Vedomosti.- Sollers Ford has postponed the launch of the production of the Transit electric van to 2023, as told by the head of the company Adil Shirinov to journalists.
“We’ll bring the electric Transit here in 2022, in order to introduce it to our customers. However, we won’t launch the production next year. I expect the production to start in Elabuga in 2023” – said the senior executive.
As reported by Kommersant newspaper in March 2021, the company had plans to launch the production of the Ford Transit electric van in 2022, alongside the main diesel model. Ford has presented the Transit electric light commercial vehicle in 2020 and plans to commence the production of the model in the United States at the facilities of Ford Otosan in Turkey.
Shirinov has explained the reasons behind the delay of the launch of the production of the new model in Russia with the peculiarities of the vehicle’s life cycle. The electric van will only be available in the US in 2022 and the majority of the components for the Russian assembly will come from Ford Otosan.
Meanwhile, as previously, Sollers Ford intends to localise the production of the 2.2 litres diesel engine in Elabuga in 2022, to be installed on the Transit model. The production volume of the engines won’t be large scale, as told by Shirinov. There are plans to manufacture more than 21,000 LCV Transit vehicles per year, which is the only local product of the company, Shirinov added. However, even in this volume, the localisation of the engine is economically feasible, taking into consideration the availability of a local site for operations.
