Avid car lover and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin drove Russia's first gasoline-electric hybrid car on Friday to visit political partner President Dmitry Medvedev. Called Yo-mobile, the car is a personal project of billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, who has said it could bring Russia a competitive edge in the global automotive industry, where the country is better known for its boxy Lada cars.
"I would like to drive your Yo-mobile to Dmitry Anatolievich (Medvedev), and show it to him ... I hope your Yo-mobile will not fall apart on the way," Putin told Prokhorov at a meeting just outside of Moscow. About 5 kilometres (3 miles) separate Putin's Novo-Ogaryovo country residence, nestled in a pine forest outside Moscow, from Medvedev's home in Gorki.
The car, whose name is a play on a Russian swear word, drives both on petrol and natural gas. It has a rotary engine and uses ultra capacitators, an energy-storing device seen as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries, which are installed on all other hybrid cars currently in production.
The capacitators store energy they receive directly from the engine and do not require re-charging from a power network. "Lithium-ion batteries are a mistake, a dead-end," said the car's developer Andrei Biryukov. Prokhorov said the Yo-mobile is to go into mass production in the second half of 2012, and expects to produce 10,000 cars a year. The car will burn 3.5 litres of fuel per 100 km and will cost about 450,000 roubles ($15,860).
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