ABSTRACT
During the twentieth and twenty- rst centuries, human exploration of remote polar environments has most often been powered by fossil fuels. When the British Antarctic Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton sailed out of London’s East India Dock aboard the Nimrod on July 30, 1907, the cargo manifest included an experimental vehicle for Antarctic transportation: a brand new Arrol-Johnston motor car (Sipiera 2002). The car would prove capable of traveling a maximum of only 8 miles at 3-15 miles h−1 across the smooth ice of Cape Royds at the foot of Mt. Erebus. Although the harsh freezing conditions and unpredictable terrain common to most of the continent rendered the car unusable, the era of hydrocarbon-powered exploration had reached Antarctica.
