The Russian government is planning on promoting local production and sales of electric cars by subsidizing their price by 25 percent up to a maximum of ₽625,000 ($8,538), as reported by Reuters.
Electric mobility is far from a popular choice in Russia, which is lagging behind most European countries. Out of the 45 million cars driving on Russian roads today, only 11,000 are electric. In order to change this ratio, the government is looking for ways to make EVs more affordable to the people and give motives for local EV production.
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The ultimate goal is for an annual production of 220,000 EVs by 2030. This may sound overly ambitious for a country without any EV factories at the moment, but Russian government officials suggest that there is already interest from foreign manufacturers to take advantage of the economic benefits.
Russia’s car market is quite substantial, with 1.76 million sales in 2019, dropping to 1.6 million in 2020 due to the pandemic. If an automaker manages to grasp a piece of this pie by producing cars locally, then building an EV factory in Russia would totally make sense.
In line with the Paris Agreement on climate change, Russia wants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, so more electric cars will help in achieving this goal. Maxim Kolesnikov, department head at the economy ministry, told Reuters that the new measures will possibly start from next year. If this happens, electric vehicles will become more affordable to Russian citizens.
