First Drive: Ken Block Drives the ALL NEW Extreme E Electric Racecar in Last Stage of Dakar Rally

so there is an ambry palette yes thank goodness hello. I just got back from a quick weekend trip to Japan to buy Toyo tires for the Tokyo Motor Show. Toya doesn't have a great booth there and I was doing a lot of interviews, press stuff and signings. autographs for fans with Mad Mike Baja 1000 winner Alan en putea and Japanese drift champion kalibata, so it was a really cool moment. I really enjoyed the Tokyo Motor Show, it's one of the wildest motor shows in the world because Japanese car culture is so cool and now I'm back in Park City, my hometown, for a whole day, so I'm going to the mountains, I'll do some hiking, snowboard with my dogs and tomorrow I'll go to Saudi Arabia for my

first

extreme

trip.

II Odyssey 21, an all-

electric

race car, so I get to do the final

stage

of the Dakar

rally

in that thing, so it's going to be a wild time, so stick with it, but we've reached the end. The end of the final

stage

of the Dakar Rally is Here and here we are with the GE car, so today is going to be quite interesting. The

first

day here in Saudi Arabia. The first day driving this car. Yes very important. Okay, yeah, that's good. It fits very strangely. maybe our clumsiness will just get you the red brick we saw no really yeah wait so there's a handbrake paddle yeah paddle rest.

I like it, so I can hook this well. The

extreme

ii odyssey 21 race car, all-

electric

all-wheel

drive

. It's my first time driving an electric racing vehicle, so I'm here to test it today and then

drive

it tomorrow on the final stage of the Dakar Rally. I'm told this has about 400 kilowatts of power, which in terms of horsepower is about 550 and the torque is about a thousand Newton meters of torque, which in a vehicle that weighs about a ton and a half is a lot of torque, statistics Very impressive and I think it's going to be a lot of fun to drive, so let's do it.

I want it to be able to. Drive now, can I? Drive, let's drive, ah man, it was nice to finally get this up to speed that feels really good. I love the fact how aggressive you can be to move the thing, move it under braking and really you know, put it where you want it and then you hit the gas and the torque is instantaneous and it just goes, so it's actually a lot of fun to drive. . I'm so used to the combustion engine where you're actually trying to build turbo boost to like kick the engine in and out and it's so instantaneous that it dies down sooner than you would think, so for me it's incredibly fun, it's just a matter of to adapt my calibrations to what this thing is capable of doing at all times. a little new to me but man it's really fun, super capable stuff and yeah I hope to keep driving more so we're out of Riyadh, Syria.

We left the hotel this morning, only driving about half an hour outside of that big bustling city here in Saudi Arabia. Arabia and we are in a really dynamic and beautiful place, this is the scene of the

last

stage of the

dakar

rally

and by the way we are standing in the middle of the wash, this is what we think is part of the stage we have been testing the Odyssey 21 today so driving through the middle of the wash you can't get in and out of the wash avoiding big rocks like that one that I may have hit, it looks like it was in a hole right above it. there and there's all kinds of random things along this side.

I have no idea what this is, but how it grows and things like a very dry desert is really beyond me, so yeah, very cool Dakar Rally Saudi Arabia Extreme II, can't wait. run tomorrow, okay, so, actually, it's race day for me, well, kind of a race day, uh, because I'm not in the actual race, I can just demo around the stage, but today we are like flying. We have reached this stage here in Dakar, but in reality this is more of a test for this team, for this very extreme team. The guy who's going to sit with me as a co-driver is actually one of the engineers on the team, so it's going to be interesting to see, hey, if I could, we could find the stage, but how fast could I get to the stage because we'll actually be able to compare times. of what we do in Odyssey 21 compared to what everyone else does, but we're really not very well equipped to attack this too intelligently.

I have to conduct this fairly conservatively. I don't have a proper co-pilot and it is what it is. This is for demonstration, I did it for fun and us. I'm going to make the most of it and by the way, I'm going to forget to say this, but thanks to Ford for letting me go out and do this, because it has nothing to do with this championship, nothing to do with this car, but they are very involved. Techie that I am I wanted to come out and experience this and see how the development of this electric rallycross type truck was progressing and they were nice enough to let me do it so thanks for this, it's great the first time.

I have been to the Dakar for the first time in Saudi Arabia and it is incredible that I cannot go out and race the stage without pressure and with a lot of fun and a new racing vehicle that I live in here. "At the end of the Dakar Rally I finished the stage this morning, the vehicle performed amazingly. In fact, it was quite surprising to me once I got on stage and was driving at high speed, how well it did to try to really read a road that I had." I've been on it before and I ride it as fast as I can, but the main thing is that I'm really curious to know what my time is on the stage.

We cheated a little there because we don't have all the usual spare parts. everyone is wearing it, so we're probably a little lighter, and I didn't have a co-pilot either. I just wanted the engineers sitting with me to get lost in a moment, but he did a great job. I think it was a lot of fun, the car Riley has been crazy driving this extremely electric vehicle, it's been amazing like these days, so the winner of the stage was Nasir Altea, in fact, one day he used to compete against the WRC, and his time was 850, which is fast and In fact, we checked the actual time from the start of the stage to the finish via my GoPro Hero 8 and it looks like I would have had a time of 917 if I had been officially entered in the race So third overall against all these guys, that's an amazing showing for this new car with a lot of testing and with me only very little testing.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about it. It's a little warning to stay away from this place in pretty quick time.