While the nation’s electric car market remains small with only dozens of vehicles sold each year, the variety of fuel-free and hybrid vehicles available for local customers is growing.
Ukraine-headquartered SIG Motors joined the market last year.
The company was established in 2011 by businessmen Andriy Sudrab and Igor Burushkin. Currently it assembles car components produced in China, though plans are underway to switch to Ukraine-made ones and launch in-country production, the company’s managing partner Mykhailo Demuria told the Kyiv Post.
“The company was established to supply the country with electric transport and improve the ecological situation,” he says. “In 2013 we assembled the first set of 10 (electric) cars and 30 tricycles, which are absolutely new for Ukraine. This year we want to produce 100 cars and tricycles.”
The price for such vehicles ranges from to $5,000 for a tricycle to $13,000 for an electric car. By comparison, fuel-free cars produced by French-based Renault, Japanese Mitsubishi and Nissan, and Chinese BYD are available in Ukraine at a price from $14,000 to $26,000.
SIG Motors also sells electric buses it imports from China, which are widely used in Crimean sanatoriums, according to Demuria. All vehicles are charged from a regular electrical socket. It takes four to eight hours, depending on the size of the car. One charge provides energy to drive 40 to 100 kilometers, which is one of the reasons why such vehicles are mostly used on small, closed areas like sanatoriums.
The limitation is why, without governmental subsidies or tax breaks, this business does not look too profitable, AutoConsulting’s Oleg Omelnytskyi says.
Lawmaker Lev Myrymskyi presented a bill which envisioned setting limits on petrol transport at sanatoriums and conservation areas, a measure that could boost the market for electric vehicles. The bill did not make it out of committee. Myrymskyi had skin in the game: he was one of three people who registered the SIG Motors brand, according to Ukrainian Institute of Industrial Property database.
Oleg Nazarenko, head of the All-Ukrainian Association of Automobile Importers and Dealers, adds that cancelling import duties for electric and hybrid cars, which are not treated differently from regular autos, could raise their popularity.
Lack of infrastructure is another problem for the domestic electric cars market. There are only two charging stations for electric cars so far, both are in Kyiv – WOG’s on 8 Naddniprianske highway and Okko’s on 1 Heroiv Stalingrada. Street.
So it’s no surprise that electric cars are not ubiquitous in Ukraine – only 31 were sold over the last two years, while around 200 hybrid and electric vehicles are owned by local drivers. Yuri Urbanovskyi, National Ecological Center chairman, doesn’t see a huge potential for the electric car market to grow in Ukraine now: “Electrocars are used in countries where the percentage of sources of renewable energy like solar panels or windmills is high. As far as this energy is produced with less damage for the environment, the country is interested in having electrocars. Here, as long as energy is produced in a hazardous way, the chances for using electrocars are lower than in Europe.“
Demuria of SIG is more optimistic: the company sold all the electric cars it had assembled. Moreover, openings of new representative offices and showrooms in Kyiv, Lviv, Donetsk, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk are scheduled for this year.
Kyiv Post staff writer Anastasia Forina can be reached at [email protected]
