In support of the initiatives of the Government of the Russian Federation aimed at the development of the automotive vehicles running on natural gas, the President of JSC “AVTOVAZ” Bo Inge Anderson, the Government of the Samara region, LLC “Gazprom gas fuel” and LLC “PBX service” signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the development of technologies and infrastructure for usage of natural gas fuel in the Samara region.
The main purpose of the Memorandum will be the joint development and implementation of programs to create, test and produce CNG vehicles and popularization of this type of fuel and the development of the necessary infrastructure. In the framework of the project JSC “AVTOVAZ” together with its partners will launch a pilot production of LADA Largus CNG taxi version and will carefully analyze the technical features of its’ operation. The timing of production of cars will be announced later.
“AVTOVAZ is ready to produce cars powered by natural gas. We can install this equipment to all LADA models and we have all this technologies, – said AVTOVAZ President Bo Inge Andersson. – However, beforehand it is necessary to solve a number of problems associated with the development of the infrastructure of filling stations and reduction of CNG equipment cost. We also expect that more environmentally friendly LADAs will be included in the list of the cars subsidized to buy “.
It should be noted that today JSC “AVTOVAZ” is ready for certification of the production version of LADA Granta CNG, that will be conducted as soon as the market will show the demand for dual-fueled vehicles. Thus, given the price of gas, a 20% increase to the cost of a CNG car pays off in only 45000 km mileage.
