Russia Starts Delivering Its Atom EV After 5 Years of Hyping It Up
The proud domestic substitute for western tech has finally hit Russian roads, delivering a grand total of two cars to actual humans.
Production at the Moskvitch plant, financed by KAMAZ and Rosatom, finally yielded its first public deliveries when two vehicles were officially handed over in July 2026. Before this grand milestone, around 17 pre-production units were stealthily registered to VIP clients over two months without any public fanfare.
Pro-government blogger Maxim Gorshenin claimed the title of first private owner after making an early deposit back in late 2025. Company CEO Igor Povarazdniuk plans to fulfill at least 3,000 orders by the fourth quarter out of a claimed 105,000 total pre-orders, though the current handover marathon stretches all the way until mid-October.
Built on a local platform with a 77 kWh battery and a 204 hp rear-wheel motor, the four-meter hatchback hits 100 km/h in eight seconds. Engineers famously dropped the steer-by-wire system mid-development after real-world test drives turned out terrifying, leaving buyers with a touchscreen mounted directly inside the steering wheel and suicide doors lacking a central B-pillar.
Pricing for this domestic miracle starts at 3.9 million rubles, though state subsidies can knock the total down to roughly three million if buyers take out a loan.
Five years of massive state funding and over a hundred thousand hypothetical orders have culminated in two sets of keys being handed over, proving that domestic automotive revolutions operate strictly on geological timescales.
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