There have been a number of ideas, many dismissed as non-starters but all options have needed careful consideration.

Serious consideration was given to short term gyro storage but this was dismissed because of the nature of the road surfaces that many of these vehicles travel on not being appropriate for this system of power.

Fuel cell technology is an exciting future development and there was good reason to look at that in detail, particularly if the methane to fuel it could be produced from street rubbish. The technical difficulties associated with the production of methane and its conversion to a viable fuel made it a difficult route to follow.

Solar power was considered very early on, dismissed, and now returned to. There has been some research into this in India and it is becoming increasingly attractive as a means of powering small, light-weight vehicles. The way I think it would work would be to not simply focus the attention on the vehicle but on the garaging it at night. The surface area of these vehicles is not enough to enhance sufficient energy from the sun to power them throughout a day. Hence solar power’s early dismissal. But supposing the depot to which the vehicle went at night was a huge energy bank, recharging the batteries from the energy collected by the solar roof during the day. It is estimated that each vehicle will achieve a motoring distance of about 30 miles on each charge. If the vehicle had an on-board solar roof for top-up purposes this distance could be increased by a few miles. Tempos probably do not travel any further than that during the course of a normal day.

To develop a vehicle from scratch is very expensive so the intention is to find a suitable vehicle, already in existence, for conversion. The tempo is not a large vehicle, in its taxi form carrying a maximum of three passengers in cramped conditions. The replacement vehicle should be sympathetic to the criteria already in place and also take into consideration the type of streets these vehicles will travel down. A four-seater, or perhaps a six-seater golf buggy would be ideal. The two extra seats of the six-seater would be taken out to provide extra battery storage space. Ideally, I would like a couple of decommissioned buggies for the team to work on, developing the technology and designing any required changes to the vehicle. Once we have reached a final and successful design we would need to implement these into a newer vehicle.

There may well be other suggestions coming to the fore as the project develops. All options need to be fully discussed and tests carried out on those showing greater potential for success. It may be that we do not choose a lone system but two to carry out a comparative study during the second phase of the expedition.