Yahoo Autos How Sinje Gottwald Crossed Africa on an Electric Motorcycle
How many of us have dreamed about packing it all in and heading off on an around-the-world adventure? Roughly once a week, I think about loading my life into the back of a van and setting off on a journey like this. Sinje Gottwalt went beyond the daydreaming stage, plotting a trans-continental motorcycle adventure and setting off to make it a reality. To complete the adventure, last year she set off to ride across Africa on an electric dirt bike. That trip became the longest distance ever covered on a battery-powered motorcycle, and brought to a close the ‘round-the-world ride Gottwalt began back in 2017.
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When Gottwald first started her ‘round-the-world adventure, she set off solo on a BMW R100GS PD, riding across Europe and into Central Asia. She then crossed south, sailed to Australia, crossed that continent, and headed over the Pacific into South America. From there, Gottwald rode north through Bolivia all the way up to Canada, and then crossed the Atlantic to Africa.
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“I got my license in 2008 and then did smaller adventures, from Germany to Morocco for example,” Gottwald told Jalopnik on a recent video call. “I did a lot before, but never on this scale. And never really on my own, so that was very different.”
Just Sinje Gottwald, her bike and the open road.
Gottwald’s ride around the world took her across the Pamir Highway, over mountain passes that topped 13,000 feet above sea level, and introduced her to some of the “friendliest people,” she says. It took her three years to reach Africa, and the timing couldn’t be worse: She was entering the closing stages of the trip right as the global COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold.
“When I was in Mali, in Bamako, the pandemic started,” Gottwald told Jalopnik. “So, I had to decide whether to stay there and wait to see if it gets better. Of course, it didn’t get better, so I drove back to Senegal, left the bike there and flew home.”
This left her ‘round-the-world ride on indefinite pause. Gottwald had planned to take her BMW from Morocco all the way down the west coast of Africa to South Africa, where she would conclude her adventure. But after flying home due to COVID-19, the trip was left feeling like “unfinished business,” she said.
Gottwald started working for Cake while planning the ride.
The ambition to finish the journey never left Gottwald and, while plotting her eventual return to the open road, she started a new job with electric motorcycle maker Cake. Founded in 2016, the Swedish company ships a range of high-tech electric motorcycles for off-road riding or hauling gear around town.
“The idea of doing a longer trip on a motorcycle didn’t come up because of working for Cake, it was the other way around,” explains Gottwald. “I had this idea for many years and when they hired me I took the first chance to talk to Stefan [Ytterborn, founder and CEO of Cake] and say, ‘hey, this is my idea.’”
Charging Into the Unknown
Gottwald says most people thought she was “crazy” for believing that an electric bike could manage a ride like the one she had planned. Nevertheless, Ytterborn was “surprisingly” open to the idea, and supported her on this final leg of the journey.
To complete her ‘round-the-world ride, Gottwald planned to depart from Barcelona, Spain on October 14th, 2022. She would sail across the Mediterranean sea into Africa and head south to the bottom of the continent, finally bringing her mammoth ride to an end after five years and one global pandemic. But instead of taking her trusty gasoline-powered BMW, Gottwald switched to battery power, saddling up on one of Cake’s own Kalk off-road electric bikes.
Sinje Gottwald switched her BMW for a Cake Kalk.
“So the first one was with a BMW R100GS PD, which is a big bike,” she explains. “It has 1,000 cc, it’s super comfortable and has lots of space. Now, I have an electric motorcycle. There’s limited space because I have soft panniers, and it’s a very light bike.”
The two bikes, Gottwald says, could not be more different. Swapping onto the Cake meant a new riding position to adapt to, a new seat to get comfortable on and a new way of controlling the bike, thanks to the Kalk’s “very linear acceleration,” Gottwald explains.
