Automotive industry in Russia

Automotive production is a significant industry in Russia, directly employing around 600,000 people or 1% of the country's total workforce. Russia was at Nr 15 of car producing nations in 2010, and accounts for about 2% of the worldwide production. In 2009 the industry produced 599,265 cars, down from 1,469,429 in 2008 due to the global financial crisis, and 1,895,474 vehicles in 2014. The largest companies are light vehicle producers AvtoVAZ and GAZ, while KamAZ is the leading heavy vehicle producer. Eleven foreign carmakers have production operations or are constructing their plants in Russia.

The Russian Empire had a long history of progress in the development of machinery. As early as in the eighteenth century Ivan I. Polzunov constructed the first two-cylinder steam engine in the world, while Ivan P. Kulibin created a human-powered vehicle that had a flywheel, a brake, a gearbox, and roller bearings. One of the world's first tracked vehicles was invented by Fyodor A. Blinov in 1877. In 1896, the Yakovlev engine factory and the Freze carriage-manufacturing workshop manufactured the first Russian petrol-engine automobile, the Yakovlev & Freze. The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was marked by the invention of the earliest Russian electrocar, nicknamed the “Cuckoo”, which was created by the engineer Hippolyte V. Romanov in 1899. Romanov also constructed a battery-electric omnibus. In the years preceding the 1917 October Revolution, Russia produced a growing number of Russo-Balt, Puzyryov, Lessner, and other vehicles, held its first motor show in 1907 and had car enthusiasts who successfully participated in international motor racing. A Russo-Balt car placed 9th in the Monte Carlo Rally of 1912, despite the extreme winter conditions that threatened the lives of the driver and riding mechanic on their way from Saint Petersburg, 2nd in the San Sebastián Rally and covered more than 15,000 km in Western Europe and Northern Africa in 1913. The driver of the car, Andrei P. Nagel, was personally awarded by Emperor Nicholas II for increasing the prestige of the domestic car brand. In 1916, as part of the government program of building six large automobile manufacturing plants, the Trading House Kuznetsov, Ryabushinsky & Co. established AMO (later renamed to First State Automobile Factory, ZIS, and ZIL), but none of the plants were finished due to the political and economic collapse that followed in 1917.

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