Interfax reports the news of the Russian automotive industry:
“The Kaliningrad [plant] Avtotor plans to invest 5.7 billion rubles in the development of production capacities for the production of electric vehicles, which can start by November of this year, replacing the stopped projects for the production of German BMW models and South Korean Kia and Hyundai. <…>
According to the founder of Avtotor, Vladimir Shcherbakov, quoted in a press release from the automaker, the company has found a model for working in the new conditions and in the coming months will carry out preparatory work to launch the implementation of new, electric mobility projects. There are no plans to lay off employees.
“We see a way out in the following: this year, at the latest next year, to create the production of electric vehicles. We will produce, among other things, the main units here. This is an electric motor. We plan to make 50-60 thousand electric vehicles. Full transition from 2024 to electric vehicles. We must produce about 300,000 cars in four years.”
Vesti specifies that 50-60 thousand is the planned annual production volume. The production of cars with other types of engines, according to the Vesti story, is not planned, but motorcycles and ATVs will be produced.
How, producing 60 thousand cars a year, the plant is going to produce 300 thousand in four years, remains a mystery.
However, according to automotive expert Sergey Aslanyan, Avtotor is unlikely to have to solve this paradoxical equation, since it is generally impossible to produce these electric vehicles:
“One hundred percent of the components are located abroad. We don’t even have wires for electric vehicles, we don’t have connectors, plugs. We will never have batteries, we will not have electric motors. And those electric motors that are supposedly Russian are Chinese.
We can invent and draw. But we don't have machine tools – the machines are all Western. There is not a single car factory that makes a machine park for itself. All equipment is made by about five companies in the world: mostly Swiss and German. But they imposed sanctions.”
According to Sergey Tselikov, director of the Avtostat analytical agency, in Russia it is only possible to set up a screwdriver-driven assembly of Chinese electric vehicles:
“Russia could not make a normal diesel engine. She wants to step over and now get ahead of everyone so that we have our own electric car. This is, of course, impossible. Mercedes has been going to this for 100 years, BMW for 80 years, Koreans for 40 years, the Chinese for 25 years.”