Lada: 1st Russian-Built Electric Vehicle

September 11th, 2012 by Nicholas Brown

A vehicle called “El Lada” is to be the first Russian-built electric vehicle.

Renault and Nissan, which are sister companies, own 50% of Lada.

El Lada Russian Electric Car.

El Lada is shown below in a video that was released by AvtoVAZ, which is also a part-owner of Lada,

The car has a 60kW (80 HP) electric motor that facilitates a top speed of up to 80 mph, and it can travel up to 100 miles after each charge.

This 5-door compact hatchback electric car will undergo its first tests as a taxi in the city of Stavropol in southern Russia, which is about 100 miles above the border of Georgia. This is reminiscent of a recent EV taxi project in The Netherlands commissioned by Better Place Consortium.

Project Better Place offers a concept that enables electric vehicles to switch their batteries to fully charged ones in less than 2 minutes. This is very impressive compared to normal charge times for all other electric cars on the market today. But the key is that the vehicles don’t have to charge their own batteries — they swap them with already charged ones. But, back to Lada….

Lada recently hired former Mercedes-Benz senior designer, and former Volvo chief designer, Steve Mattin to run the Russian automaker’s design operations.

Lada has apparently jumped ahead of Yo Auto, which is owned partially by Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov. Yo Auto claimed in 2010 that it would start producing Russia’s first hybrid vehicle by the end of this year. The company recently retracted this claim and said that the car, which is called a Yo Mobile, will not be available until 2015.

Source: Autoblog

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Tags: el lada, electric vehicles russia, lada, Lada EV, Russia alternative fuels, russian EV, russian-built EV, southern Russia electric vehicle

About the Author

Nicholas Brown writes on CleanTechnica, Gas2, Kleef&Co, and Green Building Elements. He has a keen interest in physics-intensive topics such as electricity generation, refrigeration and air conditioning technology, energy storage, and geography. His website is: Kompulsa.com.

HR4fre

My next car will most definitely be an electric – and, why not, a Russian – one. But 80 HP is a bit too little. Gotta wait some more!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Stan-Stein/1756064509 Stan Stein

Ok….so….100 miles range? We get a Volt with what? 40? In this world of planned obsolescence, we have still failed to kick the boogyman’s butt……WHY don’t we have enough guts to insist that when we bail out an automoble manufacturer, they “pay us back” by putting their best foot forward? They need us way more than we need them…..we can buy a car from anyone, from almost anywhere…..The CEO of GM is on record as saying that the price of gas should be $5……why? Because then, paying a giant premium for an EV, with a few extra thousand of profit “stuck into it” would stop people from procrastinating about switching….and gladly pay twice as much for a car to avoid paying $100 per week for gas instead of $60
GM is more than happy to build a Volt….a Cruise has well less than 1/3 of the profit of a Volt. That’s also why they sell the sexiest SUVs that they can…..compact cars have the lowest profit of any model.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  I do wonder what your point is Stan.
  
  EVs with 100 mile ranges work for some people. Others need a PHEV with 40 miles (or 16 in the case of the Prius) but the ability to drive further than 100 with fuel.
  
  That’s just where the technology today. (Remember computers with clock speeds of 1.023 MHz and data storage on 5 1/4″ floppies? That cost well over $2k in today’s dollars?) Ranges will increase and prices will fall.
  BTW, the Volt was designed and introduced prior to the financial industry crashing our economy and requiring us to protect American car manufacturers.