Business news

MINSK, 15 September (BelTA) – The new plant BelGee may start producing electric vehicles in 2019, Industry Minister Vitaly Vovk said at an online press conference hosted by BelTA’s website.

“The Geely company has an electric car in its lineup. There is an agreement that the Belarusian plant will start assembling it as from 2019 - up to 5,000 units. But we will need a certain degree of localization. We will show the developments of our enterprises, both private-held and state-owned ones, to Geely to get their approval for using these developments in their car,” Vitaly Vovk said.

He stressed that the whole world is moving towards the development of electric drives. “The main task is to create a source of energy. It can be batteries, drives. Here we pin our hopes on science, academia,” the minister noted.

To have a well developed infrastructure is equally important. “For the time being we have some problems with the infrastructure. Private and state-owned producers have offered their designs of recharging stations. But there are still issues related to their deployment, payment. Energy is not free of charge. We need to set a tariff,” the minister explained.

In addition, we should not forget about recycling, the minister noted. “We will have cars from Europe, America. The lifespan of batteries will expire with time. How to recycle these batteries? We must therefore develop a comprehensive program. The president set forward such a task. We need to think over every detail,” Vitaly Vovk noted.