The early member of the RAF family that outpaced the usual RAF-2203 minibuses was the signal for a new direction. This variant, though only modestly longer or shorter in its lineage, carried innovations that hinted at a future where urban transport would be cleaner and more compact. The RAF-2204, for instance, stood one meter shorter than its predecessors, measuring a concise 4.2 meters in length. It was designed with front-wheel drive and, notably, a fully electric propulsion system that reflected a bold push toward zero-emission city travel.
Access to the interior was arranged at the rear through a double door, a practical solution for frequent passenger turnover. The seats were constructed from lightweight plastic to minimize overall mass, a deliberate choice to maximize efficiency. The vehicle’s weight was a key consideration, with the alkaline battery alone weighing nearly 800 kilograms and offering a capacity of 160 ampere-hours. Drive power was delivered to the front wheels via a reduction gearbox and thru-axles with universal joints, a layout chosen to balance torque delivery with driving comfort in urban settings.
With a total vehicle weight around 2700 kilograms, the effective driving range was roughly 40 kilometers on a full charge. Charging the battery required about 14 hours, a timeframe that reflected the charging technology of the era and the ambitions of early electric public transport concepts. This model’s powertrain included a 22 kilowatt direct-current electric motor, enabling the vehicle to achieve speeds up to 70 kilometers per hour when push came to shove on open stretches. Yet, despite these capabilities, there was no plan for mass production at the time; the electric bus served as a forward-looking prototype representative of the technical imagination of its era.
Historian and technology enthusiast Mikhail Kolodochkin has spent years gathering and sharing remarkable historical facts about technological progress. His work illustrates how small design decisions illuminate large shifts in how people imagined mobility. For example, he has pointed out intriguing details like the unusual features on the headlights of Zhiguli cars from earlier generations and what those features might have signified for motorists of that period. These anecdotes remind readers that the evolution of vehicles is not just about engines and batteries but about design choices, user experience, and the broader context in which engineers operated.
Readers curious about the broader story of domestic electric vehicle development can explore a growing collection of materials that trace the arc from early concept buses to the modern era. The journey reveals how energy storage, charging infrastructure, and vehicle dynamics intersect to shape practical urban transport. The project of documenting these milestones continues to illuminate how seemingly modest experiments contributed to larger technological trends and, in time, to a more electric vehicle landscape. The exploration is an invitation to consider how today’s electric buses build on past experiments and how current choices echo the questions and constraints faced by engineers a generation ago.