Deputy Mayor for Economic Policy and Property and Land Relations Vladimir Efimov claims that everything is going according to plan. Admittedly, they talk about these plans very sparingly, and yet there are less than four months left.
The time is now very favorable for the development of the car business, but will the city government manage to solve this difficult task in such a short time?
Expert opinion
Maxim Kadakovyeditor-in-chief of the oldest automotive publication in Russia, Za Rulem magazine:
— Everything is kept strictly confidential, I asked the director of Moskvich Dmitry Pronin a direct question – who is your partner? But for now, he doesn’t want to talk about it, or he can’t. If they start assembling 600 cars by the end of the year, 300 of which are electric cars, they should have a contract by the end of August. After all, car kits have to be paid for, delivered, assembled, the assembled models have to be certified as part of the production and only then are they put on the conveyor belt and all the documents for the cars produced are received. Putting this whole puzzle together I can say it will definitely be JAC because there are just no other options. But everything will be done calmly so as not to run into sanctions, the Chinese also do not want unnecessary problems. After all, they use western technologies in one form or another, JAC works together with Volkswagen, nobody needs extra publicity.
From a purely technical point of view, the remaining four months are sufficient to make these cars. After all, this is an SKD assembly: machines are delivered disassembled in several parts, with certain requirements for components and assemblies. And then they will be collected in Moskvich. And for that, it is enough just to have an empty room and organize a slipway there. You can even use the wire from the final assembly line.
Certification, of course, also takes time, but I think that in the current situation, the Moscow authorities and certification bodies will find a common language, and all this will happen as soon as possible.
Another thing is that it is not clear whether these machines will have time to go on sale before the end of the year and at what prices. It is also unclear how the models will be “separated”, as the JAC company sells cars in Russia under its own brand and now its models will be sold under the Moskvich brand. And Sollers will also produce their own car, and I suspect also in collaboration with JAC. That is, it is necessary to somehow understand the whole scheme.