Pressure is increasing on the Romanian government to (re)prioritise the trans-Carpathian motorway. An Olympic snapshot of Slovenian snow clearing. A driver lands a whacking tax bill after personally exporting cheap Luxembourg fuel, the New Europe Bridge over the Danube defies expectations, the IRU makes a film about its TIR dispute with Russia, and the Autoworld Museum in Brussels is apparently well worth a visit.

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10,000 DACIA WORKERS RALLY OVER TRANS-CARPATHIAN HIGHWAY

New road worth €30 per car says Dacia.

ROMANIA: More than 11,000 workers at the Dacia factory downed tools for an hour yesterday to rally in favour of a new trans-Carpathian motorway.

As well as ‘Build the highway from Sibiu to Pitesti’, the protestors reportedly shouted slogans including ‘Irresponsible political class’ and ‘Down with Basescu’, despite President Basescu last month making a public call for the motorway to be built.

With work on the A1 in the west of Romania on-going, the only missing section of motorway between western Europe and the Black Sea is across the Carpathian mountains. The Dacia factory at Mioveni, six miles outside Pitesti, is to the south of the mountain range.

This Sibiu-Pitesti section faces large technical challenges and will not open before 2020 at the earliest. Last year the government decided its road building priorities were in the south west and east of the country.

Because of the transport difficulties, most of Dacia’s production – 430,000 units in 2013 – is exported through the Black Sea port of Constanta, in the opposite direction to Western Europe.

The protest was not endorsed by Dacia management but the company did allow workers the time off.

Last month, Dacia general manager Nicolas Faure was quoted by news agency Mediafax saying, ‘It is very important for us to have easy access to the [Hungary] border in Arad, and this is a priority that we’ve communicated to the Government. According to our calculations, we would save EUR 30 per vehicle if there was a highway.’

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‘No problem with snow here in Slovenia!’ tweets Olympic biathlete Tim Burke @tb_burke this morning via @SloveniaInfo

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roundup: FUEL. A driver caught in Saarbrucken with 220 litres of fuel bought in Luxembourg was forced to pay €280 in tax. The maximum amount outside the fuel tank tax-free is 20 litres. Unleaded is currently €1.315 in Luxembourg and €1.568 in Germany according to fuel-prices-info. NEW EUROPE BRIDGE. In defiance of expectations, ours included, the new bridge over the Danube between Vidin and Calafat in the west of Romania and Bulgaria is doing well. 300,000 vehicles have used it since it opened last June with bilateral trade growing by 6-9% to top €3bn according to local reports. FREIGHT. The IRU has produced a video on the background to the on-going dispute with the Russian Customs authorities over the international TIR system. CARS. Brussels Autoworld is well worth a visit says @Nick_Stafford. It’s in the east of the city centre with a collection of 250 vehicles, from sporting to historic to Belgian makes.

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No new cars but some good news for Tesla’s Continental customers. Some very discrete technology on the latest Rolls Royce Ghost. Shocking queues at the Gibraltar frontier, refurbed carriages for Eurotunnel truckers, and the parlous state of Italy’s filling stations.

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TESLA: DRIVE (ALMOST) ANYWHERE IN EUROPE FOR FREE

No new cars but plenty of new supercharger stations, apart from in the UK.

A line up of Tesla Model S at the Davos World Economic forum in eastern Switzerland, January 2014. Photo via @TeslaMotors

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Tesla didn’t bring any new cars to the Geneva Motor Show this week – it’s been a while since anybody saw its upcoming Model X SUV – however, the company brought some bold claims instead.

In addition to the thirty new stores and service centres due to open, the company expects a comprehensive network of free superchargers to be up and running in Europe by the end of this year.

Tesla boss Elon Musk said, ‘By the end of this year, we expect you will be able to travel almost anywhere in Europe using only Superchargers.’

The word almost was well chosen because there’s no coverage even planned in East or south east Europe. But it will be possible to drive from the absolute north of Norway to Lisbon or Rome (see map below).

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The coverage of Tesla Supercharger stations by the end of 2014. Picture via www.TeslaMotors.com

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There are currently 14 supercharger stations in Europe, in Germany, Netherlands, Germany and Austria. Six of them however are in Norway.

Superchargers can replenish half a charge in twenty minutes, or eighty percent in forty minutes. They are free to use for Model S owners, ‘and always will be,’ Musk has said previously.

Meanwhile, Tesla is gearing up to launch the Model S in the UK. Demand in what is expected to be a significant market is not yet clear. There were places available right up until the last minute for demonstration drives in Bournemouth and Leeds this week.

The planned supercharger network in the UK so far only stretches from London to Liverpool and Cardiff.

Model S prices start at £49,000 rising to £68,700 for the 85KW P85 Performance version. Delivery is currently quoted in ‘4-5 months’.

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HEADLIGHT HIGHLIGHTS PART 10:

The headlights in the Rolls Royce Ghost Series II, unveiled in Geneva this week, feature ‘glare-free’ technology. Naturally the company doesn’t go into the tawdry details of exactly how the system works, but the effect is to sense oncoming lights and dim automatically while retaining full beam in general (similar to the all-LED lights in top line Audis which dim individual LEDs to do the same thing). Wonder if it works for driving on the other side of the road?

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GIBRALTAR QUEUE WATCH. The average delay at the Spanish frontier is 90mins Chief Minister Fabian Picardo told the Gibraltar Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday adding, ‘Judging by the results, the UK has not done enough to deter Spain from bullying and harassing.’ EUROTUNNEL. A £1.2m refurbishment cars’ is designed to win back freight customers lost to its ferry competitors in the past year says Lloyds Loading List. New features include better seating, a roomier area for vending machines, redesigned toilets and overhead video screens which display traffic and weather updates. The roll out started last week. ITALY. The condition of up to 5,000 petrol stations is ‘unthinkable’ by western European standards and they should be closed the Italian Association of Oil Companies president Alessandro Gilotti told a parliamentary committee today adding, ‘You or I would not like our children to fill up there.’

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New life has been breathed into old plans to span the Kerch Strait between Russia and Crimea. Young adventurers invited to Disco in the French Alps. Europe’s most congested cities announced – and the busiest speed cameras in France – plus there’s an end in sight to the Turkey-Bulgaria truck dispute while an annoying bottleneck on the A3 in Luxembourg is to be removed.

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NEW BRIDGE ACROSS THE KERCH STRAIT.

Russians very keen to build a bridge to Crimea.

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Velvet invasion or not, one of the events ratcheting up the tension yesterday was the seemingly sudden announcement that the Russians were to build a bridge across the Kerch Strait to Crimea.

Most locals knew it had been planned for decades. Still, Prime Minister Medvedev’s declaration was clearly timed as another blow in the psychological battle being waging at the top of the Black Sea.

Last October, even before former president Yanukovych had – formally – decided not to sign the EU agreement, there were reports that the idea had been revived.

A bridge over the Strait was first put forward by Nazi architect Albert Speer in 1943 as the Germans fought in the North Caucasus though they were overrun before it was half built. The Russians quickly finished it off only to see it swept away by ice flows within six months of opening.

The idea came up again after the fall of the USSR in 1991 – backed by then Moscow mayor Yury Luzkhov – and again in 2003. The two countries nearly came to blows after it emerged the Russians were surreptitiously building out to Tuzla Island in the middle of the Strait.

Occupying troops at the Kerch Ferry terminal earlier today. Photo via @EuroMaidanPR

For eight years after that, according to Yanukovych, Ukraine and Russia were in negotiations. Another agreement in 2010 seemed to come to nothing until the ‘exchange of inter-governmental papers’ in October 2013. That was quickly followed by a contract signing in Moscow on 17 December, with the agreement ratified by the Ukraine cabinet at the end of January.

The bridge plans were tightly tied up in the $15bn loan Russia promised to Ukraine at the same time, details that were understandably overlooked by many at the time.

What Medvedev actually announced yesterday was that the state road building company Avtodor will the main contractor via a new subsidiary Avtodora, and that engineering studies will be completed by November 2014.

Whatever happens, the bridge won’t be up and running anytime soon. Thanks to the shifting sands in the Azarov Sea – the major inflow of the Black Sea – it will be a tough technical challenge.

In 2010 the costs were estimated at 24bn RUB (£400m) with a minimum build time of five years.

The 4.5km route is currently served by car/train ferry. It costs less than £20 each way for cars but, according to Hurriyet Daily News, is ‘known for long lines and poor service’.

update 5 March: the build time has been reduced to 3.5 years and the cost increased to 50bn RUB (£830m) according to The Moscow Times today. The cost would double if the bridge also carried trains.

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Land Rover sponsored the Next Generation Explorer competition last weekend in the French Alps to mark 25 years of the Discovery. Alex Woodford, 22, from Leicestershire won out after 24 hours of tests in the mountains around Megeve which included slalom driving on the slopes, a 180kg sled pull and a kayak race across Lake Geneva. She will now be mentored by adventurer Bear Grylls.

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TRAFFIC. Brussels is Europe’s most congested city followed by London, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Stuttgart says the latest INRIX scorecard. The most congested countries are Belgium, Netherlands and Germany. Congestion in general rose for the first time in two years, for the last three quarters of 2013, but still fell overall. FRANCE. A speed camera on the A40 clicked an average 377 times per day last year making it the busiest in France according to new figures. Other hotspots included the A10 near Tours and A47 at Givors. See thelocal.fr for more. BULGARIA/TURKEY. Peace has utterly broken out after 15km truck queues at Kapitan Andreevo-Kapikule border point last month. As promised, the two countries seem to be moving serenely towards an agreement to liberalise freight transport, due to come into effect in April. LUXEMBOURG. The annoying customs buildings across A3 at Zoufftgen near the French border, a regular traffic bottleneck as vehicles are forced to slow, will be demolished. The work will take a year, mainly at night and at weekends.
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Chinese companies are financing and building important roads in the Balkans. Jaguar and BMW debut some very smart motoring accessories. Freeloading motorhomers get kicked off their winter pitches in Portugal, a new ring road for Minsk and Luxembourg gets serious about its road safety problem.

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MONTENEGRO’S FIRST MOTORWAY UNDERWAY

Thanks to the Chinese there’s a rush of road building in the west Balkans.

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Contracts to build Montenegro’s first ever motorway were signed in Podgorica yesterday.

Work starts in two months on the section Smokovac (Podgorica)-Mateševo – marked in yellow, above – the highest priority stretch of the 170km Bar-Boljare motorway, from the Adriatic to the Serbian border.

Ultimately the road will connect to Belgrade via Corridor XI, currently under construction in Serbia.

Montenegro might be the last European country to build a motorway but Bar-Boljare will be the most expensive per km. Forty percent of its length is taken up by 42 tunnels and 92 bridges and viaducts.

The 44km first stretch costs €809m, financed by China’s EXIM Bank and built by CRBC (China Road and Bridge Corporation). No finish date has been made public.

Meanwhile, on 22 February, nearby Macedonia turned the first sod on its most ambitious highway project in the past fifty years. The €375m, 60km, three lane road between Kicevo and Ohrid in the south west will take four years to build. The project is also financed by EXIM but built by SinoHydro Corporation.

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BMWi8 Louis Vuitton: it must be accessories week. In addition to a new range of Jaguar F-TYPE-inspired driving shoes from Oliver Sweeney – see www.oliversweeney.com – now comes a set of fitted luggage for BMW’s upcoming i8 electric sportscar. Designed by Louis Vuitton, of course. Price on application. Available from select LV stores worldwide from 1 April (before the car itself is available). Fitted luggage is very swish, etc, and space efficient but happens to it when the car is sold on, presuming it won’t ever be part of the deal?

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roundup: PORTUGAL. Motorhomers wintering on the riverside in Silves in the Algarve were evicted by a team of officers last week amid accusations the area was being treated as a ‘public toilet’. The local mayor however has spoken up for the campers who congregate in ‘dozens if not hundreds’ each year. LUXEMBOURG. The cream of the Duchy’s road safety industry met yesterday to discuss ways of reversing the recent slide in crash stats. Harsher penalties, fixed speed cameras and better signage and accident analysis were suggested ahead of final proposals to be published 19 May. BELARUS. The second Minsk ring road will go ahead. ‘The bottom line is we will poison Minskers if we fail to build this highway,’ President Lukashenka said today as increasing east-west transit traffic threatens to clog the capital’s streets. Meanwhile, a renovated four lane 7km section of M6 Poland-Minsk highways opens on 1 September at Shchuchin with the entire road to be reconstructed by 2016 ‘at the latest’.

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Hefty fuel duty increases in Italy and Switzerland, and possibly Spain too, plus a roundup of Continental prices. Sochi winners get brand new Mercedes in Moscow’s Red square. Gibraltar queue watch, history spat in Porsche’s home town, Berlin traffic boost, crazy remote driving vid Spain, plus final Saimaa Canal tragedy findings.

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UP, UP, UP: FUEL PRICES IN ITALY & SWITZERLAND.

A snapshot of fuel prices around Europe.

Italy, May 2013. Unleaded already at €1.69 with no sign of coming down since.

An increase on Saturday (1 March) means Italy will rank behind just Croatia for the highest fuel tax in Europe.

While the Croatian treasury takes 60.6% of the price in duty, Italy now reaches 60.5%. The European average is 47.9% according to business association CGIA Mestre.

But while unleaded 95 sells for €1.345 in Croatia, and diesel for €1.266, for the past few years fuel in Italy has been among the Continent’s most expensive.

The national average price for unleaded 95 is now €1.769, the third highest in Europe behind Norway (€1.854) and the Netherlands (€1.787) according to www.fuel-prices-europe.info (Belgium has recently fallen slightly to average €1.614).

For diesel, Italy now edges up into second place (€1.679) after Norway (€1.722) and ahead of the UK (€1.656).

Meanwhile – following the Swiss government’s defeat in a referendum over raising the price of the annual motorway vignette to pay for road improvements – transport minister Doris Leuthard says she will increase fuel duty by 15 cents per litre instead.

This is considerably more than the 9c per litre rise she hinted at shortly before the vote in November, a claim that drew accusations of scaremongering at the time.

Fuel in Switzerland is currently relatively cheap by western European standards at €1.367/l for unleaded and €1.478/l for diesel.

A rise of 15c per litre (around €0.12) still has unleaded in the European mid-table, cheaper than neighbouring France (€1.495) and Germany (€1.562) but catapulting it way ahead of Austria (€1.390)

However, the same rise for diesel would put it at fourth most expensive, considerably more than Germany (€1.408) France (€1.319) and Austria (€1.320). You wonder whether the fuel retailers, concerned about cross border leakage, will wear it. It’s not going down too well with citizens either.

Finally, Spain is in hot water over a ‘health tax’ it levies on fuel to pay for the public health system. The European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that the ‘centimo sanitario’ was illegal and ordered the €13bn revenues raised 2002-11 to be returned.

The government says it will heed the ruling and is analysing the impact on its finances.

With unleaded currently selling for €1.407 and diesel at €1.361 (compared to Portugal’s €1.614 and €1.414, not mentioning Andorra’s €1.249 and €1.139) there’s considerable local wiggle room for a distinctly unhealthy tax rise to compensate.

All prices from Saturday 1 March, per litre for unleaded 95 and regular diesel.

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Each of Team Russia’s Winter Olympics medal winners were given a brand new Mercedes today. Forty five cars were handed out in total – a GL-Class for gold, ML for silver and GLK for bronze – by prime minister Dmitry Medvedev at a ceremony on Vasilyevsky Spusk (descent) between Red Square and the Moskva river. Child prodigy figure skater Julia Lipnitskaia, too young to drive, also got a chauffeur.

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roundup: GIBRALTAR QUEUE WATCH. Delays topped two hours this afternoon. SPAIN. Unbelievable video of a young lad driving his car at motorway speeds, including overtaking a truck, from the passenger seat. FINLAND. Neither the weather nor the state of the road were to blame for the accident last weekend along the Saimaa Canal in Russia that claimed ten lives says the official report of the Finnish Ministry of Transport. The Saimaa strip is leased from the Russian government. CZECH REPUBLIC. The hometown of Ferdinand Porsche – Vratislavice nad Nisou in what is now the northern Czech Republic – is embroiled in an ongoing controversy about whether to honour its famous son. A new exhibition is due to open in May. BERLIN. City centre traffic could be due for a boost if the road beside the British Embassy is finally reopened to cars. Wilhelmstrasse is a key link road from the bottom of Unter den Linden and the Brandenburg Gate but was closed in 2003 at the start of the Iraq War over security fears.

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Dunkirk gets some EU money towards its redevelopment plan. Increasing the speed limit cuts accidents says a Danish experiment. The FIA hikes passport fees. Luxembourg police ramp up spot checks. The Competition Commission extends its deadline in the Eurotunnel/SeaFrance case. German police say they are powerless to stop people texting from behind the wheel and Turkey turn-up visas are now available until the end of the year.

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MAJOR REDEVELOPMENT DUNKIRK

Increased capacity, smoother access.

Dunkirk Port West

For drivers heading for northern Europe – or even south via cheap fuel Luxembourg – the Dover-Dunkirk ferry is likely the best bet.

The sailing takes 30 minutes longer than Dover-Calais but drops passengers closer to the Belgian border. DFDS – the only operator that runs services to Dunkirk – currently charges the same fares as it does for Dover-Calais.

The chief disadvantage is that the crossings are much less frequent, twelve each day compared to 23 P&O Dover-Calais. Turning up expecting to hop on the next service isn’t really an option (though the wait would be maximum two hours).

Also, whilst it might look straightforward from the map, getting in and out of the port is slightly convoluted.

However, a new €14.6m project announced today will increase capacity and remove traffic bottlenecks between the port and the A16. The terminal platform will be completely reorganised and rebuilt to reduce waiting time and smooth traffic in and out (hopefully with better signage).

The European Commission – which is paying ten percent of the cost – says just an extra 15 minutes saved on each turn-around could allow an extra sailing each day.

The port is split up into three sections: west, central and east. The west port is where the roll-on roll-off (Ro Ro) ferry operations are located and where the work will be concentrated.

Dunkirk is France’s third largest port behind Marseilles and Le Havre, handling around 7,000 ships each year. Traffic has increased tenfold since 2000, with traffic volume growing 10.6% in 2012.

There’s no word yet on when the redevelopment starts or whether DFDS will be able to use Dunkirk while the work is on-going. We have a call out to the company and will update this story when we hear back.

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Aston Martin’s brand new lipstick-grilled Vantage N430 ‘Clubsport’ driving through everybody’s favourite: a cloistered tunnel. Cannot say precisely this one is obviously but if that’s your thing check out SP20 between Longarone and Maniago in the Dolomites, north east Italy. Even better, through the tunnels SP20 is one way only. If the road in front is clear you can really floor it.

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roundup: SEAFRANCE/EUROTUNNEL. The deadline for considering the ‘merger or just asset acquisition’ case has been extended until early May by the Competition Commission. GERMANY. Police are powerless to stop an increasing number of people using mobile phones while driving they say. The current fine is €40. DENMARK. Increasing the speed limit made the roads safer say police after a two year study. LUXEMBOURG. Police will increase patrols throughout the Carnival period, until 9 March, on the lookout particularly for DUIs and speeding drivers.

HISTORIC. Owners are not happy that Historic Technical Passports (HTP) issued prior to 2011 become invalid at the end of 2014 as a new five year renew comes into force. HTPs are needed to enter FIA-mandated events on the Continent. The early ones were without a time limit. They cost between £405-930 each. The FIA says renewals received before 30 September will get a 50% discount. TURKEY. Visas can still be bought at the port of entry until the end of 2014. New electronic visas, to be obtained before travel, were due to take over on 10 April. The 90-day multiple entry visa costs £10.

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