After climbing the Transfagarasan up to Balea Cascada and the winding roads leading to Paltinis ski resort two weeks ago, beautiful spring weather invited us to continue exploring „the joy of electric driving” along the northern border of Semenic National Park’s scenic area.
Resita, a former heavy industry city, is recovering slowly from decades of extreme pollution and promoting electromobility by offering free charging for taxis, right in the down town area parking lot.
The charger worked just fine for our Model 3 and needs an activation card. Other charging options in the city are offered by Kaufland (card required).
From Resita the road starts climbing on a well maintained road and then drops to the village of Valiug, right at the bottom of the Gozna lake dam, providing great driving opportunities.
From Valiug the ascent to the „Gate of Semenic” mountain, where regional road 582E turns right to the ski resort, provides some opportunties for panoramic views, including manmade lake Gozna.
On the road to Garana we passed by the outdoor wood sculptures park and the location of the Jazz festival, before reaching our destination La Rascruce restaurant.
Excellent food, friendly service and a beautiful dog roaming the courtyard between hungry patrons in search for treats, makes it always worth a stop.
From here on, after a short 10 minutes drive along Trei Ape lake we reached our main objective for the day, the headquarters of ENDUROMANIA. A vividly painted house signals something special is going on this property which became a „dream come true” for the initiator of enduro travels in this part of Romania, Sergio Morariu.
Meeting Sergio, after more than 20 years, was a delight and more than an hour passed like minutes listening to the fascinating stories about creating the enduromania movement. Following his dreams to build this heaven for people in love with enduro travels, for outdoors and adventures, sets a challenging target, but it also highly motivates to follow your dream, to find like minded partners and get people back to nature.
This is how, on the first opening day of the 2019 season, Sergio „interviewed” me about our electric endeavors, as it does not take long to figure out, that somebody traveling in an electric vehicle across the mountains, could be on a mission.
We got to talk about project Electromobility, educating interested people about the joy of electric driving, and the experience gathered during the last year, by offering electric test drives to interested people in US, Norway, Sweden, Germany and Romania.
It was within minutes that Sergio accepted my desire to have a late summer electric test drive camp established in the area, to offer the real joy of electric driving on mountains roads, to those interested to understand the significant difference of driving electric, instead of ICE (internal combustion engine) powered cars.
Seems easy to explain, no shifting, no breaking, just enough torque any time you need it, or want it … but how do you make people understand that electric driving is another dimension of gliding silently, along the mountain in perfect harmony with nature, recovering energy during each descent ?
With his endless passion for all things he believes in, Sergio launched an instant invitation to explain our Electromobility project to his guests in April. We gladly accepted and are looking forward to the date and participation of EV lovers and their cars from the area.
Thus, out of respect for Sergio’s team achievements in creating the enduromania movement and events, we named our first ever mountain road electric test drive event „electROmania”.
db
PS: By the time we got back home, the average energy consumption from Resita, over the mountains, to Timisoara, including 130 km/h on the freeway from Lugoj to Remetea, and air conditioning set at 19 C, reached a very decent 13.8 kWh / 100 km, which is 8% lower than the 15.0 kWh / 100 km average achieved from November 1st to March 24th, over 8938 km.
My lifelong automotive career started with design and testing of ICEs, continued with service and sales, followed by 20 years of global seat design, requirements and knowledge management.
My recent passion for electric vehicles found its home at 24auto.ro and electromobilitate.
