The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
A silent safari that’s totally electric
Heather Richardson cruises the bush in a new battery-powered 4x4 that is turning heads
If you’ve been on safari, you’ll know how noisy game-viewing vehicles are: the great thrum the engines make on starting and the clatter as they drive through the bush. Yet it’s the kind of noise you get used to and might not even notice – until it isn’t there anymore. That’s what happened when I climbed into one of the new electric 4x4s at Cheetah Plains and experienced the joy of a near-silent game drive.
The vehicles – Toyota Land Cruisers with Tesla batteries – are more or less a first in South Africa’s popular Sabi Sands Game Reserve. (Luxury lodge Londolozi trialled them a few years ago, but development stalled when Land Rover stopped producing the Defenders at the project’s core.) Given the novelty, we received strange looks from guests of neighbouring lodges. One morning, we shared a leopard sighting with another 4x4 that arrived with the usual blaring revs and roars as it edged towards the big cat and her seven-month-old cub. After a while, Matt, our guide, asked if we were ready to leave. He switched on the engine silently and we glided off with barely a sound. In the other vehicle, everyone lost interest in the leopards, turning to gawp at our Cruiser in slack-jawed confusion.
It’s not just people who look surprised. Rounding a corner, we met a herd of impala on the road. The antelopes snapped their heads round to stare at us in doe-eyed bemusement. They would normally have darted away on hearing the engine. “How did you get here?” they seemed to ask.
In places where animals are more skittish, this could have undesirable results; you don’t want to surprise a cantankerous elephant. But Sabi
Sands’ animals, well used to vehicles, take it all in their stride. Our silent approach doesn’t panic any of the wildlife we come across, from a family of warthogs and impalas with spindlylegged newborns to a lone bull elephant, a pair of white rhinos and the lions gorging on a zebra kill.
Cheetah Plains – a luxury lodge comprising three exclusive-use, four-bedroom villas – reopened in December 2018 after a complete rebuild that reflects a responsible approach to safari. Owner Japie van Niekerk told me the lodge will be “100 per cent off grid by the end of April”, running entirely on solar power. The villas are fitted with greywater recycling systems and are nearly free of single-use plastics.
Electric vehicles are a big part of the sustainability drive (so to speak): with th zero emissions and solar-charged batteries, the environmental benefits ts are clear. Then there’s the lack of noise oise pollution. People journey to the bush h largely for the tranquillity. A noisy engine is a big irritant – a problem van Niekerk was determined to solve.
“I’ve been involved in motor sports rts for 12, 15 years,” he said. “I went to one ne of the well-known guys and said, ‘Let’s et’s make something that looks like a Land nd Cruiser. We’ll adjust the suspension so it drives like a Range Rover, but it must work like a golf cart.’ ” On a game drive, it’s not uncommon to spend four to six hours a day in a vehicle. With this in mind, van Niekerk set out to perfect “your most expensive seat, your most comfortable seat.” His team created one that you sit in, not on, sloped slightly backwards with raised sides. There are seat warmers for chilly winter mornings and USB chargers for ensuring you don’t run out of camera battery at a crucial moment. Converting each of the Cruisers cost around $100,000 (£77,730).
Bolstered suspension makes these Land Cruisers the most comfortable safari vehicles I’ve been in. As we cruised along, there was just a faint electric whirr in place of what now seems like a highly obnoxious engine racket. “It It sounds a bit like a cable car,” said a fellow guest. I could easily hear Matt from the back seats as he was driving – a big advantage. It’s usually hard to catch any verbal exchange above the engine from three rows back.
As guinea pigs, we experienced a few technical
‘Let’s make something that looks like a Land Cruiser and drives like a Range Rover, but works like a golf cart’
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