The Ministry of Economic Development wants more: electric transport was diluted with hydrogen one

Alexander Titov, Head of Oil Market Research at the Institute for Energy and Finance commented to the analytical portal Gas & Money on the support of electric vehicles in Russia.

The Russian Ministry of Economic Development made changes to the draft concept for developing production and use of electric transport in Russia until 2030, increasing the volume of investments for the program implementation from 418 billion to 777 billion rubles.

Alexander Titov noted that Russia is at the very beginning of the road to the development of electric transport in the country, despite the active growth of the electric vehicle fleet in recent years.

So, according to the agency "Autostat" in Russia, 10.8 thousand units of electric vehicles are used as of January 1, 2021, and at the beginning of 2019 this figure was 3.6 thousand units. At the same time, the total car park in Russia is about 45 million units, i.e. electric vehicles account for only 0.024%.

“Thus, we are only at the very beginning of our journey, since such a share of electric vehicles was observed on average in the world back in 2011 (about 10 years behind). Of course, infrastructure development, changes in consumer behavior patterns, adaptation of legislation is a long process , and we will catch up with developed countries and China in terms of transport electrification most likely by the end of the decade,” the expert noted to Gas & Money.

Titov believes that expectations regarding the replacement of cars with an internal combustion engine in Russia with electric cars within 20-30 years can be fully justified, since trends in the automotive market are set by large foreign auto holdings.

“If they manage to implement plans to radically reduce the production of cars with internal combustion engines in favor of electric vehicles and hybrids, and the price of electric vehicles continues to decline, then Russian consumers will also choose electric vehicles and hybrids. In this situation, we will act in the same way as motorists in Western countries,” Titov said.