Zhiyi Auto / Chen Yi
North Korea has always been a country of mystery, and most people don't know much about its car-making industry.
In North Korea, there are two major automobile factories, namely the "Shengli Automobile Factory", which was built with the aid of the Soviet Union, and the "Peace Automobile Factory", which is the product of inter-Korean cooperation.
Founded in 1950, the predecessor of the "Tokugawa Automobile Factory" built with the aid of the Soviet Union, mainly produces trucks, trucks and various construction vehicles, and the first truck developed by North Korea, the Shengli-58, was born here.
If you are careful, you should have already found the clues, yes, the so-called "autonomous" research and development is just a pretense, because the Victory-58 is essentially an imitation of the Soviet GAZ-51 truck.
The Victory-58 is equipped with a 3.5-liter 6-cylinder gasoline engine with a payload of 2 tons, and has been produced since 1958.
In addition to the Shengli-58, the "Shengli Automobile Factory" also launched many products, such as the Shengli-61 in 1961, the Independence-64 in 1964, and the Shengli-NO.2 in 1964, but without exception, they were all made by reverse copying Soviet cars, in other words, the Soviets made an extremely important contribution to the development of the North Korean automobile industry.
On the other side, the "Heping Automobile Factory" mainly produces passenger cars for everyday life.
The background of the "Peace Automobile Factory" is rather special, it was jointly funded by the DPRK and the ROK during the honeymoon period between the DPRK and the ROK, of which the DPRK holds 30% of the shares and the South Korea holds 70% of the shares. In other words, the "Heping Automobile Factory" is a serious joint venture car company.
"Heping Automobile Factory", like "Shengli Automobile Factory", likes reverse development, and China and Germany are honored to be the reference objects:
Peace 2019, a reference to the 2018 Haval H5;
Peace 2021, a reference to the 2017 Haval H9;
Whistle 1613, a reference to the Volkswagen Jetta;
口哨1610，参考了奔腾B50；
Stema 2008, a reference to Volkswagen Magotan;
杜鹃2008，参考了北汽战旗；
......
This style of painting, Zotye also called it an expert.
It is worth mentioning that in terms of new energy, North Korea has not departed from the pace of the times, but this "new energy" is not the other "new energy", because North Korea's "new energy" vehicles are wood-burning.
This "new energy" car will be placed in the tail of a large iron bucket, used to burn wood or straw and other materials, due to the primitive mechanical structure, the combustion process will also continue to produce black smoke and pungent smell, can be said to be very North Korean characteristics.
In fact, similar "new energy" vehicles appeared as early as World War II, when it was in response to the shortage of oil resources, and as for North Korea, considering the particularity of its national conditions, the existence of such "new energy" vehicles has become reasonable.
Looking back on history, North Korea, like China, is a socialist country with a late start to the automobile industry, but after decades of development, China has become one of the world's top automobile markets, and North Korea still has a lot of room for improvement, as of 2023, North Korea, with a population of nearly 25 million, has only 30,000 cars, which is almost equivalent to only 1 in 833 people having a car.
As an additional thing, North Korean law stipulates that ordinary people can buy private cars, but for various reasons, in fact, most North Korean people are not allowed to buy private cars, and only those who hold important positions or have made outstanding contributions to the country can own private cars, which is completely unthinkable for ordinary Chinese people today.
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