It all started back in March with a scouting trip, to identify a good location for electric vehicle test drives, around the Semenic National Park area, later this year. Meeting by chance Sergio Morariu, the initiator of the EnduRoMania movement in Brebu Nou, changed everything.
Six weeks later, four electric vehicles, and their drivers were aligned at the start of ElectRoMania, ready to take our guests on their first electric test drive. The purpose of the Electromobility project is to educate interested people about electric cars by driving. ElectRoMania takes this one step further, by offering rides in different cars, on the same track and day, to facilitate the comparison of each experience.
Our own EVs, „Ionica” (Hyundai Ioniq) and „TM 3” (Tesla Model 3, LR, RWD) are different enough, but having in addition one BMW i3 and a Renault Zoe, provided by City Limo, made this ride extremely interesting, according to the participants.
By rotating every 30 min to another car and going up the hill to Prislop pass, then down the road along Trei Ape lake, we were able to demonstrate the energy recovering advantage of EVs, compared to ICE equipped cars, and also the differences among the four vehicles in our caravan.
„TM 3” was leading the pack, celebrating six month since joining project Electromobility. Instead of champagne all we got was plenty of water on the road, caused by heavy rain and occasionally it looked more like a boat test or a water park.
Bad weather warning did not scare any participants and borrowing from our hosts’ specific motorcycle „jargon”, we came up with a word – „electromaniacs” – to define this group of 16 people, running four EVs up and down the mountain in pouring rain.
Our hosts at Enduromania Bed and Breakfast in Brebu Nou have over 20 years of experience with international guests, „funny” people and street art painters, as it is easy to find out by the colorful works covering all walls.
Coming from different countries, back grounds, and trades, our 28 guests were at their first electric drive and will share soon their experience with you.
Driving on the mountain road in rain, with air condition, wipers and lights on, took its toll. However, as the data obtained before in other parallel testing confirmed, Ioniq is more efficient than Model 3, a much heavier car.
Tesla Model 3 results after first three rounds: 47.8 km, 19.6 kWh/100 km, resulting in electricity cost of 12.5 RON/100 km.
Ioniq overall ElectRoMania result, including a trip to Crivaia: 131 km, 14 kWh/100 km, resulting in electric energy cost of 9 RON/100 km.
We all hope the youngest ElectRoMania participant will never have to drive an ICE powered vehicle, except for fun on a race track, to hear how noisy and stinky 20th century cars were.
With all four cars performing perfectly in the storm and nobody getting sick after two hours of driving on the winding mountain roads, we were happy to stop for lunch.
In the afternoon, while the Eugen and Mircea took the Renault and Zoe safely back to Timisoara, Ionica and TM 3 continued to provide test drives until later in the evening.
The debriefing session continued till late that night and participants seemed delighted with their new electric experience.
This is a good reason to start planning the second ElectRoMania edition, sometime late September. Stay tuned !
Pictures and videos by Dragos Ciobanu, EV connect
Special THANK YOU to our stormy weather safe drivers: Catalin, Roxana, Eugen and Mircea
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.
