I gotta say this makes a surprising amount of sense.<p>- Turkey is the perfect size for a relatively beefy electric car battery to make through in one charge, effectively removing the range anxiety.<p>- This car will likely be immediately competitive in at least the Turkish market because Turkish taxes are crazy on transport. Gasoline is taxed at ~70%, cars are taxed at 68% (50% + 18% VAT). A domestic car will probably avoid the 50% on purchase and a domestic electric car will entirely avoid taxes on gas. Taxes make this a good deal at almost any price the average Turkish consumer can buy.<p>- With the current very low, out of whack exchange rate (1USD:6TRY) this will also become competitive in at least Southern European markets fairly fast as well.<p>- Since this is government sponsored they can also do a fairly fast rollout of electric charging stations by offering generous incentives. If that doesn’t work, they have the eminent domain hammer, and they will definitely just build it themselves as part of the electric service.<p>- This also avoids the heavy industry required to build ICE cars, which has environmental costs. That cause is becoming popular with the electorate as well, exemplified in the stiff backlash against the country’s first nuclear reactor.<p>- Lastly, Turkey has been building cars for the past 35 years and it’s gotten pretty good at it - many of the entry to mid level marques of European conglomerates are built in Turkish factories. This is an entry into luxury segment, it is <i>not</i> an entry into car manufacturing. That knowledge of being able to build safe and solid European cars already exists in there. If you’ve visited Europe, you likely already ridden a Turkish-made car (taxis) and if you live in Europe, chances are you might own one without knowing.<p>- As a bonus point, I would say the choice of an Italian designer over a Turkish one bodes well for the effort because somebody actually made a level headed, reasoned call on this and not a nationalistic one.
There's a lot more information and photos here:
<a href="https://www.motor1.com/news/390036/turkey-togg-csuv-ev-automobile/" rel="nofollow">https://www.motor1.com/news/390036/turkey-togg-csuv-ev-autom...</a><p>> Customers can choose from two different lithium-ion battery setups. The smaller option promises 186 miles while the larger pack should crack 300 miles per charge.<p>> TOGG says the rear-drive model can hit 62 miles per hour in 7.6 seconds. The dual-motor SUV will do the deed in 4.8 seconds.
Interesting to see so many new entrants to the car manufacturing market. I guess internal combustion manufacturing was so dominated by the big boys in US-DE-JP that no one really had the muscle/margins to get into the fight at that point. From what I've gleamed, electric motors are a lot simpler (less moving parts).
Honestly, think they stand a pretty good chance in making it successful, especially considering how good their domestic home appliance capabilities has become. Different things, but atleast the embedded systems/electrical engineering talent is there.
So, they (reportedly) commissioned Pininfarina to do the design work, as a "joint design team" with the TOGG folks, but based on the fit/finish of the interior (and the design choices) it kind of looks like Pininfarina did the actual manufacturing of this concept car.<p>I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it might be a bit early to call this a "fully homemade car".
I’m old enough to remember the last “first fully homemade Turkish car”. It was named Imza (Turkish for signature). I don’t remember the specifics but it was total flop with some financial fraud in the mix. Hoping for a better result this time.
There were companies who are selling the same template with different color plate to the customers and lying about they designed from scratch. It seems Italians did the same.<p><a href="https://www.motor1.com/news/390097/togg-suv-sedan-concept-pininfarina/" rel="nofollow">https://www.motor1.com/news/390097/togg-suv-sedan-concept-pi...</a>
I've been traveling in Turkey few months ago. Was extremely impressed by the resources this vast country have and by the wealth its citizens (in Istanbul) used to have.<p>Turkey have healthy infrastructure to develop these kind of industry. I believe that they can afford paying top talents from all over the world to come there and boost this industry
One of the things that technology enables is lower barriers to entry. In the past, you had to be horizontally integrated to make a car. Even Tesla, to some extent is massively horizontally integrated as they are first movers.<p>Technology enables global supply chains. Electric cars may have fewer moving parts. The result is a "narrower" approach to integration where you can rely on others for important or critical parts.<p>Assuming they can make this car reliable and cheap - the makers only need to focus on marketing and selling to make it successful.
Completely new platform from completely inexperienced vendor, mass produced, with more shiny tech than the major car manufacturers have today combined (lvl 3 AD, augmented reality, V2X, eye tracking, holographic assistant?, etc). All done in 2 years...good luck. No doubt they might get a car out eventually but it wont be the car advertised here and the timeplan is still very optimistic.
Where are they getting the batteries?<p>Electric cars are an extremely simple, mature technology that is decades old. Building one isn't hard. The real trick is high volume production of high capacity lithium ion batteries, and the associated pack technology. This is why the Europeans are still massively behind Japan, Korea, and the US (Tesla) with EVs. They can't get enough cells to manufacture cars in high enough volume to be profitable, because they are simply buying them from LG Chem and Panasonic.<p>If Turkey isn't investing billions into battery production, then the whole endeavor is a pointless prestige project.
3.7bn over 13 years? There’s no way that anything will become of this. Of course, that’s not the point. I suspect that exactly one car will ever be made, the car that the despot Erdegon will get to drive in for the cameras.
On a tangent: Why hasn't Tata (India) tried to enter the American markets? They're a huge shop (they've got a ton of engineering branches just like GE or LG), and I realize a lot of their car production is tied up domestically or to Africa where their industrial their vehicles are big, but surely they've have to had considered selling cars in Europe/the US? They have a US engineering/consulting presence already and even do large scale government contracts (although they require US citizens for those .. which is .. a weird hybrid when you think about it), but we don't see any of their cars in the US.
Devrim was the first one (and had more style to it), but there were only 4 of them produced:<p><a href="http://devrimarabasi.com/galeri/big/siyahbeyaz/siyahbeyazdevrim62.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://devrimarabasi.com/galeri/big/siyahbeyaz/siyahbeyazdev...</a><p><a href="http://devrimarabasi.com/galeri/big/siyahbeyaz/siyahbeyazdevrim54.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://devrimarabasi.com/galeri/big/siyahbeyaz/siyahbeyazdev...</a>
I hope one day cars will be the next "tower computer" in that you can buy your motors, shell, seats, OS (and self driving AI), all separately and just put them together. It would be very cool to see companies that just specialize in making different bodies, companies making different frames, but all working with a standardized blueprint.<p>I think the first iteration of THAT would be a huge boon to the economy.
I believe Elon Musk deserves credit for inspiring people thousands of miles away.
-Over 100K guaranteed sales
-Free land allocation for 1M m2
-100% tax cut
-Massive interest rate cut for financing
-2 SUVs and 1 Sedan in 2022
-Concept designs were made by
Pininfarina
By today's standards it's a pretty car. I'm way over the Lamborghini style front end scoops but this has much softer lines compared to most right now and it's nice.
he drove it today on live broadcast:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1Cu4dPNLok" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1Cu4dPNLok</a>
I don’t understand what about this car is “homemade.” The headline doesn’t make any sense. And if it does, it’s in a paternalistic (maybe racist?) sort of way.
> Erdogan first revealed plans in November 2017 here to launch a car made entirely in Turkey by 2021.<p>Electric cars are much simpler then conventional combustion engine cars... no transmission needed.<p>I'm glad that Elon was not successful in putting a transmission in the Tesla car.