"New Energy Trend" public number report: Now when it comes to the research and development and exploration of electric vehicles, I believe that 99% of people will think of the famous Tesla, GM or Mercedes-Benz, this is because today they are still alive, in fact, the world's earliest leaders of electric vehicles are not in Europe and the United States, but in a country that has disappeared - Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, and even Ukraine, which is now being violently beaten, also has a credit in it.
They built electric cars even before the Soviet era, as early as 1900.
In 1899, Romanov Hippoli Vladimirovich of Tsarist Russia designed the world's first recorded electric car, the Cuckoo (кукушка).
The cuckoo has two seats, weighs 750kg, of which the battery accounts for 370kg, and can travel 60km at a speed of 39km/h on a single charge.
Shortly thereafter, Romanov introduced an electric bus.
This electric bus, designed specifically for the hospitality industry, was commissioned in 1902 and has 20 seats and can transport 17 passengers. After a single charge, it can travel at a speed of more than 60 km/h at 20 km/h.
Romanov hopes to put the electric bus into public service, and a year before the production of the St. Petersburg Duma submitted a petition proposing to open 10 electric bus lines, a total of 80 electric buses, for a total amount of more than 500,000 rubles.
However, under the pressure of the efforts of many horse-drawn carriage manufacturers, the company established by Romanov failed to successfully finance and the project was aborted.
▲ LET（ЛЭТ） 1935
In 1935, the Moscow Institute of Power in the USSR introduced the "oil-to-electricity" version of the Guis-5 (ЗиС-5) truck, LET(ЛЭТ) 1935, ready for municipal garbage removal.
LET can carry 1800kg of garbage, according to today's eyes, the biggest garbage may be the 1400kg battery behind its cockpit... Although the battery is huge, its capacity is only 168Ah, which can only support the maximum power of the motor to reach 13kW, and the endurance of LET is only about 40km, and the maximum speed can only reach 24km/h.
Due to the serious shortage of LET product strength, the municipal government finally chose a better fuel removal truck.
▲ NAMI-750 (1948)
In 1948, NAMI built two test cars, naming the NAMI-750 (0.5 tons) and NAMI-751 (1.5 tons) according to the load capacity. Both cars are equipped with dual DC motors, nami-750 using dual 3.2kW motors, NAMI-751 using dual 6kW motors, the top speed of the two vehicles is 30km/h and 35km/h, respectively, and the cruising range can reach 50-70km.
At that time, the importance of weight reduction for electric vehicles was already noted, and the body of the NAMI-750/751 was made of simple structure of plywood + aluminum truss, which was very lightweight.
▲ NAMI-750/751 powertrain layout
The lead-acid battery with a capacity of 200Ah/80V (16kWh) is arranged in the middle of the vehicle, and due to its high body height, the encroachment of the battery system on the cabin space is also acceptable.
After testing, the two prototypes were handed over to the LAZ Lviv Bus Factory in Ukraine for official production. LAZ replaced lead-acid batteries with nickel-iron batteries, and the name of the car was also changed to NAMI LAZ-750/751.
Because the cost of electric vehicle production was still too high at that time, and the cold weather in the Soviet Union was not friendly enough for electric vehicles, LAZ only produced 20 cars on a small scale, which were sent to the post offices in Moscow and Leningrad, and until 1985, these cars were shuttled through the city to transport mail. It is worth mentioning that their use cost is "ridiculously high", the price is 2 times that of fuel vehicles, and the battery is replaced every 20,000 kilometers.
▲ The first electric bus in the Soviet Union to be put into operation
In 1957, NAMI built the first operational electric bus that could accommodate 70-80 passengers, with a top speed of 36 km/h and a range of 55-70 km. On the day the electric bus was put into operation, soviet supreme leader Khrushchev personally boarded the bus for review.
In the 1970s, the All-Soviet Institute of Industrial Design (VNIITE), the All-Soviet Electric Power Science Research Institute (VNIIEM), and the Road Transport Research Institute (NIIAT) jointly developed electric vehicles with UAZ and RAF automobile manufacturers.
± U-131(U-131)
VNIIEM and UAZ teamed up to create the U-131, an electric van based on the UAZ-451. The U-131 uses a lead-acid battery with a capacity of 100Ah and a maximum cruising range of up to 70km.
However, due to the heavy and huge battery that greatly affected its cargo volume, the maximum load of the U-131 was only 500kg, which was significantly lower than the 800kg of the gasoline version.
The U-131 was equipped with an AC asynchronous motor with a maximum power of 15 kW, and although the parameters were not eye-catching, the AC motor was relatively avant-garde at that time. The U-131 represented the Soviet Union at the Fifth EVS World Electric Vehicle Congress (1978) and became the only model in the field to use an AC motor.
▲ UAZ-451MI
▲ UAZ-3801
Subsequently, UZA continued to develop the UAZ-451MI and an upgraded version of the UAZ-3801. The biggest breakthrough of the UAZ-3801 was to upgrade the load mass from 500kg to 800kg, and the battery system was transferred from the drawers on both sides of the body to the floor in the middle of the compartment.
In addition, UAZ-3810 can charge the battery to 70% in 1 hour, which is already super fast charging at that time.
In 1980, Moscow hosted the 22nd Olympic Games, which was also the first time that the Olympic Games came to a socialist country, and the Soviet Union of course mobilized the whole country to ensure the smooth progress of the Olympic Games.
This time, they have developed an electric referee car for the race walking competition.
The RAF Riga Bus Factory in Latvia will "oil-to-power" the more mature RAF-2203 van to create a purely electric-driven RAF-2910.
The RAF-2910 referee car uses a nickel-zinc battery with a capacity of 250Ah and is arranged in the trunk. The car has a maximum speed of 30km/h and a cruising range of up to 100km, which can fully meet the needs of the event.
The RAF-2910 referee car is equipped with convenient configurations such as double-sided sliding doors, rotatable seats, folding table and refrigerator, and a race information display on the roof. After all-round armament, this referee car provides a strong guarantee for the Olympic event.
After the race, the RAF-2910 was sent to the sunny Central Asian franchise countries, and solar panels were installed on the roof, making the car the first solar electric vehicle in the Soviet Union.
epilogue
Combined with the current development status of electric vehicles, we can also find the shadow of the past. Whether in the Tsarist era or in the Soviet era, the national system provided the soil for the development of electric vehicles in Russia. Unfortunately, despite the government's hopes for the electrification of cars, the development of electric vehicles in Russia has not been a big success. In the end, the cost of early batteries was too high and the energy density was too low, resulting in too low power of electric vehicle products.
The electric vehicles in European and American countries are also surpassed by the late-starter fuel vehicles due to product force factors.
Whether it is the national system or market-oriented competition, electric vehicles have not succeeded in the past era, and those electric models that represent Russia, Europe and the United States for green travel dreams have not been mass-produced.
Today, the development of science and technology is changing rapidly, and the performance of electric vehicles has long been incomparable, but the related technologies of charging efficiency and battery capacity have still failed to achieve breakthrough results, and it is too early to take on the responsibility, but it does not delay the existence of electric vehicles as a supplement to transportation travel.