour
Blog 1 | Studentteam TU/ecomotive
After months of looking forward to the "ZEM goes USA tour," it officially began on September 5. With a team of 13 students from different backgrounds we are traveling to the USA to make the tour a great success. During the tour we will visit universities, companies and authorities to inspire everyone with our beautiful ZEM.
In the past months we have had a lot of contact with inspiring people to plan all kinds of activities for the tour. Together with these people we want to create the future of sustainable mobility.
Within TU/ecomotive we can handle unexpected situations well, but unfortunately now we are dealing with a situation over which we have no control. Namely, our team has had to deal with the fact that Zem will not be with us on the west coast, this is for half of the tour. Due to an extreme delay, Zem is currently still on the boat and it is no longer possible to drive Zem from New York to San Francisco for the start of the tour. We have done everything we can to still get Zem to the west coast in time, but unfortunately, not everything can always go our way. With a scheduled arrival Aug. 21 and Zem's actual arrival on Sept. 6, we were very unlucky with the boat.
As Bart van Grevenhof, the TU/e representative once said, we are the hot chocolate and Zem is the whipped cream. Hot chocolate is the base and everyone will be very happy if they are offered some hot chocolate. Ask them if they want it with or without whipped cream, and almost all of them will say they would like it with whipped cream. We believe that our highly motivated and enthusiastic team is the base (hot chocolate) and that Zem is a nice addition (whipped cream), but does not make the team any less valuable.
Since it is not possible to get Zem to the West Coast from the beginning of our tour, we have decided to split into two teams - a large team on the West Coast and a smaller team on the East Coast - which will meet halfway through the tour in Austin. The west coast team will start the tour in San Francisco on September 5 without Zem, and the east coast team will wait for Zem to arrive on September 8. The east coast team will then begin their own additional mini-tour before joining the rest of the team in Austin.
Every disadvantage has its advantage and that includes this extreme delay of the boat. Having to split up our team means we can do twice as many activities, making our impact twice as big and inspiring twice as many people!
Follow the adventure
Read all the latest updates from the TU/ecomotive team here!
