Sales of electric vehicles in Russia showed growth for the first time this year

At the end of seven months of 2017, sales of new electric vehicles in Russia amounted to 39 units, which is 18% more than a year earlier (33 units), Autostat reports.
It is worth noting that in the first five months of this year, the already rapid sales of electric cars in Russia were falling , but for the first half of the year the figures were still equal to last year’s.

As analysts point out, the growth in sales of electric cars in the country is due to the Tesla brand, which accounted for about 70% of the total volume, or 27 electric vehicles sold. Sales of the remaining 12 electric cars were distributed as follows: Nissan Leaf - eight units, Renault Twizy - three jokes and one Mitsubishi i-MiEV.

Over 60% of new electric vehicles are registered in the capital region (Moscow and Moscow region), which is a total of 25 units. Residents of the Far East purchased another six electric cars. Also, two cars went to the Krasnodar region. One new electric car was purchased in St. Petersburg, Tatarstan, Irkutsk, Voronezh, Ryazan and Rostov regions.

In Russia, the fleet of electric vehicles still does not reach the 1,000 mark: as of January 1, 2017, 920 electric vehicles were registered in the Russian Federation. For comparison, there are already more than 825 thousand electric vehicles on the roads of China.

But the Russian authorities are optimistic: in November last year, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak predicted that by 2020 the volume of the electric car market in the Russian Federation could reach 200 thousand cars. At the same time, the government is preparing ahead of time uniform requirements for charging stations, of which in some places there are more than electric cars themselves.