Yesterday evening, an important event for the Russian automotive industry took place in Moscow: the prototype of the domestic electric car "Atom" was presented. This is not yet a production car, but it is already much closer to the "series" version. The car can even move independently.
According to the editor-in-chief of "Za Rulem", Maxim Kadakov, about 500 specialists are involved in the project to create the Russian "Atom", including 200 engineers. Offices are located in Russia and China, and the headquarters are in Naberezhnye Chelny (this is not surprising, since KamAZ is behind the creation of "Atom"). The creators believe that they can start production of "Atom" in 2025, and the projected output looks very ambitious - 200 thousand cars per year! For comparison, AvtoVAZ produced approximately that many for the entire 2022.
The creators of the electric car provided refined technical specifications of the car. And here is the most interesting thing: the base "Atom" is rear-wheel drive! This is, of course, a plus for handling, but off-road performance suffers. However, the company is also working on an all-wheel drive version.
The "Atom" will receive a traction battery of domestic production - it is being developed by one of the structures of "Rosatom". The expected range is 500 km. The rear-wheel drive version will accelerate to 100 km/h in 7 seconds, the all-wheel drive version will obviously be more dynamic. The dimensions of the car are 3995 x 1780 x 1615 mm.
The swing doors and the absence of a central pillar make the car extremely convenient for getting in/out, but it is not yet clear whether this feature will be retained in the production version, because the middle pillar significantly increases the rigidity of the body. Also, the production version may abandon the retractable door handles, and the door hinges in appearance and design will be much closer to traditional ones.