Soviet Tesla: Electric Lada from 40 Years Ago That Was Mass Produced
People admire the rise of electric cars these days. The Tesla Model S is said to be revolutionary and to have changed the way electric cars are marketed and accepted in the world. Every brand is trying to come up with its own electric car. However, LADA had one back in 1980s.
The Soviet state commission approved LADA’s attempt to create an electric vehicle and recommended the car industry to start produce electric cars en masse. So in the years 1980-81, the first serial Soviet electric car was produced – over fifty cars were made in that first production run.
The model was designated “VAZ (LADA) 2801”. The aluminium body hosted Nickel Zinc batteries. To service the batteries, there was a special hatch in the place of the rear door (see the photo above, there is a hatch where “ELECTRO” is written).
Some cars stayed in LADA’s native city Togliatti, they were used by post offices, and intra factory services (like delivery of lunches). The blue electric LADA’s (like the one above without any markings saying it is electric) were used in Moscow, but most of the early electric cars were sent to Ukraine. They were working in different spheres of communistic business like TV repairs and other small service centers. Some were in Crimea, and some were in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev.
The Ni-Zn batteries were a heavy load – over 380kg of weight. The engine had 25 kWt (35 hp) which could get the car up to 90 km/h. By the way, the range limit was pretty good even by modern standards – it could go for more than 130 km from charge to charge
However, there was little to no infrastructure of charging stations at that time in the USSR. Also, the initial cost of production turned out to be greater that the Soviet officials thought it would be, so they started slowing down the project of mass adoption of electric vehicles in the USSR.
“This car is different from our usual cars. It has no gas burning engine, it has no transmission, no gas tank, no stick to change gears and even no clutch pedal. It’s a very clean car and is really a must have car for a city. The first practical use of LADA electric cars will be during the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980”