Today, May 11, the domestic brand Atom showed the prototype of an electric vehicle of the same name of its own design and presented the first version of its own operating system and the Atomverse marketplace.
Today we were shown a functional sample of an electric car. The first serial Atom will leave the assembly shop at the end of 2024, the launch of mass sales of the model will take place closer to the summer of 2025.
Atom will be the first electric vehicle built from scratch in Russia.
Characteristics
The car has good characteristics – acceleration to “hundreds” in 7 seconds, power reserve on a single charge – up to 500 km, depending on the version. The electric car is rear-wheel drive, but there are also plans for a 4×4 option.
New dimensions: length – 3995 mm, width – 1780 mm and height – 1615 mm. These dimensions will provide the electric car with good maneuverability in the city, ease of parking and operation. With such dimensions, the declared level of passenger comfort is C / D-class.
In the development of key components: a storage battery and an electric drive, Atom’s partners were enterprises of the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom. All components of the electric car are adapted to cold climates. The battery is based on modern lithium-ion cells with high energy density.
Design
The Italian design bureau worked on the appearance of the electric car together with Atom. The task was to create “not pretentious beauty”, but an easy-to-use and functional car with an eye to the future. For example, a steering wheel with a built-in display is an important reference to unmanned vehicles.
Atom deliberately moves away from the standard layout and standard number of displays, relying on a single control center on the steering wheel and an augmented reality interface on the windshield.
Project feature
The company creates its own software and automotive platform. The development of the car is led by a well-known automotive specialist Harald Grubel, who previously developed projects at Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and AVTOVAZ.
How much will it cost?
So far, the creators give an evasive answer to this question: Atom is a technological mass electric car for the city. On the one hand, it must be affordable, and on the other hand, it must offer a high level of comfort and safety. This will determine the price of the Atom. According to the estimates of “Behind the wheel”, such a car cannot cost less than 2 million rubles.
Expert opinion
Maxim Kadakov, editor-in-chief of the magazine “Behind the wheel”:
– I think this is the most realistic project of all automotive startups in recent years. Now the question is being decided where the electric car will be produced. Whether this will be a new plant or one of the idle plants that can be adapted is not yet clear. At the same time, laboratories will be built where it is planned to conduct testing, including batteries. To achieve all this by 2025 is a difficult and ambitious task. But in general, I like this project: the car is pleasant, and the solutions embedded in it are quite interesting. And Rosatom is working with them, which is also important and speaks of the seriousness of the project. Here with KAMAZ, even though they talk about it, there is nothing in common. These are two separate projects (KAMAZ is developing its Kama-2 electric vehicle. — Ed.).
The project is definitely “sharpened” for carsharing. Its strongest point will be software and IT solutions that will allow you to quickly connect everything: car fleet, carsharing, etc. 100 machines can be easily connected in 5 minutes. All this soft is ours, domestic.
They want to make 200,000 cars a year. Only the estimated price is still unclear, and the success of the project depends on it. There is a feeling that such a machine cannot be cheap. And if the price approaches 2 million rubles, selling 200 thousand of these cars is not an easy task.
The Atom electric car can be seen at the International Economic Forum KazanForum 2023, which will be held in Tatarstan from 18 to 19 May 2023.
“Behind the wheel” can now be read on VKontakte.
Photo: Atom and Maxim Kadakov
