7 ms·

Mass-Produced Electric Lada from 30 Years Ago

118 points by stmw 8y ago

a-dub 8y ago
"The Ni-Zn batteries were a heavy load – over 380kg of weight. The engine had 25 kWt (35 hp) which could get the car up to 90 km/h." a car that weighs nearly 1000 pounds with an engine that was about as powerful as a riding lawnmower. reminds me of the old joke... "what do you call a lada on top of a hill?" "a miracle."
- jotm 8y ago
  Well, Li-Ion was mass adopted way after the fall of the USSR, so back then Ni-XX is all they had. The Ford Endura Diesel engines provided ~60 HP, but were more than good enough for everyday use. If they kept up with it, electric may have been quite standard by now. Of course, the US had electric cars almost a century before,which were abandoned, as well. And electric batteries are still nowhere near petrol by energy density. It seems like a good experiment for the times.
- stmw 8y ago
  The Tesla battery packs are ~500kg, so what's changed is the power - 320kW or something.
- dpwm 8y ago
  > reminds me of the old joke... Despite the jokes, the 80s ladas weren't so bad. My dad had a second-hand one in the 90s (almost certainly from mid 80s) and it was a pretty solid car. There was a degree of simplicity to the maintenance that was uncharacteristic of other cars at the time. I don't recall it needing any major work doing to it at any point. It also had windscreen wipers on the headlights which I recall a strange fascination with because at night the blades would cast moving shadows across the road. When he sold it, it was snapped up quick for the Russian market. However, the power of the electric lada in the article does sound more worthy of the old jokes. It still seems pretty ambitious for the day and certainly surpasses my expectations on range.
  - EugeneOZ 8y ago
    lol, it was clearly an exception. Soviet cars (all russian cars except Kamaz) are total trash. My father spent 30 years of his life by repairing them.
    - readhn 8y ago
      You have no idea what you are talking about. First lada, for instance, was not a "soviet" car. It was a product of FIAT. Ural Motorcycle was really a BMW creation etc. etc. Henry Ford helped build some of the first Soviet cars (starting in 1929). By 1935, the Soviets had produced 100,000 Ford-designed vehicles. Soviets often "borrowed" western product designs and presented them as miracles of soviet industry.
      - bch 8y ago
        Ural was not a BMW. It was a Russian product based off an (old) BMW design. There’s a difference. Construction and materials don’t naturally follow just because they liscensed a design.
        readhn 8y ago
        Russians acquired the design and production techniques for BMW motorcycles and sidecars from Germans. Basically german tech reproduced in russia. "According to official accounts, after lengthy discussion, the BMW R71 motorcycle was found to closely match the Red Army's requirements. Five units were covertly purchased through Swedish intermediaries. Soviet engineers in Moscow dismantled the five BMWs, reverse engineered the BMW design in every detail and made molds and dies to produce engines and gearboxes in Moscow."
      - Fins 8y ago
        Fiat that the USSR bought wasnm't exactly a pinnacle of automotive engineering to begin with (as an American joke goes, FIAT stands for "Fix it again, Tony", doesn't it?) Initially, while all the Italian equipment was operating within design tolerances, Italian expendables were used, and designs weren't tweaked, it wasn't terrible for what it was. But that did not last long, and quality went downhill. To add insult to injury, Lada (or strictly speaking Zhiguli, Lada was the export name, and those were built slightly better) was a highest-end car a normal person could buy (after waiting in line for a few years, of course) without being "somebody".
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  My dad owned a late 60s Ford Cortina, 1600cc push rod engine, which probably made 100hp on a good day. If you look at it's 1959 predecessor it was about 1000cc and made 39hp. That Cortina also was a POS. 'Some' 1950's and 1960's American cars weren't POS. Everything else was. I don't think until the Japanese automakers efforts at world domination in the 1970's did you see high quality reliable ordinary cars.
  - jacobush 8y ago
    Volvo was always damn reliable from 1950-s on through 1991 as long you as you changed oil, or at least topped it up regularly. Can't kill it, there's almost nothing to go wrong with it. Same basic engine design for 40 years. (B18, B21.)
- rdtsc 8y ago
  > > "what do you call a lada on top of a hill?" > "a miracle." Heh. My driving instructor who enjoyed soviet cars told us of a trick to get cars like that up the hill - turn around and go back up the hill using the reverse gear.
  - nradov 8y ago
    Yes reverse has a lower ratio than 1st on many cars.
  - patrickg_zill 8y ago
    The Ford Model T and maybe the A also were driven like this. Personally I think that the Lada Niva is interesting.
    - ollie87 8y ago
      The Fords where due to how the fuel tank worked, not a lack of power.
i_feel_great 8y ago
There was a time back in the late 70's and early 80's when the USSR bought New Zealand dairy and agricultural produce but couldn't pay the bill. So they paid with Ladas instead. They were terrible, terrible cars. Even worse than the rear-engined Skodas.
- eccbits 8y ago
  Odd fact: Skoda is owned by VW now
  - vetinari 8y ago
    Another odd fact: Skoda is the 5th oldest car manufacturing company in the world (after Daimler, Opel, Peugeot and Tatra - another Czech company).
asaph 8y ago
> So in the years 1980-81, the first serial Soviet electric car was produced – over fifty cars were made in that first production run. Does 50 cars produced over a 2 year period really qualify as "mass-produced"? When Tesla makes a few thousand Model 3 cars in a single week, analysts complain it's not enough.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  Seems weird to me as well, but at the same time, there probably wasn't a bigger market at that time for that vehicle than what they made.
nimbius 8y ago
Americans love to take the piss of of the old soviet lada, but as an automotive mechanic I think theyre another example of how the soviets really were ahead of their time. In 2018 most americans just commute in their cars. performance isnt a real concern, but gas mileage and longevity are. most modern compact cars are hardly capable of doing more than merging onto the interstate. And forget about trying to repair them yourself (the Honda Fit requires you to drop the engine to service the plastic fuel filter.) but the lada could be serviced with a set of rented hand tools and in most cases had ample ground clearance to work without stands. you could rebuild the electric starter with a spool of wire and a few parts from an electronics store. it was never going to beat an american muscle car in the quarter mile, but the lada 1200 made 23 miles per gallon. the 1972 chevy nova of the same era? 14 miles per gallon.
- readhn 8y ago
  "The necessity is mother of invention." Russians were "hungry" and they had to work with what little they had. Their western counterparts were "well fed" and "lazy" in comparison. There was no need to be inventive and creative at every step of the process. Its a funny balance. Throwing money alone at a problem often does not work - you need to have "hungry" people as well. p.s. im not advocating return to communism lol
  - taneq 8y ago
    > Their western counterparts were "well fed" and "lazy" in comparison. There was no need to be inventive and creative at every step of the process. That doesn't seem entirely fair. The western counterparts could never have sold this car, any more than the Soviet engineers could have sold the Chevy. They weren't being fat and lazy, they were just designing for their target market.
    - gsich 8y ago
      I think they could have. Most people need a car to get from A to B. They take the cheapest one in most cases.
p2detar 8y ago
Back in the old days my dad built his Lada himself. We could not really afford a new one, so he bought and collected parts including the chassis. Then, I think it took half an year or so between his job to assemble it together. With lots of help of course, from my uncle and several books describing the technical details. As a kid, I had minor contributions as well and learned a thing or two about cars in the process. How reliable was the car? Pretty reliable. He drove it for half a decade, at least. At its end, we used the car mainly for pulling a trailer with construction work materials for several years then sold it for scrap. Yeah, you could build a Lada yourself, if you really wanted to.
amai 8y ago
But Porsche was even more ahead of it's time with the first hybrid car in 1900: "The Lohner-Porsche's design was studied by Boeing and NASA to create the Apollo program's Lunar Roving Vehicle. Many of its design principles were mirrored in the Rover's design." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner-Porsche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner-Porsche

118 points by stmw 8y ago

"The Ni-Zn batteries were a heavy load – over 380kg of weight. The engine had 25 kWt (35 hp) which could get the car up to 90 km/h." a car that weighs nearly 1000 pounds with an engine that was about as powerful as a riding lawnmower. reminds me of the old joke... "what do you call a lada on top of a hill?" "a miracle."

jotm 8y ago
Well, Li-Ion was mass adopted way after the fall of the USSR, so back then Ni-XX is all they had. The Ford Endura Diesel engines provided ~60 HP, but were more than good enough for everyday use. If they kept up with it, electric may have been quite standard by now. Of course, the US had electric cars almost a century before,which were abandoned, as well. And electric batteries are still nowhere near petrol by energy density. It seems like a good experiment for the times.
stmw 8y ago
The Tesla battery packs are ~500kg, so what's changed is the power - 320kW or something.
dpwm 8y ago
> reminds me of the old joke... Despite the jokes, the 80s ladas weren't so bad. My dad had a second-hand one in the 90s (almost certainly from mid 80s) and it was a pretty solid car. There was a degree of simplicity to the maintenance that was uncharacteristic of other cars at the time. I don't recall it needing any major work doing to it at any point. It also had windscreen wipers on the headlights which I recall a strange fascination with because at night the blades would cast moving shadows across the road. When he sold it, it was snapped up quick for the Russian market. However, the power of the electric lada in the article does sound more worthy of the old jokes. It still seems pretty ambitious for the day and certainly surpasses my expectations on range.
- EugeneOZ 8y ago
  lol, it was clearly an exception. Soviet cars (all russian cars except Kamaz) are total trash. My father spent 30 years of his life by repairing them.
  - readhn 8y ago
    You have no idea what you are talking about. First lada, for instance, was not a "soviet" car. It was a product of FIAT. Ural Motorcycle was really a BMW creation etc. etc. Henry Ford helped build some of the first Soviet cars (starting in 1929). By 1935, the Soviets had produced 100,000 Ford-designed vehicles. Soviets often "borrowed" western product designs and presented them as miracles of soviet industry.
    - bch 8y ago
      Ural was not a BMW. It was a Russian product based off an (old) BMW design. There’s a difference. Construction and materials don’t naturally follow just because they liscensed a design.
      - readhn 8y ago
        Russians acquired the design and production techniques for BMW motorcycles and sidecars from Germans. Basically german tech reproduced in russia. "According to official accounts, after lengthy discussion, the BMW R71 motorcycle was found to closely match the Red Army's requirements. Five units were covertly purchased through Swedish intermediaries. Soviet engineers in Moscow dismantled the five BMWs, reverse engineered the BMW design in every detail and made molds and dies to produce engines and gearboxes in Moscow."
    - Fins 8y ago
      Fiat that the USSR bought wasnm't exactly a pinnacle of automotive engineering to begin with (as an American joke goes, FIAT stands for "Fix it again, Tony", doesn't it?) Initially, while all the Italian equipment was operating within design tolerances, Italian expendables were used, and designs weren't tweaked, it wasn't terrible for what it was. But that did not last long, and quality went downhill. To add insult to injury, Lada (or strictly speaking Zhiguli, Lada was the export name, and those were built slightly better) was a highest-end car a normal person could buy (after waiting in line for a few years, of course) without being "somebody".
Gibbon1 8y ago
My dad owned a late 60s Ford Cortina, 1600cc push rod engine, which probably made 100hp on a good day. If you look at it's 1959 predecessor it was about 1000cc and made 39hp. That Cortina also was a POS. 'Some' 1950's and 1960's American cars weren't POS. Everything else was. I don't think until the Japanese automakers efforts at world domination in the 1970's did you see high quality reliable ordinary cars.
- jacobush 8y ago
  Volvo was always damn reliable from 1950-s on through 1991 as long you as you changed oil, or at least topped it up regularly. Can't kill it, there's almost nothing to go wrong with it. Same basic engine design for 40 years. (B18, B21.)
rdtsc 8y ago
> > "what do you call a lada on top of a hill?" > "a miracle." Heh. My driving instructor who enjoyed soviet cars told us of a trick to get cars like that up the hill - turn around and go back up the hill using the reverse gear.
- nradov 8y ago
  Yes reverse has a lower ratio than 1st on many cars.
- patrickg_zill 8y ago
  The Ford Model T and maybe the A also were driven like this. Personally I think that the Lada Niva is interesting.
  - ollie87 8y ago
    The Fords where due to how the fuel tank worked, not a lack of power.

i_feel_great 8y ago

There was a time back in the late 70's and early 80's when the USSR bought New Zealand dairy and agricultural produce but couldn't pay the bill. So they paid with Ladas instead. They were terrible, terrible cars. Even worse than the rear-engined Skodas.

eccbits 8y ago
Odd fact: Skoda is owned by VW now
- vetinari 8y ago
  Another odd fact: Skoda is the 5th oldest car manufacturing company in the world (after Daimler, Opel, Peugeot and Tatra - another Czech company).

asaph 8y ago

> So in the years 1980-81, the first serial Soviet electric car was produced – over fifty cars were made in that first production run. Does 50 cars produced over a 2 year period really qualify as "mass-produced"? When Tesla makes a few thousand Model 3 cars in a single week, analysts complain it's not enough.

TomMarius 8y ago
Seems weird to me as well, but at the same time, there probably wasn't a bigger market at that time for that vehicle than what they made.

nimbius 8y ago

Americans love to take the piss of of the old soviet lada, but as an automotive mechanic I think theyre another example of how the soviets really were ahead of their time. In 2018 most americans just commute in their cars. performance isnt a real concern, but gas mileage and longevity are. most modern compact cars are hardly capable of doing more than merging onto the interstate. And forget about trying to repair them yourself (the Honda Fit requires you to drop the engine to service the plastic fuel filter.) but the lada could be serviced with a set of rented hand tools and in most cases had ample ground clearance to work without stands. you could rebuild the electric starter with a spool of wire and a few parts from an electronics store. it was never going to beat an american muscle car in the quarter mile, but the lada 1200 made 23 miles per gallon. the 1972 chevy nova of the same era? 14 miles per gallon.

readhn 8y ago
"The necessity is mother of invention." Russians were "hungry" and they had to work with what little they had. Their western counterparts were "well fed" and "lazy" in comparison. There was no need to be inventive and creative at every step of the process. Its a funny balance. Throwing money alone at a problem often does not work - you need to have "hungry" people as well. p.s. im not advocating return to communism lol
- taneq 8y ago
  > Their western counterparts were "well fed" and "lazy" in comparison. There was no need to be inventive and creative at every step of the process. That doesn't seem entirely fair. The western counterparts could never have sold this car, any more than the Soviet engineers could have sold the Chevy. They weren't being fat and lazy, they were just designing for their target market.
  - gsich 8y ago
    I think they could have. Most people need a car to get from A to B. They take the cheapest one in most cases.

p2detar 8y ago

Back in the old days my dad built his Lada himself. We could not really afford a new one, so he bought and collected parts including the chassis. Then, I think it took half an year or so between his job to assemble it together. With lots of help of course, from my uncle and several books describing the technical details. As a kid, I had minor contributions as well and learned a thing or two about cars in the process. How reliable was the car? Pretty reliable. He drove it for half a decade, at least. At its end, we used the car mainly for pulling a trailer with construction work materials for several years then sold it for scrap. Yeah, you could build a Lada yourself, if you really wanted to.

amai 8y ago

But Porsche was even more ahead of it's time with the first hybrid car in 1900: "The Lohner-Porsche's design was studied by Boeing and NASA to create the Apollo program's Lunar Roving Vehicle. Many of its design principles were mirrored in the Rover's design." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner-Porsche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner-Porsche