Turkey has launched its first passenger car, and it is directly electric. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan became the owner of the first Togg car on Monday, delivering two cars, a red and a dark blue, at a ceremony in Ankara with his wife. Another Turkish car, the T10X, will be given to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. In the coming days, Turkish cars will be delivered to interested residents, who were selected by lottery due to the high interest, the local media.
“Today we are witnessing the fulfillment of a 60-year dream of our nation,” Erdogan said outside the presidential palace in Ankara. In the 1960s, they tried to produce their own car in Turkey, which was called Devrim (Revolution). But the project failed.
A car produced by five companies
Erdogan unveiled the first prototype of the Turkish passenger car in December 2019. The car is produced by a consortium of five companies called Togg, founded in 2018. Last month, the company started online orders for the first cars, and interest was so high that the owners of the first 20,000 cars had to be selected by computer lottery. A total of 177,000 T10X cars have already been ordered, Industry Minister Mustafa Varank announced.
Starting at 50 000 $
The price of the model with standard equipment starts at 953,000 Turkish Liras (about fifty thousand dollars). The car is sold with two types of batteries, the stronger one is supposed to last for about 520 kilometers, and the weaker one is for 310 kilometers. The fast-charging stations are supposed to charge up to 80 percent of the battery in less than half an hour, the Hürriyet daily reported.
The car factory was built near the city of Bursa in northwest Turkey, the country’s automotive manufacturing hub. So far, only foreign brands have been, including cars from Turkish joint ventures with Renault and Fiat Chrysler.
Source: CTK
