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Cars
Published on November 28, 2018 |
by Jake Richardson
November 28, 2018 by Jake Richardson
Igor Antarov is a business partner of the Tesla Moscow Club, an organization that promotes Tesla electric vehicles, sells them and services them. It also sells and installs electric vehicle chargers and supports the electric vehicle community, among other activities. In 2013, the club started delivering the Tesla Model S to Russia and imported the first Model 3 in March 2018.
Antarov recently took a little time on a busy schedule to provide information and details about Teslas in Russia CleanTechnica.
1. Your Tesla Model 3 video was fascinating: it revealed the level of awareness of strangers on the street. How surprised were you with the extent of their knowledge?
Thanks for the nice words!
We have been working on the issue of awareness since the foundation of our club four years ago. The level of consciousness is increasing, but not as fast as we wish. I think there are still a lot of myths and prejudices around electric cars since people keep asking the same questions.
We had the hypothesis on the current state of awareness that there were about 3 out of 10 people who knew about electric vehicles. Surprisingly, during this specific test, it was closer to 8/10, although we deliberately chose the crowded street of tourists from other parts of Russia. Unbelievable!
It was a big surprise, but why do we still feel weak conscience in reality? Maybe we should do more tests.
2. Is this model 3 your vehicle or belongs to the club?
The car was registered as mine on paper, but it belonged to the club. My business partner Alexey went to the United States to get there the first day Tesla started delivering to non-employees in December 2017. We imported Model 3 to Russia as soon as possible to present it to the public Russian.
Such a presentation has proven quite expensive for us, but we are happy to have done so. We managed to show the car to a lot of people, travel by car, make headlines and do a lot of tests and reviews.
3. How many kilometers are there on Model 3 in the video and what was your experience up to here?
The first thing we did after the acquisition of Model 3 was traveled 2,000 miles on the east coast of the United States in a week, just before the car was sent to Russia. In fact, we invited journalists from the biggest Russian car magazine "Autoreview" to do some tests there.
We also used it for trips here in Russia. Model 3 arrived in Moscow in winter, which was quite unexpected for the region and the car worked perfectly. It's all right on snow, ice, and a dirty and dirty mess that covers our roads and is supposed to melt the ice.
In Model 3, we made several trips to Russia, including one from Moscow to Minsk, Belarus and vice versa. The total mileage in Russia is about 6,000 miles.
You can see the video of the trip to Belarus on our channel in English. We compared model 3 to model S.
This photo was popular at the moment.
4. How long have you been involved in the club and what are its goals?
We dream of replacing all ICE cars with electric cars. I imagine roads cluttered with modern environmentally friendly cars, silent, safe to drive and inexpensive to maintain, and I can not wait for that moment.
I have personally started supporting Tesla since the beginning of the Model S. I consider Tesla as one of the most important agents of change in the world today. Thus, each thread, multimedia source and knowledge received information about Tesla from me.
Meanwhile, my long – time friend, Alexey, watched National Geographic 's "Megafactories – Tesla" video and was very excited about this idea. This led him to create the club in early 2014. I helped him a little remotely and I joined him as a business partner a year later.
To have at least some EV on our roads, it was necessary to bring them to Russia. So Alexey made the move, convinced the first owners and helped import several vehicles for them. That's how we have a Tesla Owners Club and a company that helps select and import EVs. We also have a branch occupying other electric cars – Electric Motors Club. But anyway, Tesla has always been a pilot.
We now have a team of 17 people working full time on the development of electric vehicles. It takes a lot of effort to move this market forward here. Alexey and I have spent a lot of 80-hour work weeks in recent years.
We promote electric vehicles a lot, organize public and club events, work with the government to lobby electric vehicle incentives, set up public charging infrastructure and bring real cars to the roads.
We recently signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Federal Road Agency of Russia. Together, we will expand the load network on federal roads. It was a huge success, because the federal support was only for filling stations previously.
5. What is the current cost of introducing a Tesla in Russia, and will the costs be reduced one day?
In Russia, we have to pay customs clearance of 48% for every imported car. In addition, we have to deal with a set of different fees, shipping costs, insurance, etc. Thus, it is a price 55 to 60% higher than the retail price in Europe.
We do not see a way to establish a dealer for Tesla or other brands of electric vehicles at the moment. Without this, we see no way to reduce costs for the end customer, we did everything we could in terms of logistics and costs.
We are doing everything we can to ensure that customs clearance is reduced to zero and other government incentives. Our work in expert committees has progressed in this direction. On the positive side, we have free parking in Moscow for electric vehicles, tax exemptions in some areas of Russia and electricity in Russia is extremely cheap (0.02 to 0.07 USD per kWh) .
6. How many members are in the club and do you expect it to grow?
Today, there are about 300 cars belonging to the members of our club. Let's just add that they live not only in Moscow, but in many other regions. We also have a discussion among members with more than 100 active participants.
We work hard for the community to grow, it's the best way to spread the word. We organize events at the clubs, have even organized a trip to California in 2016 for club members, visit the Tesla factory and meet Tesla fans from other parts of the Earth.
7. The other day, I was walking on the waterfront in San Francisco and saw your fellow countryman's super yacht, 'Here Comes the Sun'. Do some wealthy businessmen import Teslas, even if they make a lot of money from oil and gas?
I can give you a good example. In our club, a member works in an oil company. He can not let his Tesla drive him to work (his colleagues probably will not understand him), but he was extremely confident in buying the car to show his children what the real future is.
Tesla owners are always interesting people, they support innovation and technical progress. We have a lot of people from computer and other industries related to technology.
8. In your opinion, what is the demand for Teslas in Moscow and in other Russian cities?
The demand is certainly growing – we have seen growth since the day we started importing these cars.
However, lack of financial incentives, weak government support, expensive customs clearance make Tesla less popular than in our country.
The Russian Far East is filling up with relatively cheap Nissan Leafs, imported from Japan. This is an excellent opportunity for Tesla Model 3: we are considering a very promising future for this car on the Russian market.
9. Are there Russians with Teslas who charge them with their domestic solar energy system with energy storage?
Solar panels are not so popular until now. But we have requests for Tesla Energy products and we are ready to implement them if we could get the go-ahead from Tesla Inc.
10. Is the government in favor of electric vehicles, neutral or friendly?
The attitude differs, but there is also a lack of awareness. Generally, government forces are neutral. In any case, we have some support and activists on the ground who are working to raise the issues of EV adoption and infrastructure. It's always the real people who make the real change. We are in contact with all the government support people who help them set up a lazy system.
11. Are there Russian companies that manufacture their own electric vehicles?
There were several projects and prototypes. For example, Lada El Lada. However, they are all quite far from the production phase. The Russian car industry is not very strong today, but it's time to create new cars from scratch and the changes may be imminent.
PS: At Electric Motors, we are working on projects that could be useful to the global electric vehicle community and promote electric vehicles around the world. We recently launched https://evcompare.io/, a website aimed at capturing the prospects of the growing market for electric vehicles. We want to help people who are considering buying an electric car to find the vehicle that suits them best. The website is in active development, any comments would be appreciated.
Image credit: Igor Antarov
Keywords: Moscow, Russia, Tesla, Tesla Model 3
About the author
Jake Richardson Hello, I've been writing online for quite some time and enjoying the outdoors. If you want, you can follow me on Google Plus.
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