Omicron is not a hindrance! Turkish Togg travels to USA
The young Turkish car company Togg has announced that it will be presented at CES in Las Vegas in early January. At the same time, we learned how things are going with a startup with powerful state sponsorship.
While General Motors Corporation announced this week that it will not travel to CES due to fears of the rapid spread of the Omicron strain of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus around the world, Turkish company Togg decided to head to Las Vegas and showcase its innovative development. Initially considered the domain of IT companies, CES has become the debut platform for many automotive innovations in recent years, and this year will be no exception, even if GM is absent. Togg’s presence at the show should probably be understood as a sign of the Turkish company’s interest in the US market, even if it’s too early to talk about exact expansion plans.
Togg was introduced exactly two years ago; The event was personally attended by Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Togg is an acronym for the Turkish Automobile Initiative Group. The company is formally private, owned by Anadolu Grubu, BMC, Kök Grubu, Turkcell and Zorlu, but was created precisely on the initiative of Erdogan, who suddenly wanted to have a Turkish national electric car, developed mainly domestically. The government supports the project with tax incentives, free lease of land for the plant and the obligation to purchase part of the production for its own needs.
In December 2019, Togg showed the world two prototypes made by Pininfarina: a compact crossover and a sedan, and the crossover already had two front design options, with a grille and a plug. The announced novelties are based on a modular electromobility platform of our own design (McPherson-type front suspension, rear multi-link), and three more models will appear in the future: a hatchback, a compact van and another crossover.
The compact crossover will be the first to enter the series at the end of 2022; it will be offered with a 200 hp electric motor on the rear axle or two electric motors (one for each axle) for a total output of 400 hp. The single-wheel drive version will be able to accelerate to 100 km / h in 7.6 seconds, the all-wheel drive version in 4.8 seconds. There are two battery options: with a power reserve with a charge of 300 and 500 km.
A plant with a capacity of 175,000 vehicles per year in Gemlik (a seaside district of the city of Bursa) is almost completed for the production of Turkish "electric trains". Next door will be a 20 GWh battery plant built in collaboration with China’s Farasis Energy, but the nickel-manganese-cobalt cells will come from China or Farasis Energy Europe’s European subsidiary under construction in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Germany. The network of charging stations in Turkey will actually have to be created from scratch, but always with the help of the state.
Europe is called Togg’s main export market, but for the first two and a half years, the Gemlik plant will only produce vehicles for Turkey, which means that Turkish electric trains will not be exported until 2024, and if they enter the US market, then also after.
At CES, the Turkish startup will most likely demonstrate the Internet orientation of its cars: inside the crossover prototype there were already six monitors on the front panel (two of which are electronic rear-view mirrors), modern electronic assistants were announced and, in the future, a full-fledged autopilot.