Belarus, Russia discuss establishing joint venture for producing Union State electric vehicle

MINSK. Dec 24 (Interfax) - Belarus and Russia are working on creating a joint venture to produce a Union State electric vehicle, the Belarusian National Academy of Sciences' (NAS) press service said.

"From December 22 to 25, a delegation from the Belarusian NAS, led by Academician and Secretary of the Department of Physical and Technical Sciences Sergei Shcherbakov, is visiting organizations of Rosatom state corporation (Moscow) to discuss promising projects in the field of electromobility and the possibility of expanding areas of cooperation. Members of the delegation visited the Atom electric vehicle development center, where materials on the proposed platform were presented," it said.

During negotiations with the leadership of Rosatom, JSC TVEL, JSC Kama and Renera LLC and representatives of enterprises under the Belarusian Industry Ministry, the parties agreed to consider creating a joint venture and discussed the terms of cooperation in the electromobility sector.

The discussions focused on the development and production of batteries based on Renera cells, localizing battery components, localizing Atom components and designing and creating a Union State electric vehicle based on the Atom platform, the press service said.

"Following the negotiations, the parties signed a protocol on further cooperation and agreed to strengthen the development of their partnership," it said.

The Belarusian Industry Ministry previously said that negotiations between Minsk and Moscow had taken place on combining efforts to develop both countries' automotive industries. In particular, they focused on unifying the production of their component base.

In December, the Belarusian Industry Ministry and the Russian Industry and Trade Ministry signed an agreement establishing unified approaches to the development of automobile manufacturing in the two countries.