Istanbul
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan unveiled prototypes of a domestically manufactured electric car that is hoped will hit the road within three years.
“Today we are witnessing together a historic day when Turkey’s 60-year-old dream is coming true,” Erdogan told a ceremony in the Kocaeli province in northwestern Turkey. Turkey has a considerable auto manufacturing sector, but it is mostly subsidiaries or partners of international carmakers.
“Turkey has become a country which is not only a market for new technologies but also a country which develops, produces and exports them to the world,” he said. Two models were unveiled on Thursday, but five are planned with an autonomy of 500 kilometres (300 miles) on a full charge. Production is expected to get underway in 2022 by a consortium of five Turkish industrial firms dubbed TOGG.
Turkey said it plans to produce up to 175,000 vehicles annually under its domestic electric car project, drawing investment of 22bn lira ($3.7bn) over 13 years.
The project to produce a fully home-grown car has been a longtime goal of Erdogan and his ruling AK Party as a demonstration of the major emerging market’s economic power. Turkey is already a big exporter to Europe of cars made domestically by firms such as Ford, Fiat Chrysler, Renault, Toyota and Hyundai.
The new project, launched in October, will receive state support such as tax breaks, and establish a production facility in the automotive hub of Bursa in northwest Turkey, according to a presidential decision in the country’s Official Gazette. Five models of the car will be produced by a workforce of more than 4,000 people, the statement said, adding the government had guaranteed to buy 30,000 of the vehicles by 2035.—Gulf Times
