Red Star for Effort: Gunmaker-built Russian EV Earns Top Marx For Retro Done Right

You don’t have to be from a former Eastern Bloc country to feel strange pangs of desire for this Russian one-off. Built by Kalashnikov — yes, that Kalashnikov — the CV-1 concept car features an old body concealing an advanced electric powertrain.

The maker of the AK-47, AK-74, and various other automatic small arms apparently wants to stamp out Tesla’s decadent invasion of the Motherland’s fledgling EV market.

If you took one look at this car and said, “Hey, isn’t that an IZH-21252 Combi?”, you’d be correct. Kalashnikov used the beloved Soviet car, which started production in 1973 and didn’t stop until 1997, as the basis for the CV-1.

A testbed for the company’s new powertrain components, the retro-chic CV-1 improves on the Combi’s aesthetics in a manner sure to please dystopian near-future filmmakers. It’s amazing what you’re able to do with a simple grille insert and some LED strips. Brezhnev would approve.

Kalashnikov claims the vehicle generates 295 horsepower, drawing juice from a 90 kWh battery pack. Featuring a “revolutionary” inverter capable of handling gobs of current and an advanced (or at least contemporary) powertrain monitoring system, both developed in-house, the vehicle offers a driving range of 217 miles. Memories of the Warsaw Pact come standard. Unlike the original hatchback, this vehicle rockets to 62 miles per hour in 6 seconds.

“This technology allows us to stand alongside and compete with global electric car manufacturers such as Tesla,” a Kalashnikov spokesperson told Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

While the CV-1 surely created a stir in its corner of Army-2018 international military and defense exhibition, there’s no word on when Kalashnikov actually plans to start building a production car.

Teslas remain rare in Russia, as the only way to get your hands on one is to import it. No stores, repair facilities, or Supercharger stations exist. Still, there’s 300 of them in the country, and that number could soon double. According to Bloomberg, mobile phone retailer Svyaznoy recently added Tesla vehicles to its catalog, leading to 236 orders in June alone.

[Source: The Moscow Times] [Images: Kalashnikov]